Recovering alcoholic John Hemingway takes the job of night manager in a seedy bus station, where a robbery and a missing bus test his resolve to stay sober.
John goes 30 days without alcohol, and wants to get back together with his wife. Before he can reach her, she serves him with divorce papers.
John is not about to celebrate when his sponsor orders him to be celibate -- especially when it's for six long months.
John's mother, an inveterate con artist, begs him to bail her out of jail, and then becomes the obvious suspect when a batch of credit card slips goes missing from the bus station.
John takes stock of himself while helping a runaway teen realize that she can go home.
A fellow con artist from John's drinking days offers to cut him in on a lucrative real-estate scam; a bounty hunter is taking an incredibly naive Mississippi teenager to face a ten-year sentence.
Badgered by an extortionist, bedeviled by a work slowdown and befuddled by his sponsor's drinking, John feels like he's teetering on a ""tightrope of sobriety.""
A startled John begins questioning his sexuality after another male alcoholic visits to make amends -- by apologizing for seducing him.
John's given food for thought when an old writer friend bases his first book on John's bacchanalian past, a neo-Nazi named Steve Hitler demands to charter a bus, with support from the ACLU, and a sleazy health inspector threatens Dexter with blackmail.
John tries to make amends to ex-wife Carol and son Tony he ran out on.
John's passionate love affair hits a snag when his perfect woman joins AA -- and must be celibate for six months.
John's nephew Bobby learns the meaning of tough love when he shows up at the bus station for a wild evening with the man who taught him to drink.
John gets hooked into a crap game and finds himself being forced to pray at gunpoint by Mahalia; Dexter discovers that his new girlfriend is a hooker.
John's order to train his boss's harebrained nephew, who been in AA for a year but is still a basketcase.
John's son tries to form a father-son relationship; Chester disappears and is found dead; John must deal with a battle to the death between Mahalia and her sister Linda, who stole Mahalia's first husband.
Entrusted for a few moments with the official United State inch, John can't resist peeking -- and damages it; meanwhile, he worries over a bus driver who drinks but denies it.
Hemingway and Dexter get stuck together in a crummy motel with a cage full of chickens; when a baby is abandoned in the station dumpster, Officer Eggers kidnaps it.
John's girlfriend turns out to be married -- when her husband confronts John with a gun; Mahalia's estranged husband arrives.
At a drag show, John runs into his old college roommate, who's playing Marlene Dietrich; Mahalia is targeted anew by a blackmailer she thought she'd paid off.
Carol is furious when Tony leaves her to stay with John; Mahalia worries about her brooding son Dante.
Officer Eggers develops a crush on John after he rescues her from a gunman; Dexter's business languishes after a customer puts a curse on the diner.
Dexter is outraged when his sister strikes up a friendship with Hemingway, Mahalia is overjoyed to hear her first boyfriend is coming to visit, Carly reports to Hemingway that she was sent out on a house call -- to his son.
John accidentally gets high on marijuana brownies, Hampton gets an unusual request from his long-estranged father, actor Joe Pesci studies a homeless man living at the bus station as research for a role.
Hemingway is feeling suicidal on his birthday, but discovers new meaning when the entire bus station is held host age by a gun-toting lunatic.
John moves into a more upscale apartment and is immediately attracted to his new neighbour, a nurse on the night shift.
Dexter hides from an angry girlfriend in John's apartment, foiling John's amorous intent with his new neighbour.
Carly asks John if he wants to have a serious relationship with her -- just after Catherine has indicated that she is interested, then both come to his housewarming party.
John takes a company physical and is assured not to worry about his high cholesterol level, then the doctor drops dead, prompting John to seek lifestyle advice from Catherine. Meanwhile, Gene and Mahalia both find new loves: Gene's is Sara, a lovely ice skater, but Mahalia's turns out to be another con artist she met at a group for ""single Latinos over 30 who've recently remembered childhood abuse through hypnosis.""
John and Catherine can't seem to get together for a date because of John's problems with others: Dexter needs him to play tutor for a high school equivalency exam, and Mahalia needs him to help sober up Oscar for a visit from a social worker.
The guys gather at John's apartment to view what they think is a vintage porn film, but instead find themselves viewing footage of national security importance -- the assassination of JFK. Meanwhile, Eggers decides she wants to be a mother; and we learn something startling about Oscar's mysterious past.
With Dexter's help, John practices driving so he can renew his license for a vacation with Catehrine; meanwhile, Boyz II Men trade a performance for bus repair.
A young woman informs John that he's one of three men who could be her biological father.
Catherine gets the wrong idea when she spies John dancing with Carly, Mahalia is cheered by a passenger passing through.
Synopsis unknown.
John is upset when his son joins a religious cult, and enlists Dexter's help; Egger's embarassing parents visit.
John, Mahalia, Dexter and Heavy Gene apply for a better playing job at a New Orleans bus station.
Good fortune follows the appearance of a faint image of Christ on the bus station's wall.
John's mouthing off to the police lands him in jail with musician-author Kinky Friedman, Catherine learns about Carly's past, Eggers practices her mothering skills on Mahalia's daughter Lucy.
John tries to help a famed '70s poet (Cassidy) onto the wagon, while attempting to get his second ex-wife pay his first ex-wife's son's college tuition, the bus station bar and lunch counter become the trendiest places in town, a lesbian customer challenges Officer Hampton to an arm-wrestling match.
Carly's 21-year-old brother has eyes for Catherine, but his age -- and John -- aren't the only obstacles to winning her heart: despite his fabulous income from bike racing, he is illiterate.
Catherine has two house guests: a seven-year-old niece, who invests in Dexter's nine-ball skills, and her jazz musician ex-husband, who wants her back.
Old flames resurface after John and Catherine agree to take a break to assess the direction of their relationship.
Mahalia's crash diet lands her in the hospital on the night John must attend Carly's fundraising party, so Dexter must man the bus station alone.
A canine is the centerpiece of the bus station's new security system, Catherine and John try living together, and John's former art professor show up to announce he has incurable cancer and intends to commit suicide.
John's daughter appears topless in a skin magazine, Officer Eggers holds an attractive stranger hostage unless he agrees to impregnate her.
Heavy Gene and Sarah plan to wed.
Catherine breaks up with John because ""things are too good"", Dexter discovers that his new love Annie has a surprising past, Mahalia loses her new dog, and John's suspicions are aroused by the kindly gentleman who returns it.
John searches for a lost package and Carly mulls a marriage proposal.
John finally proposes to Catherine, she accepts, and everyone shows up for the wedding -- except the bride and groom. John accepts Carly's eager proposition to come home with her for the evening. But he disappoints Carly by proclaiming that he still loves Catherine. Mahalia advises John to call a psychiatrist, but after John reveals his deepest feelings--and his identity--he's mortified to realize that he's talking to radio psychiatrist, Dr. Frasier Crane live on the air. Determined to win Catherine back, John asks Catherine to marry him. Meanwhile, the St. Louis, Missouri Crossroads Bus Terminal begins closing at midnight.
John reconciles with Catherine, who takes on a new enterprise by buying the bus bar from Carly and turning it into a jazz club; the entire crew switches to the day shift; and Eggers introduces her beloved dog -- which turns out to be a wild wolf.
John's daughter and son hit town at the same time, and John decides to tell each of them about the other's existence. John's children by different mothers, Rachel and Tony, each unaware that the other exists, meet at the bus terminal. Rachel is in town for a memorial concert by the band Grateful Dead, and Tony has ended his studies at Yale University, although he claims he's on vacation. Not knowing that they're related, they become attracted to each other. When they go on a date, John panics and tries to find them before they become physically involved. Meanwhile, Mahalia persistently tries to seduce an attractive traveler, despite his protests that he is not available. Feeling guilty, she goes to confession at church and finds out he's a priest.
After he discovers a collection of short stories he wrote as a young man, earnest John Hemingway enters a writing contest that could send him to Paris, and Catherine hints that she'd like to accompany him. Unfortunately, the story is from John's alcoholic period, and he actually may not have written it: acerbic newspaper chief editor Otto Friedling accuses John of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway. In a black-and-white fantasy sequence, John's autobiographical story comes to life, with the fantasy John Hemingway (Miller) a would-be writer for whose love both Catherine and Carly vie.
Catherine accepts a date with a stranger -- who thinks she's plying Carly's former trade. Meanwhile, the crew from TV's ""Cops"" rides with Hampton and Eggers, and Dexter is mistaken for a bank robber.
After a burglary in the apartment building where John and Catherine live, he seizes the chance to play on her vulnerability; Dexter's mom and Cathy's beau have something in common. Catherine is very scared when a thief breaks into the building she lives in. John exaggerates the danger, figuring that if she's frightened she'll want him around. Meanwhile, Carly introduces everybody at the terminal to her millionaire boyfriend, Karl. To Dexter's dismay, his visiting mother recognizes Karl from when she worked as his nanny.
Dexter accompanies John on a visit to his boyhood home in Chicago -- where John learns his departed father never departed. Meanwhile, Hampton gets flowers from his male doctor.
John tells Catherine that she would love him if she could forget about their past together. Later, he logs onto an computer on-line service as ""Fitzgerald"" and types flirtatious messages to a user named ""Ella."" The two seem perfect for each other and arrange a date -- only to discover that ""Ella"" is of course Catherine. Meanwhile, Dexter tries to convince filmmaker Spike Lee to let him cater the meals for Spike and his film crew while they are in St. Louis. When the overzealous Dexter accidentally injures Spike, who ends up in the hospital, the film company hires Dexter to impersonate Spike in the film until he recovers. Also, John represents Mahalia during a deposition with an opposing lawyer in her custody battle for her children but does more damage than good, while Mahalia almost ruins her case by dating the lawyer.
Dexter joins John for a writing class, where another student entrances John -- until she writes a cruel character study of him. Meanwhile, Dexter's bizarre piece of fiction is popular with the class, and John forgets a favor he promised Mahalia -- who finds herself one of three women who shows up at a rage management seminar harboring resentment towards John. Catherine is upset because she ended her relationship with John; Carly is angry that he rejected her; and Mahalia is mad because he sometimes acts like her divorced husband.
John assures Mahalia that he'll talk to her younger sister Venus about her overly seductive behavior and reckless living. But a case of mistaken identity causes him to end up in the bedroom with the alluring Venus instead. Meanwhile, Gene reluctantly agrees to make his professional boxing debut as the ""Jolting Janitor,"" fighting against Tyrone Brisco, with Dexter as his manager.
On his ""lucky day,"" John attends the wedding of Mahali'a ex and bets Catherine's IRS payment money on a horse instead of depositing it in her bank -- just the beginning of a scenario in which he ends up in hospital. John wins, but the guy who brokers the bet; Norm steals the money and flees. John must take Dexter and Gene to find the formidable Norm at a sleazy downtown bar and get the money back before Catherine finds out. Meanwhile, Mahalia is furious when she learns that her shiftless ex-husband is marrying a sophisticated woman. She vents her anger in a letter to him, but the letter gets delivered to the wrong man.
After John writes a scathing negative newspaper review of performance artist Amanda Cox, she professes respect for his critical opinion and seductively lures him to her loft -- where she exacts her revenge with an unforgettable show involving John and a concealed live audience. Unfortunately, Catherine and her mother, Louise Merrick are part of that audience. John vows revenge with some trickery of his own but is again humiliated. Meanwhile, Catherine bribes her friends at the bus terminal to exaggerate her status to make her mother proud; and Hampton practices being a Buckingham Palace guard.
Mahalia starts a second career selling real estate, and Carly's millionaire boyfriend Karl is one of her first clients, buying a fabulous house and allowing John live there for free while Karl is traveling. When Carly helps John decorate the house, they consider acting on their romantic feelings for each other -- until a frighteningly jealous Catherine almost burns down the building accidentally.
When Eggers consults a plastic surgeon for a breast reduction, John considers a nip-and-tuck when he fears he looks older than his 45 years.
Is it destiny that hooks up John with a pretty yoga instructor for a health spa vacation that he planned with Catherine? If so, why is Catherine on their train? Alone at first, Catherine meets her former high school boyfriend, Todd; and John, who has dumped the annoying Penelope, now does everything he can to keep Catherine from reuniting with Todd.
John makes a bad impression upon meeting his favorite author Jackson Bishop, but Dexter's friendship with the writer leads to a second chance for John -- and a second faux pas when he succumbs to a seductive model who, unbeknownst to John, is Jackson's wife.
A parody of Sunset Boulevard, with Betty White as the Norma Desmond of TV who has written ""Golden Girls: The Musical"" and entices John into rewriting it, with Catherine as lyricist, and staging it in the bus terminal (with John press ganged into the role of Dorothy when Catherine mysteriously goes missing).
John gives Catherine dancing lessons, but she won't let him lead; Mahalia and Carly gives Eggers a makeover to prepare her for a date; Dexter and Gene run the Raincheck Room for a night while arguing about who's in charge; Hampton challenges himself to survive an entire work shift without eating a donut; and the elephant recently seen marauding around the city makes its nocturnal home in the bus station.
It happened one night, nearly a decade ago. Or so says John, who recalls a visit he made to the bus station in 1987, when he first encountered Catherine and had a profound impact on his current friends.
Mahalia accidentally gets the byline for John's article on racial equality, but when the piece wins a prize of an electric car, John happily assumes the role of ""Mr. Sanchez,"" a ""light-skinned"" Hispanic. Continuing the charade, John tries to impress a sexy Basque activist and ends up leading a radical Basque political group. Upset that John is capitalizing on the troubles of a minority group for glory and romance, Mahalia gets revenge by conspiring with the Basques to fool him into appearing as Abraham Lincoln in her son's school play. Meanwhile, when Gene asks Dexter to be his infant son's godfather, Dexter realizes that he was never baptized. Fearing that he will go to hell when he dies, Dexter convinces a street preacher to baptize him. Unfortunately, the marauding elephant scares the preacher away and sprays Dexter with holy water -- which he interprets as a sign from God.
John eagerly accepts when Catherine asks him to father her child, but it's a problematic plan. Meanwhile, Dexter is a housemate in a project similar to MTV's The Real World, a reality-based television show called ""Reality House."" He moves into a rent-free loft with six roommates that he has never met, and their actions are all recorded by an ever-present camera crew. However, Dexter violates the group's cardinal rule --always be ""real"" -- by repeatedly advertising his lunch counter.
Fancying himself a newspaperman, John gets an apprenticeship as an intern at a major St. Louis daily, where he thinks he's stumbled upon a murder -- the mysterious death of the paper's published -- which John concludes was committed by his boss. During their sleuthing for clues, John and Catherine ascend in a hot-air balloon flown by a man named Charlie.
John reluctantly agrees to help Carly's rich, moronic boyfriend Karl campaign for the state senate, but after learning that Karl wants Carly only as a showpiece, John decides to run himself and saves Carly from a loveless marriage by purposefully losing a key debate.
Now that they're both free and clear, Carly and John agree to a date, but advice from Dexter keeps them apart -- at first. Later on, nothing can. No longer a bum, Oscar opens a shoeshine stand in the bus station. Unfortunately, no one is brave enough to sit under the giant shoe sign hanging menacingly overhead. Meanwhile, John's landlord, Mr. Soulaymanulo comes to the station to berate John for causing a high electricity bill with his electric car. Mr. Soulaymanulo and Mahalia are immediately attracted and begin dating. Later, John gets a huge rebate from the government for driving the electric car, and he pays his landlord extra. When John announces that he and Carly are getting married, everyone expects that some sort of disaster will prevent it. At the wedding, Hampton accidentally reveals that he is a homosexual. Then, after John and Carly exchange vows, Catherine arrives and tells Dexter that she is pregnant with John's child...
Picking up from last season's cliffhanger, this season's premiere polishes off the nuptials between John and Carly. In short order, at the bus station reception, Catherine drops the bombshell to the glowing groom that she's pregnant with John's child — portending a connubial future that's no piece of cake. As a stop-gap solution to the staggering dilemma, the odd trio move in together, and soon see that three is anything but company.
Thanks to John's contest-winning, double-edged essay, Mahalia is named Mother of the Year and faces a custody battle for her kids. The article spurs a home visit from a suspicious child welfare investigator (guest Adams) -- just when taskmaster ""El Capitan"" John is babysitting -- and a custody hearing in which Mahalia and John face off against Mahalia's ex, Stewie, Sr.
Attempting to share John's love of literature, Carly signs up for a course on Ernest Hemingway. In exchange, John agrees to a fitness programme -- with Eggers as his all too personal trainer.
Ray Charles has agreed to perform at Catherine's bar, and John must pick him up at the airport. Meanwhile, after Carly breaks up with him, John's denial is so deep he thinks his therapist is interested in him romantically instead of professionally.
Dexter's estranged father comes to see John's autobiographical play about father-son issues, continually rewritten after comments by the copy shop attendant.
After John gives Eggers advice on how to get the man of her dreams, she uses the opportunity to get him to agree to be her date for a Halloween party. Meanwhile, Gene must prove his mettle by cleaning up a toxic chemical spill.
New policies eliminate hugs and napping in the workplace. John's son gets thrown out of Yale after feigning insanity, but lands on his feet by becoming John's new boss. John quits his job in protest and says that he will concentrate on his writing. Eggers dates a Christ-like figure.
John wants to dictate his screenplay, so he buys a tape recorder from a disreputable electronics retailer. It is ruined by accidentally pouring Cheese H. Taste salad dressing on it and John schemes to get his money refunded by purchasing subsequent recorders with warranties. Hampton volunteers to wear an ""stun vest"" but its remote control falls into the wrong hands. Dexter has trouble breaking up with Jocelyn.
John decides to relive his old New Orleans radio days by becoming ""The Night Hawk"" and hosts a local late night radio program - but has trouble staying awake. A girl rejects Dexter for being out of touch with contemporary black culture. To compensate, he becomes a rapper, but after experiencing ""rapper's block"" he steals Oscar's old song. The women become shoes buddies by pooling their shoes to account for each having two different size feet.
Employees of the bus station must take physicals and a general knowledge test to get reduced insurance rates. John discovers that his college degree is not valid and he is not exempt from the test. He cannot grasp geometry and his worst dream comes true when he tries to cheat on the test. Hampton becomes a mounted policeman to attract attention.
John needs a buddy relationship and goes hunting with Hampton. It becomes an adventure when the truck won't start and they are stranded in the woods. Mahalia drops hints about her upcoming birthday so the gang tricks her into helping plan her own party by saying that it is for Oscar. Jealous that someone else is getting a party, she decides to make awful plans so that the party will be ruined.
Carly's past intimidates John during their honeymoon. Dexter accepts $10,000 to rename his lunch counter.