The show opens with Anton, a 35-year-old Black man, anxiously delivering a slam poem about how, when he was nine, his mother locked him in his home and disappeared, leaving him in a heat wave with no air conditioning and little food.

David has met young Anton in the group home and plans to foster him. Anton wants to talk to his mom. David says that’s not possible, but asks for his message and promises to pass it along.

The Colemans have just brought home nine-year-old Anton to foster him while his mother is in prison. While the foster father, David, seems eager to bond with Anton; the mother, Dee, holds back, remembering the recent death of their teenage son, James.

Dee tries to care for Anton while always remembering that he’s not their son, but David tries to mold Anton into a Coleman as they finally start to bond over skiing.

With her sentence almost over, David and Connor visit Anton’s mother, Juanita, in prison. David persuades her to give up parental rights to give Anton a better life with the Colemans as his adoptive parents.

After finding out that his Mam is relinquishing parental rights, young Anton runs away to the Roosevelt Projects in Brooklyn, looking for her. He calls David, who shows up and finds young Anton, heartbroken. They have a heart-to-heart and David asks Anton if he’ll go along with them adopting him.

With Anton poised to be elected governor, People publishes an article about him. In the office one night, he’s going through mail and finds a letter from Juanita, his birth mother, who saw the article.

As Anton charges around his office, frantically readying himself to go to Georgia and assess the threat his birth mother poses to his campaign, his campaign manager and best friend, Brad, tries to calm him.

Anton reconnects with Carine and spends the night on her couch. The next morning, while she takes her son to school, Anton feels freer than he has in years and wonders if this is his first real taste of living life for himself.

After spending the day with Carine and her son, Shay, Carine and Anton tuck Shay into bed. Anton gets a glimpse at the life he almost had with Carine.

When Anton nervously drops his phone and reaches for it during a traffic stop, the white cop overreacts, dragging him from his car and handcuffing him prone on the ground. The cop goes back to his cruiser and in a moment of suspended reality, we see Juanita singing a song of gratitude for her son coming home. She’s soon joined by Carine and Dee. Anton unfreezes and starts panicking, fearful for his life. In the final moment of the song, Young Anton also appears.

In the show’s finale, just back from Georgia, Anton begins to give a campaign speech and finds he can’t go through with it. He instead talks about his own history and the history of the US, culminating in this song, where various characters appear in his mind and join in.