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.

John tries to make amends to ex-wife Carol and son Tony he ran out on.

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.

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's order to train his boss's harebrained nephew, who been in AA for a year but is still a basketcase.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A young woman informs John that he's one of three men who could be her biological father.

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 takes stock of himself while helping a runaway teen realize that she can go home.

A startled John begins questioning his sexuality after another male alcoholic visits to make amends -- by apologizing for seducing him.

John's girlfriend turns out to be married -- when her husband confronts John with a gun; Mahalia's estranged husband arrives.

John is upset when his son joins a religious cult, and enlists Dexter's help; Egger's embarassing parents visit.

Good fortune follows the appearance of a faint image of Christ on the bus station's wall.

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.

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'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's passionate love affair hits a snag when his perfect woman joins AA -- and must be celibate for six months.

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's daughter appears topless in a skin magazine, Officer Eggers holds an attractive stranger hostage unless he agrees to impregnate her.

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.

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...