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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

John is not about to celebrate when his sponsor orders him to be celibate -- especially when it's for six long months.

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

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.

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.

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 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.