Staff Sergeant Pete Hill is sent home from Afghanistan for assaulting a superior and is forced to return to the US. Upon his return, he is made the platoon sergeant of a group of misfits at Florida-based Fort McGee that includes his two younger brothers, Derrick and Randy. Pete's sergeant major, Command Sergeant Major Cody, gives his platoon the task of finding a lost dog that belongs to the family of a deployed soldier. Pete's platoon is moments away from winning a war games exercise against a group of Italian troops when the dog is spotted in the battlefield, causing Pete to choose between winning the war games or rescuing the dog.

After Pete and Jill tie for the base marksmanship trophy, they embark on a series of additional competitions to try and break the tie. Meanwhile, Randy is the only member of his troop to fail the marksmanship test, so Derrick steps in with some unusual training methods to prepare his brother for a retest.

Randy wants Pete to move in with him and Derrick but Pete just wants to get away from everyone at the end of the day, so he buys a trailer away from the barracks. Meanwhile, Robinson and Park challenge Sgt. Perez's desire to be an enigma who keeps her work and private lives separate.

Cody meets with USMC Sergeant Major Diggins to discuss an upcoming Army-Marine flag football game, and the two make their "usual wager" on the results of the game. In his room, Randy becomes emotional watching military homecoming videos on the Internet.

Pete and his unit offer to do home improvements for an obnoxious father (Andrew Daly) and his reclusive son (Drew Justice) while their wife/mother is deployed. As the projects become more challenging and the father more irritating, Derrick fears Pete's legendary temper will surface, but Pete gets through it by using a technique he learned in Afghanistan called "embracing the suck." All goes well and the projects are finished, but Pete loses it when the father says Pete and his troops are "not real soldiers." In the end, Randy figures out a way for the father to connect with his son. Meanwhile, Jill thinks Cody is taking her out for coffee to talk about her request for enrollment in the Advanced Leader Course, but he just uses her to help spy on his teenage daughter.

The town's annual parade is coming, and Cody asks Jill's troops to march in the parade while placing Pete's team on "doody duty" (clean-up detail). Derrick and the troops seem perfectly happy with this, as it means they only have to work a couple of hours and don't have to do marching practice in the hot sun. But when Pete challenges the gang and asks if they've ever aspired to something greater, they all remember how Derrick was their "dreamcrusher" when they first came to the base, and they turn on him.

The troops are all set for a day at the beach on "soldier appreciation day", when Cody asks the Hill brothers to look after three Korean War veterans who are visiting Fort McGee for the first time in 60 years. After the vets steal a Humvee and the brothers go to retrieve it, they each find a connection with one of the old men. The guys learn that the vets are in town for the funeral of a recently passed comrade, and they help the old men fulfill their Army brother's dying wish. Meanwhile, Derrick learns that Erin has a 6-year old son.