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 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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Carol is furious when Tony leaves her to stay with John; Mahalia worries about her brooding son Dante.

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 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.""

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.