Originally produced for The Norman Lear Collection DVD set, this special has interviews with Norman Lear, Mackenzie Phillips, and Bonnie Franklin. Find out the back story on the show and how Norman developed it.
The two actors discuss growing up on television and share memories of their time working on One Day at a Time.
Newly divorced Ann Romano won't let her daughter go camping with boys.
Ann's new boyfriend invites her to spend the weekend with him.
Ann fears the girls are rejecting her in favor of their father's steady girlfriend.
Ann takes a job with a lascivious older man.
David pressures Ann to respond to his marriage proposal.
Julie wants all the expensive things that her rich friend has.
Schneider crashes Ann's house party.
Julie's boyfriend pressures her to sleep with him.
Ann's angry letter to President Ford causes a visit from the Secret Service.
Ann discovers David and a young woman in a compromising position.
Julie gets a waitress job in a grubby diner on the rough side of town.
Julie's date seems to prefer Ann.
The girls coax David into letting them throw a party while Ann is away.
Ann's ex-husband announces his plans to remarry.
Barbara naively announces the reconciliation of her parents.
Julie turns to her boyfriend after she disagrees with Ann about education, employment and marriage. (Part 1 of 4)
Ann is overcome by guilt after Chuck and Julie run away. (Part 2 of 4)
Schneider uses CB radio to search for Julie and her boyfriend. (Part 3 of 4)
With their possessions stolen, Julie and her boyfriend consider calling Barbara for help. (Part 4 of 4)
Hoping to attract desirable males, Barbara decides to change her image.
David returns from Los Angeles with a job offer and hopes of marrying Ann. (Part 1 of 2)
Ann must decide whether to accept David's marriage proposal.
Ann must deal with an upholstery ripoff.
Schneider touts his visiting nephew as a model gentleman, unaware that the youth is a thief.
Ann's visiting father tries to persuade her to return home.
Ann finds herself attracted to the piano player who has moved into the building.
The girls put on a New Year's show at a retirement home.
Julie's religious zeal drives Ann and Barbara crazy. (Part 1 of 2)
Julie's newfound religion inspires her to help a homeless man. (Part 2 of 2)
Ann won't allow her ex-husband to spoil Julie and Barbara with a new car.
Schneider expects Ginny to leap at his marriage proposal.
Ginny becomes depressed after her mysterious Sunday excursions.
With the family doctor away and Julie down with possible appendicitis, Ann accepts the services of a young resident.
Ann's new job leaves her boss wondering whether it is fit for a woman.
Julie writes Chuck a Dear John letter, while Ann finds herself in the middle of a feud between Chuck's parents.
Barbara accepts an invitation to a school dance, then can't turn another one down.
Ginny persuades Ann to go to a singles bar.
Tired from cramming for entrance exams, Julie doesn't want to go to college any more.
With Ann out of town, the girls sneak out to a party.
After Julie plows into a car, its dashing driver offers her a job.
Julie's boss invites her on an out-of-town trip.
Julie is startled by her boss' proposal.
Julie is implored by her father not to marry her 42-year-old boss.
A lecherous client has more than business on his mind.
An insecure boy interested in dating Barbara bolsters his confidence by taking out a notorious classmate first.
Ann meets her ex-husband's new wife.
When Barbara hands in Julie's verse as her own for a class, a school counselor takes her for a poetic genius.
Barbara contends with a girl who is trying to befriend her.
Barbara's classmate phones to say she's taken a drug overdose.
A man claims to be Schneider's son.
Ann sees her 36th birthday as a crisis, not a cause for celebration.
Ann explores romance with the building's newest tenant, a race-car driver.
Ann begins to question her relationship with a dashing race-car driver.
Ann learns that a secretary she just hired is a reputed drug user.
Frustrated over not getting enough attention at home, Barbara runs away to Chicago.
Determined to keep his job, Schneider woos the building's new owner, who falls for him.
Ann has a competitor in the lecherous Francine Webster.
Aspiring designer Julie tries to enter a fashion show after the entry deadline.
Julie must decide how to handle a banking error in her favor.
Barbara struggles with deciding whether to turn in a friend whom she caught vandalizing the school.
Julie plans to move out, but Ann doubts her daughter can make it financially.
Ann thinks Julie's new roommate is a bad influence on her.
Ann's career advice to Barbara's friend leads to hard feelings between the boy and his father.
Ann's ex-husband tells her that he can no longer pay her child support for his daughters.
Ed is forced to admit the truth to Julie and Barbara.
Ann is stunned when a friend says she's leaving her husband.
Barbara has a strong reaction to her ex's new flame.
Schneider takes a disabled boy as his assistant.
Barbara's friend visits with news that she's now a mother.
Ann pursues a man with advice from her daughters.
An elderly resident of the building stages an armed protest, keeping the Romanos hostage.
Julie and Barbara become rivals when they fall for the leader of a rock group.
The battle for the band leader continues as Barbara tries to win him back from Julie.
Ann plays hostess to an Arab sheik while Julie leads a demonstration against his country's economic policy.
The pace of Barbara's restaurant job proves to be faster than she anticipated.
Ann and the girls spend a warm Christmas Eve in a frigid mountain cabin.
In the first of a three-part story, Ann and a sportswriter begin a promising romance.
A smooth-sailing romance between Ann and a sportswriter hits the rocks.
Ann weighs pursuing a relationship with her married boyfriend.
Julie is depressed because her design career seems to have reached a dead end.
Francine uses her feminine wiles to wrest away one of Ann's big accounts.
Only hours after they meet, Ann's old pal and Schneider are ready to sail off on a romantic cruise.
The baby grand delivered to Ann by mistake belongs to her next-door neighbor, a slightly unstrung piano teacher who begins giving lessons in her living room.
Barbara learns a lesson about beauty after Schneider accidentally opens a door into her nose.
Julie falls for an egotistical filmmaker whose temperament exactly matches her own.
As Barbara graduates from high school, she ponders her future.
A lucrative offer to direct public relations for a computer firm prompts Ann to give Mr. Davenport two weeks' notice.
Ann deals with the breakup of her parents.
Schneider quits because the landlord refuses his raise request.
Ann tries college and ends up in a course with Barbara.
Barbara ponders going all the way with her boyfriend.
Julie returns from a ski trip sporting a meek fiance, an impending wedding date and an unexcited best man.
With the wedding approaching, Julie must decide between her fiancé and his best man.
Julie's new husband is laid off, and the couple can't afford their new apartment.
A psychiatrist recommends a heart-to-heart talk to take the heat out of Ann's relationship with her mother.
Barbara hires a genetics tutor, unaware of his obvious shortcomings.
Ann is intrigued with her handsome new assistant.
Barbara's new hobby lands Schneider in jail.
Ann suffers a heart attack.
Schneider and Max duel for the attention of the Romano women.
Ann and the family put on a show at the senior citizen home.
Schneider is offered a job as a model.
A fast-talking insurance man makes a play for Ann, her mother and Barbara.
Ann confronts the possibility of living alone.
Ann's mother moves into the building and finds a job at Ann's office.
Barbara is harassed by an overzealous suitor.
With a condominium conversion looming, the cast flashes back to past events.
Barbara feels compelled to tell Bob about his new girlfriend's former exploits.
A binge of credit-card spending leads Max and Julie to insolvency.
After Schneider's rebuff during an outing to a comedy club, Ann brings home a footloose funny man.
Ann tries to cheer up her newly separated boss.
Ann's archaeology professor makes a play for her.
Schneider must deal with a former cellmate from a gambling bust.
Ann tries to help Schneider restore his confidence with women.
Barbara seeks justice when a professor makes unwelcome advances.
Ann's promotion opportunity means she would have to relocate to Texas.
Ann must deal with an irritating commercial artist.
Ann forms a partnership with her formal rival.
Ann and Barbara return from a weekend trip to find they've been robbed with Schneider's assistance.
Schneider cheers up Ann's grieving mother.
Barbara's search for an interesting major leads her to discontinue her education.
Former tenants ask Schneider to help them conceive a child through artificial insemination.
Alex is fed up with Nick's plans for their father-and-son weekends.
Schneider falls madly in love with a woman who prizes her freedom above everything.
Schneider is jealous when his young girlfriend is alone with a man her own age.
Ann's mother gets pinched for shoplifting.
Barbara takes on the cause of an endangered immigrant.
Ann tries to get to the root of her antagonistic relationship with Nick.
A dissatisfied married woman makes a play for Schneider.
When Ann comes down with the flu, she resents her mother's doting.
Nick won't let Alex get away with turning in a shoddy science project.
Ann and Nick realize a client is involved in a bait-and-switch scheme.
A genius who once tutored Barbara has graduated from college at the age of 14.
Alex accuses Ann of keeping his father and mother apart.
Ann's old boyfriend David arrives at her door.
After his father's death, Alex comes to live with Ann and Barbara.
Alex, Barbara and Schneider await Ann's flight by flirting at the airport.
Ann's old nemesis Francine proposes a business partnership.
Julie returns after having left Max.
Ann tries to prevent Julie and Max from divorcing.
Barbara's busy dating schedule backfires.
Barbara hatches a plan to repay Mark for their disastrous first date.
Schneider contemplates taking Ann's cousin to a dance.
An overprotective Ann frets over Alex's first date.
When Ann and Francine are turned down for a loan, Schneider enters the partnership.
While Ann is away, Barbara's grandmothers wage war for her affection.
Unwelcome guests arrive just in time for Barbara's surprise birthday party at the store.
Barbara's engagement causes Ann to worry about getting old.
Ann's mother strikes up an affair with Francine's father.
Barbara fears that her marriage plans will dissolve when she learns that she can't conceive.
Alex is lauded as a hero despite having caused the danger himself.
The men go fishing and the women await their return, but they are talking about marriage.
A Russian female athlete falls for Schneider and wants to defect.
Ann and Francine battle over the same man.
Coach Max benches Alex after taking command of his baseball team.
While in Las Vegas, Barbara and Mark consider a sudden marriage ceremony.
The family rushes off to Las Vegas to talk Barbara out of getting married there.
The annual variety show for the senior citizens' home takes place.
Schneider appears to be going deaf.
Ann's mother tries to make money as a fortune teller.
With the wedding date approaching, Barbara is frustrated with Mark's lack of participation.
Barbara worries that Mark's golf game will make him late for the ceremony.
Barbara has trouble adapting to life at Mark's crazy rooming house.
Schneider and his friends take Alex to a female mud-wrestling show.
To land a new French account, Francine talks Ann into a weekend trip to Paris.
Ann is jealous when Francine takes Alex for a fun-filled weekend.
Barbara fixes up Ann with Mark's newly divorced father.
Pregnant Julie's plan for an underwater birth troubles Ann.
Julie's labor begins, but she wants to be in California to give birth underwater.
Barbara's enrollment in college damages the Royers' budget and love life.
Needing temporary shelter, Barbara and Mark come to stay with Ann.
Ann's patience is tested when her home is overrun with family members.
To escape the chaos at Ann's place, she goes to stay with Sam.
Ann's mother returns from a cruise with news that she's marrying the ship's piano player.
Alex's obsession with video games gets him in trouble at school.
When Schneider saves a man's life, he is rewarded with a cushy executive job.
Sam wants Ann to run away with him to a tropical island,
Ann's mother hides her financial troubles.
Alex makes a play for an older woman.
A letter to Ann's mother from her late father is delivered four years late.
Barbara's friend Bob reveals he still has feelings for her.
Alex must choose between a weekend outing with an attractive girl and an event at Schneider's lodge.
An Italian designer sweeps Francine off her feet.
Mark and Max rent a house without consulting their wives.
Sam sets a wedding date but then develops cold feet.
Ann and Sam have a disastrous ski honeymoon.
Newlyweds Sam and Ann quibble over small details.
A visit from Sam's ex-wife makes Ann jealous.
Mark nervously starts a dentistry practice.
Julie and Max plan to write children's stories together.
Sam's business trip with an attractive girl ignites Ann's jealous imagination.
Barbara considers adopting a child.
Barbara continues to consider adoption.
Barbara tries her hand as a travel agent.
Ann is despondent at the prospect of spending Christmas without her family.
Sam's mysterious disappearance leads Ann to worry he's been kidnapped.
Julie decides to leave her husband.
Francine talks Sam into designing an elaborate office suite.
Schneider reunites with a high-school flame on his 50th birthday.
Barbara loses charge of the household when her grandmother moves in.
Francine's marriage plans threaten her business partnership with Ann.
An Italian priest arrives, claiming to be a distant relative.
A frustrated Barbara tries to teach Mark's joke-playing friends a painful lesson.
Sam resumes his smoking habit and finds it hard to quit.
Schneider has a near-death experience.
Working together fuels an attraction between Max and Barbara.
Ann accepts a job offer in London and ponders how she will break the news.
Schneider decides to move to Florida to care for his niece and nephew.
A 60-minute CBS retrospective special reuniting Bonnie Franklin, Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli, and Pat Harrington to reminisce about the series and their characters. Regular cast members Richard Masur, Shelley Fabares, Nanette Fabray, Michael Lembeck, and Glenn Scarpelli shared their feelings about their time on the show in separate interviews.
Even some of the greatest sitcoms ever to grace television has a scandal in it's past. The Truth Behind the Sitcom Scandals talks with cast members who recount some of the crazy stories of what happens behind the scenes and what really happened. Although it airs on the Biography network, and is considered a brand new show, The Truth Behind the Sitcom Scandals was made by TV Guide in 2000.
Three to Get Ready was produced for CBS in 1975. The setting remains the same, Indianapolis. Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin), however, is a nurse being wooed by a doctor (Lewis J. Stadlen, later of Benson), barely a month after her divorce had been finalized. Also, Ann only has one daughter, Julie (Mackenzie Phillips), not two. Dwayne Schneider (Pat Harrington) is the building superintendent. Marcia Rodd plays Ann's upstairs neighbor.
