SEASON 1 – ABC
Created by Stu Silver, Dick Clair, and Jenna McMahon
Theme song: “It’s a Living” music by George Tipton and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse
- 001. Pilot – 10/30/1980
- Inside the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, a group of ladies work as waitresses in the swanky Above the Top restaurant. Under the supervision of Nancy Beebe (Marian Mercer) are Jan Hoffmeyer (Barrie Youngfellow), Dorothy “Dot” Higgins (Gail Edwards), Cassie Cranston (Ann Jillian), Lois Adams (Susan Sullivan), and Vicki Allen (Wendy Schaal). Playing piano and often singing in the restaurant is Sonny Mann (Paul Kreppel). Jan is struggling to handle her evening hours at work while raising a teenager and going to college. Dot is nervous about her date with a guy named Brad, as he wants her to go away with him for the weekend, and up until now she has not slept with him… or anyone else for that matter. Dot is an aspiring actress who is trying out for a Dodge commercial and is excited that she has gotten to the final call backs along with three other actresses. Nancy is rather hard-nosed with the girls and complains about the waitresses putting on weight. She also tells Jan that she needs to apologize to a pair of men who she yelled out when they pinched her during their last visit. Jill is opposed to this, but Nancy threatens her job. She finally acquiesces, but as she is apologizing, one of the men pinch Nancy. Jill reads them the riot act and throws them out and is quite prepared to leave her job. However, Nancy has a change of heart and tells her that she should have hit them before throwing them out. She also offers to have Jill come to her house to get makeup trips. Dot finds a small dog in traffic on her way to the audition and is afraid that having him there with her cost her the job. They call her back with good news, but it turns out to be better news for the dog, as they want him for a dog food commercial, while she didn’t get the Dodge job. Vicki returns from her weekend with Brad and says she had a wonderful time and thinks that she is falling in love with Brad. Sure enough, he doesn’t call her for days, so she finally calls him, only to be told that he hopes to see her around some time. She confesses to the others that she didn’t sleep with him during their weekend, as she wasn’t ready. Lois and the other girls tell her that she shouldn’t sleep with anyone until she is ready, and if the guy is worth a damn, he will wait. The girls all throw their support to her, while Dot struggles to wait on all of the tables by herself. 11/30/24
- 002. The Intruder – 11/6/1980
- With her husband Bill and two kids out of town, Lois is worried about a burglar that has been hitting some of her neighbors and asks Jan to spend the night at her place. Dot and Vicki get wind of this and want to turn it into a full-fledged slumber party, so Lois reluctantly goes along. Cassie doesn’t have any interest in coming as she has a date planned for the night. The girls turn it into in a fun night, eating pizza and painting toenails, but when Dot thinks she sees a hand outside the window, she starts to get scared. It turns out to be a tree, but then they hear more noises coming from downstairs. This turns out to be Cassie, who had a lousy date and asked him to drop her off at Lois’s place. They eventually decide to split into separate rooms and go to sleep. During the middle of the night, they hear noises downstairs. Initially, they think it might be Cassie, but she then comes into the Lois’s main bedroom to join the others. Cassie volunteers to go downstairs and check it out and does indeed turn out to be a man in a ski mask. They try to phone the police, but the line has been cut. Jan starts to hyperventilate, and Vicki jumps in the bed to lay down. When the prowler starts coming up the stairs, they turn the lights off and wait for him to enter the room. They then all attack him and force him into the closet. The burglar (Robert Phalen) tries to talk them out of calling the police, telling them that he has a family to support and can’t get a job. Vicki starts to have sympathy for him, but Lois then asks her if she wants someone else to go through what he did. They call the police and have him arrested, and Cassie hits on the officer (Ray Laska) and walk him out. The girls all agree that they are proud of themselves for handling the situation, but Dot and Vicki decide to pile into the queen-sized bed so they can all sleep together. Cassie returns, but declines to join them in the bed, and instead sleeps in the chair in the room. Bert Remsen is the chef, Mario. 11/30/24
- 003. Roomies – 11/13/1980
- Cassie is trying to get one of the girls to cover for an upcoming weekend so that she can go to Acapulco with a boyfriend named Jeff, but no one is able to accommodate her. Meanwhile, Vicki is in the middle of moving out of her apartment, but now that she is out of hers, she is getting the runaround from her new landlord about getting the people who live in her new place to move out. With no place to live for the next four days, her co-workers try to convince Cassie to let her stay with her since they all have other people staying with them currently. Cassie is resistant to letting her stay, but Jan and Lois agree to each take one day of Cassie’s shift so she can go to Acapulco if she agrees to. Cassie finally gives in, and Vicki and her bird Squeaky move into her apartment. Cassie leaves to go out on her date for the night, and the next morning, she is already complaining that Vicki woke her up trying to feed her poached eggs. She is already ready to kick her out, and then Vicki comes in angry because it is going to now take another week before she can get into her apartment. The other girls plead with Cassie to let her stay. The next morning, Cassie reaches her breaking point when Squeaky disappears into Cassie’s room while she has a man in it. Vicki wakes her up to look for it and then gives her coffee with cinnamon. Cassie tells her that she is driving her crazy and can’t take it anymore. Cassie shows up at work later looking for Vicki because she moved out without telling her. When Vicki shows up at work, Cassie tells her to move back in, but by now Vicki has stood up to her landlord and given her a better apartment. She credits Cassie with giving her the courage to stand up for herself for once. Cassie asks her how her bird is doing and tells her to give him her best. Mario plans a date with an old flame named Pauline, who once left him and got married to his friend Jim while he was off to war. He winds up having a miserable date, but he meets another lady at the restaurant. 11/30/24
- 004. Fallen Idol – 11/27/1980
- As Sonny nurses a supposed cold, even if only for attention, Vicki gets a postcard from her father Emmitt (Richard Schaal) letting her know that he is coming for a visit from their hometown in Idaho. Vicki is excited to see him and tells everyone what a terrific guy he, having worked and raised her by himself after her mother passed away. She idolizes him so much that she is worried that he will not like the skimpy uniforms that they wear at the restaurant. When Emmitt shows up, Nancy meets him first but doesn’t know who he is. When he meets Lois and is able to identify her, she realizes that he must be Vicki’s father. Dot is particularly excited to meet him, since she considers Vicki her best friend. When Nancy sees him hugging Vicki, she thinks he is a regular customer being over-friendly, but she sets the record straight. Vicki and her father spend the day together, and then he accompanies her to work where Nancy requests that the other girls go rest in the lounge before their shift starts. She and Emmitt have a drink together, and the next morning, Vicki tries to surprise him in his camper and finds that Nancy is there, wearing the robe that Vicki gave him. Vicki is thoroughly shocked, and when her father emerges from the shower, she runs out of the camper. During her next shift, Vicky is grump and snapping at everyone. When her father shows up to apologize to her, she locks herself in the bathroom and won’t come out no matter what he says. He decides to leave, and when Vicki comes out, Lois has a talk with her and tells her that her father really didn’t do anything wrong. She reminds her that she was worried about living up to her father’s standards with her uniform so that he accepts her, and now she can’t expect him to constantly live up to the standards that she’s set for him before she will accept him. Vicki has a change of heart and agrees to talk to her father. They apologize to each other, and Vicki tells him that she sometimes she forgets that he’s not just her father, but a man as well. He says that he was too busy trying to be a father that he sometimes forgot to show his side as a man, but he is going to continue to be the best father he can. John Wheeler is Gene, the customer mistaken for Emmitt. 12/1/24
- 005. The Lois Affair – 12/11/1980
- Jan is hoping to take her daughter Ellen to see an Andy Gibb concert, but she has to work when he is playing. Meanwhile, Lois is having a spat with her husband Bill, who tries to call her and talk about it, but she blows him off while she is at work even though she has a mountain resort weekend scheduled with him. That night she happens to run into an old high school boyfriend named Frank Ryan (Granville Van Dusen). There is clearly still a spark between them, and they speak throughout his time at the restaurant. He then says he has to meet someone in the hotel lounge but invites Lois to meet him in his room after her shift. He gives her his room key, and Dot sees this and tells the others. All of the ladies besides Cassie are adamant that she shouldn’t meet Frank and risk destroying her marriage. Jan tells her that by going to see him is to play with fire. Still not knowing what she wants to do, she calls home and leaves a message for her husband that she is going to be late. She does in fact go to Frank’s room, and they both agree that they have thought a lot about each other and what it would have been like if they had stayed together. Dot gets a call from Bill that he is going to come to the restaurant to see Lois and hopefully make up. She and Vicki then try to find Lois but only know that she is on the sixth floor. They start heading room to room to try and find her. One guest (Philip Baker Hall) tells them that he only ordered one woman. Frank and Lois share a kiss, and then Frank propositions her to spend the night with him. She says that it would be quite nice to do so but decides it ultimately wouldn’t be a good idea. She tells him how nice it was to catch up and then leaves to go home. Dot and Vicki see them hugging in the hall and tells her that Bill will be there to meet her in the lobby. Cassie agrees to work for Jan so that she can take Ellen to the concert. However, she tells Jan to remember that her time is just as important to her even though she doesn’t have a kid. Lois comes in the next day and tells everyone that she didn’t end up sleeping with Frank and even told Bill that she has met up with Frank. She thanks her friends for their concern that she would make a big mistake with her life. She admits that she came close but decided not to throw everything away. Phil De Carlo is the bad tipper. 12/21/24
- 006. Super-Mom – 12/18/1980
- Dot buys a new vintage blouse to wear to a party that the producers of a play about the 1940’s that she is up for but then finds that the blouse has an unsightly spot on its collar. She asks Nancy if she can borrow her pin to cover it. Meanwhile, Jan is excited that she has picked up a side job doing fancy handwritten lettering for party invitations in order to afford to put her daughter Ellen (Lili Haydn) through ballet lessons. Everyone cautions her that she seems to be taking on too much with her job at the restaurant, taking classes, and being a mother. She thinks she can balance it all and says that she wants to be able to give her daughter all of the things she would have had if she hadn’t gotten divorced. But the cracks begin to show quickly when she has to stay up late to study for an exam and then tries to fit the lettering in during lulls at the restaurant. Unfortunately, there are no lulls, so she has to ask the other girls to cover for her. It soon gets to be too much for everyone, and Nancy has to put her foot down. After she criticizes Jan for her work, Jan retaliates by telling her that she wasting her old age handing out menus. This really upsets Nancy, and she fires Jan. Everyone tries to talk Nancy out of it, but it isn’t until Nancy apologizes and pleads with her to let her keep her job that Nancy finally acquiesces and gives her the job back. Jan has no choice but to focus on the waitressing job and let the invitations go. All of her friends agree to stay after their shift and help her finish the invitations. Dot loses the Nancy’s pin and tries to buy time by telling her that her dog ate it, and then that it is at the cleaners. She finally has to come clean and tell her that she has lost it, and Nancy says that it doesn’t have much value and that she would have never lent her anything that did with Dot’s track record of irresponsibility. Nancy says she will charge her just the $35 that she paid for it. With everyone feeling so charitable to Jan, she hopes someone will loan her the $35, but has no luck. The ladies all do their best to help with the lettering, even though it isn’t always perfect. By the time it gets to be 4pm and Jan is complaining about their work, most of them get frustrated with Jan and end up going home. Lois sticks around to help further but tells Jan that sometimes you just simply can’t give your kids everything that you want to. After being up all night with the lettering, she finally agrees. Jan goes to meet Ellen the next day at her ballet lessons and tells her that she is simply overworking herself so she is going to have to stop the lettering job, which means that Ellen will have to give up the ballet lessons. Although she is disappointed, Ellen is at least happy that her mother won’t be as tired and grumpy as she has been lately. Greg Lewis the customer interested in the Chef’s Special. 12/22/24
- 007. Cassie’s Punctured Romance – 1/1/1981
- After the flippant way that Cassie discards most of her men, all of her co-workers are surprised when she agrees to cook a meal for a man named Ricardo “Rick” Velasquez Montoyo Lovos (Aharon Ipale). She asks Mario if he will give her a recipe that she can bake, so he gives her his Chicken Mario dish. Everyone keeps pressing Cassie for more info, and she reveals that he is a Venezuelan man who she met in Palm Springs who she flew home in his private jet. The girls ask if they can help her get ready for the date, admitting that she doesn’t even have any pots and pans. The girls go one better when they all show up before the date to help her spruce up her apartment. Dot and Vicki even bring over a backup dish of Chicken Mario in case her doesn’t turn out. Despite acting resistant, Cassie appreciates everything they did. Meanwhile, Sonny overhears Nancy making a reservation for a man named J.D. Tyler, who he believes is the manager of Nova records. He is beside himself with excitement and asks that his party are seated right in front of the piano. Cassie brings Ricardo to the restaurant to meet the ladies, all of whom are utterly charmed by him. After he leaves, Cassie tells the others that she never wants to see him again. They are all dumbfounded by this, but she confides in them that she feels off-balance and nervous around him when usually she is in complete control of the situation. Lois tells her that she is in love and encourages her to give falling in love a chance, and the others all concur. Cassie agrees to fight her instincts and go for it. Sonny goes all out to sing standards like I Write the Songs and Misty for J.D. Tyler’s table and keeps buying them rounds of drinks. However, Dot reveals that the guys at the table are actually plumbing contractors. Vicki tries to tell this to Sonny, but he keeps shooing her away. However, when Sonny tries to pick up their meal table one guy (Martin Azarow) tells him that they are actually the three Skolnick brothers whose business is plumbing and heating. When the gals see that Ricardo has stopped by to see Cassie, they fear the worst by the sad expression on her face. All of the waitresses head to the breakroom much to Nancy’s annoyance. Cassie admits to Lois that Ricardo is moving back to Venezuela. Cassie tries to put on a tough front but breaks down crying, which she hates as she says she never cries. She tells Lois that she hates her for making her do this, but it is just her way of saying thank you. 4/23/25
- 008. Up on the Roof – 1/8/1981
- It’s a normal night at Above the Top. Dot is excited that TV evangelist Reverend Worthington (Graham Jarvis) is eating in the restaurant. Once couple named Herb (Mark Lonow) and Molly (Eda Zahl) are overzealously making out at the table. A couple married for thirty years named John (Philip Sterling) and Catherine (Helen Page Camp) are negotiating the terms of their separation. Nancy calls the girls into the breakroom to tell them that the building is on fire, and although the fire department is evacuating the building floor by floor, since they are on the top floor, they will be last. As Nancy strikes up a romantic flirtation with the fire chief Brett (Ed Kenney) over the phone, the girls try to keep any of the customers from leaving before it is time to evacuate. To do this, they have to offer the slowest service possible and then bringing the incorrect dishes. Dot hedges at bringing the Reverend his check. However, the secrecy is all for not when a hotel resident named Barbara (Beverly Sanders) comes barreling into the restaurant to tell everyone they are crazy for eating when there is a fire. This causes panic as everyone tries to head toward the stairwell, but Jan is able to calm the down momentarily… until Barbara tells them that they have stopped evacuating because the stairwell is filled with smoke. Everyone is panic once again, but Lois takes the microphone and tells them that it would be stupid to rush into the stairwell and gets everyone back in their seats. Herb asks Cassie if there is any other way out because he needs to get home to his wife. Jan tries to find a way to call home to her kids, but only the house phone is working, and Nancy is on the phone talking to Brett, who is in the lobby. The Reverend asks to lead the prayer on the microphone but then goes into a hellfire speech about burning for their sins, then asks them to send him money for forgiveness. Nancy gets world that they are going to start evacuating them by helicopter, but since it only holds four at a time, everyone in the restaurant has to draw numbers. Sonny tries to get to the front of the line, but Nancy says that they employees will be last. Herb draws a 4, while Molly draws a 38. He tells her that he will see her on Tuesday, but she tells him that she is done with him. John gets a 2, but Catherine gets a 43. Much to her surprise, John trades someone with a 44 so that he can stay with Catherine. They tell each other that they love the other. The Reverend prays for a low number but gets a high one. Once all of the customers are gone, the employees all wait for the next helicopter, but since it hit the building during the last run, it has become damaged. As they pontificate on the possible end of their lives, and Sonny plays You Are My Sunshine, which has a morbid ending, they all start to become silent and depressed. Just then, Brett enters and tells everyone that the fire is out and the stairwells are cleared. Nancy and Brett are excited to meet face-to-face for the first time. Howard George is the first customer to draw a number. 4/24/25
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