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 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.