In a turn of events, Russo saves his daughter from running away from her problems and resigning from her job. Ludlow College hasn’t seen the last of him, like Katie thinks, as he gets into a taxi. He quickly yells, “See you Monday,” as he closes the taxi while it speeds away, leaving Katie stunned into silence.
Earlier in episode 2, Russo finally accepted President Walt’s offer to join the college staff. Meanwhile, Walt talks the cop into settling things with Katie’s case. Honestly, Russo beating up Archie on a live television Zoom call was the highlight of the episode.
Russo’s dramatic first day at Ludlow College
As we know from the first few seconds of episode 3, Russo lies to Katie about his last night in Florida. His “boys” didn’t do a big send-off; instead, he was alone, throwing pennies into a mason jar and watching hockey. Unfortunately, she catches onto his lies when he names off character names from Cheers as they get out of the car at his house. He’s welcomed with a gift basket from the college, and Katie turns him down to live with him since the house is too big for one person.
Then the conversation takes a turn when she admits to just not getting out of her mom’s shadow, and now her dad is here. They confirm she can find her own battles, and she needs her space. They part ways on a joke about her crashing with him for a few days, and he falls for it.
Russo slips into his shiny new shoes and runs into Professor Dylan when he leaves his house. They end up walking together since he admits he has first-day jitters. As they cross the road to campus, he agrees to help with something. It turns out that something is talking to President Walt about how he promised Professor Dylan’s friend, Ruby, the writer-in-residence job but hired Russo instead of Ruby. Walt knocks Ruby for not writing something people have heard of and says she can have it next semester as Dylan defends her friend’s writing achievements.
Russo defends Walt and his decision because he had to take the job so Katie wouldn’t lose hers. Dylan is rightly upset as Walt continues to defend his reasons for offering Russo the job. They part ways so Walt can show Russo to his office. No surprise at all, Walt doesn’t care that he upset Dylan and Ruby and loves that his office connects to Russo’s. As fast as he showed him the office, Walt heads out with the door slamming behind him.
After a tumble, he arrives to his classroom out of breath. Tommy immediately notices Russo’s struggle. He finds out that Tommy has a copy of one of his books and, on a sad note, discovers that his books aren’t on any shelves at the college. Russo admits his books are beach reads usually found at the airport, but they’re examples of the art of the page-turner.
Unfortunately, the syllabus doesn’t excite his students, and he is accused of body-shaming a student when he says, “You’ll be my white whale.” He awkwardly defends himself to the room full of people (including Archie) that he wasn’t saying it negatively. Surprisingly, Archie sticks up for Russo, making a mistake in his first class on his very first day. He gets a verbal warning and leaves the meeting with the Dean. He accepts his invitation to have a porch whiskey later that night to talk more about things.
Dylan takes over as dean
Archie thanks the dean for taking on Sunny as Dylan approaches on a mission to find out why a protest rally is happening outside her office. He confesses that he moved the free speech to be petty. He collapses to the floor. Dylan tells Archie to call 911 as Archie takes the thank-you gift from the dean’s desk. Russo arrives at the Dean’s house, and Susan tells him it’s bad as she runs to the car.
Walt tells Dylan that the dean had a heart attack, but luckily, he will pull through, and Dylan will cover the dean’s classes. As Walt is saying the dean will be back soon, we see him in the hospital, hooked up to a breathing tube. Susan tells Russo he valued their friendship, as he agrees, even though he didn’t know him well. The next morning, Russo wakes up in the dean’s hospital room and jumps up, realizing he’s late. Russo rushes through campus as his students are getting ready to give up on him showing up.
He stops them and asks someone to read out the lesson plan since he never went home after the hospital visit. He gives up and asks everyone to have fun. I love how he admits to being scared to teach but knows they are all connected through their love of writing stories. His vulnerability about his writing journey breaks open the students’ creativity, but it also causes him to end up back in the hot seat apologizing for a mistake.
Two students spot Katie watching Archie teach his class through the classroom door’s window. She catches the looks and immediately runs into someone. Embarrassed, she hurries off in the other direction. It is later revealed that Dylan is the stand-in for the dean while he is in the hospital. Katie rushes in and grabs her for a chat. Although they don’t know each other well and Dylan doesn’t know how much power she holds, she agrees to try to lift Katie’s suspension so she can teach again. Sadly, watching Archie teach gave her the impression that he isn’t struggling like she is, as he happily teaches his class.
Russo feels down about where he belongs
Russo lets himself into Katie’s house as she hands her cigarette to her TA, Lilly, to hide her habit from her dad. He’s in a rush for Katie to look at his lesson plans since his class starts in 25 minutes. She stops talking to her TA about taking over her class and pulls up her dad’s lesson plan document. Unfortunately, both girls say he’s overscheduling the lesson plan and needs to relax. She tries and fails to tell him to let loose and have some fun with his teaching, like when he coached her childhood team. But, he’s set on his nerves, getting the best of him. To deflect from the issue, he corners Katie into going to the hockey game with him tomorrow night. On that note, he rushes off to his first class.
Unfortunately, Katie ends up going out with Lilly instead of the hockey game with her dad. He runs into Dylan and has to turn his old hockey jersey inside out. Dylan doesn’t even want to be there, but she has to be because the hockey coach is clearly drunk, and she’s the stand-in Dean, so she has to take care of it. Meanwhile, Russo is struggling with feeling like he’s doing terribly, and he leaves the hockey game as the coach throws a bottle onto the ice.
Sunny’s impending summer internship
Over in Archie’s mistress’s apartment, Sunny (Lauren Tsai) is talking to her roommate, Mo (Robby Hoffman), about locking down a summer internship as Archie works on his laptop. We find out the roommate hates Archie when he tries to quiet down their loud discussion as he works on writing his book. Honestly, I agree with the roommate that Archie should break up with his mistress and leave, as he turns down her idea to do an internship with President Walt. Archie doesn’t want to be in the spotlight anymore, and he wants people to stay out of their business.
Sunny leaves Mo at a workout machine to walk over and strikes up a conversation with the dean. She immediately requests that he be her new advisor. Although she’s ready with her pitch, he graciously turns her down. Walt, lifting weights nearby, overhears their conversation. The dean wishes her luck and leaves as Walt approaches Sunny with advice on picking the best advisor, regardless of what she thinks they can do for her. She clams up but thanks him before he walks away.
Later, she’s walking with Archie, telling him about how she wishes she had just asked Walt to be her advisor since he was already talking to her. But Archie assures her Walt was just eavesdropping and inserting himself into her conversation as he does with everyone.
After Katie sees Archie happily teaching, we see him sitting in his empty classroom, sadly looking at old photos of him and her on his laptop. Archie lies about what made him tear up when Sunny walks in and asks if he’s okay. She asks why his thank-you gift for the dean is sitting next to his laptop. Again, he lies, saying he never got the chance. Focused on her task, she rambles on about needing an advisor who can breathe on his own, so she made a list. She rushes the process because of the fetus growing inside of her, even though Archie assures her the companies can’t discriminate against her. She stormed out after his reassurances, which only upset her.
Later on, Archie approaches Walt at the gym for a quick chat and pulls Sunny into the conversation. After Archie leaves, Walt and Sunny hit it off when she loves the idea of having someone else listen to her trauma.
Rooster airs weekly on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT, with the finale releasing on May 10, 2026.