Chip Lambert Timeline & Summary

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• Chip is the middle child in the Lambert family.
• He becomes a professor at W. College, where he teaches a class on media criticism.
• One year—not long before he reaches tenure—he meets a student named Melissa Pacquette, whom he finds strikingly intelligent and unashamedly flirtatious.
• Around the same time, Chip gets sneaking suspicions that he won't be given tenure. This prompts him to do something rash: start an affair with Melissa.
• They decide to take a road trip during Thanksgiving break. Before heading out of town, Melissa buys Mexican A, which they proceed to eat like candy for the entire debaucherous weekend.
• Eventually, the Mexican A runs out and Chip freaks out, so Melissa ends up leaving him in the motel to visit her parents.
• The college finds out about the affair and fires Chip a few months later
• He decides to write a script (based on his affair with Melissa) and move to New York, where he meets a film producer named Eden and starts dating her assistant, Julia.
• Time goes on and Chip goes broke. He has to borrow about 20,000 smackeroos from his sister, Denise.
• His parents visit him in New York on their way to the cruise. Chip has bigger things to deal with, though, since his girlfriend Julia has just stormed out of his apartment.
• He follows Julia to Eden's office, where he meets Gitanas, a Lithuanian politician who also happens to be Julia's ex-husband.
• Gitanas wants Chip to create fake websites in order to funnel Western investment into his country. He'll be paid handsomely, of course, so Chip agrees and they take a flight that same day.
• Things go well at first. Chip and Gitanas make tons of money and live like kings.
• Soon, however, other powerful figures get involved and end up sabotaging a series of cell phone towers owned by Gitanas. Things are getting crazy fast.
• It just so happens that it's the week before Christmas. Chip calls Enid to tell her that he'll make it home in time.
• Chip escapes to the airport amid a riot, but the facility is taken over by military forces before he can get out.
• Luckily, he's rescued by Gitanas and his bodyguards. Their victory is short-lived, however, as rogue policemen drive them off the road and steal most of their belongings.
• Chip is able to hold onto enough money to buy a plane ticket, so he walks to Poland and hops on a flight to the United States, arriving in St. Jude on Christmas day.
• The Lambert home is in disarray when he returns: Gary is mad as heck, Alfred looks weaker and crazier than ever, and Enid is depressed, having finally admitted that there's no hope for Alfred.
• Chip ends up staying in St. Jude while his father undergoes brain studies. He falls in love with—and eventually marries—Alfred's doctor; they have twins and move to Chicago.
• But don't you worry: He's still working on that screenplay as hard as ever.