SEASON 1 – Fox
Created by Steven Levitan
Theme song by Steve Hampton and John Adair (and Paul Bessenbacher, uncredited)
- 001. Pilot – 4/13/2005
- Gavin P. Miller (Elon Gold) is a divorced, published author of a very low-selling book, who has opened his own bookstore called Stacked in Los Angeles with his younger brother Stuart (Brian Scolaro), who has a master’s degree in Psychology, but is basically a red-blooded male who is constantly chasing women, despite seldom getting any. Also working at Stacked is Katrina (Marissa Jaret Winokur), who mans the coffee shop counter. They have one regular customer, the curmudgeonly Professor Harold March (Christopher Lloyd), former head of the Physics department at Cal Tech, who likes to hang out, drink coffee, and read the paper. Once day a beautiful, busty woman named Skyler Dayton (Pamela Anderson) stops in the store after catching her musician boyfriend Eddie Banks (Charles Mesure) cheating on her once again, this time with two women at once, to search for a relationship self-help book. Stuart has an immediate crush on Skyler and tries to help her find a book. Gavin criticizes the book she winds up with and tries to steer her toward a headier book, but Skyler says the author looks too mean and buys her original choice, then hangs out to read it. After she asks Harold if he thinks people can change, and he says no, Skyler decides to break it off with her boyfriend. When she invites him to the bookstore to break up, Gavin becomes nervous when she tells him how he has an explosive temper. Meanwhile, Gavin still desires a reconciliation with her wife Charlotte (Paget Brewster), who stops by the bookstore with their children Owen (Vincent Martella) and Allegra (Carlie Westerman). Charlotte declines his request for a date because she has started to see a doctor. Gavin counters by telling her that he too is seeing someone, then sneaks over to Skyler and asks her to pretend to be his girlfriend. Charlotte is shocked, and their son Owen can’t take his eyes off her chest. Eddie shows up at the bookstore and pleads with her to come back to him. Charlotte also returns and has second thoughts about leaving the door open for a reconciliation. Gavin decides to pass on the offer, quoting lines from the book that Skyler is reading. Skyler throws him out of the bookstore, so he asks Charlotte out. She impulsively accepts, but then Gavin reminds her that their kids are in the car. Skyler announces a fresh start for herself to be her own soulmate, so Stuart asks her to come work at the bookstore. Gavin doesn’t think it is a good idea at all, especially considering the choice she made for the relationship book. Then Harold comes across an article that the author of the headier book had just strangled his wife with his Nobel Prize and stored her head in the freezer. Bruce Dent is the customer, Bruce. 11/27/23
- 002. Beat the Candidate – 4/20/2005
- Skyler shows up for her first day at work, hungover from celebrating her first day on the job with her friends and wearing a skimpy dress. Gavin starts to train her, but Skyler is interrupted by several phone calls from friends. Meanwhile, an over-qualified guy named Brent (Tony Hale) puts in his resume to work at the store. Gavin thinks that Skyler won’t be working there long, while Stuart thinks it is rude to assume she won’t last after only working there for five minutes. After helping a customer named Carl (Charlie Hartsock), who can do nothing but salivate over Skyler, she starts to yawn and complain about how tired she is. Katrina shows up, already jealous that there’s a new girl become the bookstore ‘hottie’ and gives Skyler a decaf cup of coffee when she asks for a triple espresso. In her exhausted state, she is witnessed by Gavin giving a customer named Sally (Rasika Mathur) a large amount of change when she paid with a credit card. He is ready to replace her with Brent, but Stuart argues that she brings vibrance and excitement to the store, especially after Skyler invites Stuart to go out dancing with her and her friends. After Katrina starts to read Skyler the tax code, she finally falls asleep at the coffee counter. Gavin fires her and hires Brent, who is full of silly book puns, and has a pompous attitude about his knowledge. However, Skyler returns and tells Gavin that she thinks he made a mistake, and that she has been underestimated all of her life and has wanted to succeed in job that isn’t in a bar. Gavin reluctantly agrees to let both Skyler and Brent work in the store for the day, and whoever does the better job will be the one to keep it. Whereas Brent sells a customer named Ruby (Alyson Steel) two extra books, Skyler recommends a book to a customer named Diane (Brenda Isaacs Booth) a book called The Impeccable Steve Charles Vanderkirk of Turberry Court… but Brent talks her out of it and tells her it is terrible. At the end of the day, Gavin decides that Brent is better for the job, so he calls Skyler over to tell her. She agrees that Brent certainly knows more about books than she does and cites how he called her out on the book she recommended… which turns out to be the book that Gavin wrote under the pseudonym G.P. Miller. Brent is summarily fired by Gavin, who tells Skyler that he’ll see her tomorrow. Derek Cox-Berg is the fat teen. 11/27/23
- 003. A Fan for All Seasons – 4/27/2005
- Katrina is suffering a run of bad luck, starting with the Aerosmith concert she attended the night before. She had gotten eighth row tickets, but a women’s basketball team sat in front of her. Skyler mentions that she was also at the concert and had gotten on stage since she once dated Steven Tyler (himself, voice only). Gavin comments that Skyler was merely a groupie, while she insists that she was an actual girlfriend. Meanwhile, the bookstore hosts author Susanna Wolfe (Marin Mazzie), of whom Gavin is a huge fan. After the book signing session, she asks Gavin to go to dinner with her and he ends up sleeping with her. He is thrilled by this, but Skyler then tells him that he is actually a groupie. Although the phone number she gave him is for the Carpet Emporium, he insists that they have a date for that evening. However, instead of her showing up, Susanna’s publicist Barbara (Andrea Savage) shows up with an excuse for why Barbara couldn’t make it. Skyler offers to take Katrina to the shooting of an Aerosmith video, but upon arrival she is hit in the head by a microphone stand and falls into an equipment trunk, where she passes out and remains for hours. Gavin ends up hitting it off with Barbara and winds up sleeping with her too. When Skylar hears this, she then tells Gavin that he is merely being passed around by Susanna’s underlings, again causing Gavin to feel used and abused. With Skyler’s encouragement, Gavin calls and leaves Barbara a nasty message about her using him, also blasting her for being horrible in bed. He then finds out that she really likes him when she shows up at the store to ask him out again. However, when she calls and gets her messages, she walks out on him. Stuart turns to Harold for advice on how to get Skyler to like him, but he merely tells him that he doesn’t have the charm, fame, or charisma, nor the prospect of getting enough of any of them to impress her. He later apologizes for hurting his feelings, but still compares him to a NASA chimp named Captain Bobo with whom he used to work. He tries to help Stuart by rigging the elevator to get stuck so that Stuart can rescue Skyler when she gets stuck in it. However, it turns out to be Katrina who gets stuck… just when Skylar has Steven Tyler stop by to meet her. The best he can do is give her a finger handshake through a small opening in the elevator. Andrew Friedman is the stalker fan George/Dylan. Jamal Hamilton is Dino the security guard. Heidi Kaufman is the set worker. 1/19/23
- 004. Gavin’s Pipe Dream – 5/11/2005
- Not long after clarifying a statement about Skyler’s ‘rack’ actually being the magazine rack and then making sure that she knows there will be no sexual harassment on his watch, Gavin ends up having a sex dream about her, in which Abraham Lincoln (Ed Trotta) makes an appearance. Harold points out that dreams do have meeting and tells them about a recurring dream in which a robot named Baker (Robby the Robot) comes back to haunt him after he sent it into space. Meanwhile, Katrina tries to sell peanut butter balls to the customers and employees to help raise money to have her second set of wisdom teeth removed. Gavin tells Stuart about the dream to try and interpret the meaning of it, but Stuart becomes resentful, remembering that Gavin had once stole his crush Jenny Wasserman (Jenni Pulos). Skyler overhears them talking about sex dreams and confesses that she has had one about someone in the bookstore. While Stuart desperately wants it to be about him, he asks Katrina to figure out who it was in her dream, and she quickly discovers that it was Harold. Surprised when he hears this, Harold tries to appear less sexy to her by rolling down his sleeves. When Skyler chokes on one of Katrina’s peanut butter balls, Gavin has to deliver the Heimlich Maneuver on her. When Stuart sees this happening, he is furious and blurts out that it was Skyler who Gavin had dreamed of. Gavin manages to upset Skyler by implying that he is too good for her to really be attracted to her, Harold by telling Skyler that her dream about him couldn’t possibly be based on a real attraction, and Katrina by saying that it wasn’t until a woman showed up at the bookstore that they began to have all of these troubles. Furthermore, Stuart is so upset by him trying to ‘steal’ Skyler that he bites Gavin’s stress penguin. That night, Gavin looks through his old pictures of Jenny Wasserman and gives her a call. After Harold tells Skyler that he is too old to have an affair with her, Gavin shows up to work and apologizes to each and every person who he offended. He tells Skyler that he promises to try and loosen up so that they can all be friends, then smacks her on the rear end before quickly apologizing. He also tells Stuart that he called Jenny Wasserman and found out that she did indeed like Stuart, although she thought his name was Steven, and only refrained from dating him when Gavin hit on her. He gives Stuart Jenny’s phone number and encourages him to call her. Harold is then suddenly attacked by Baker the robot, but wakes up from a dream… in bed with Skyler. This in turn is just a dream that Stuart is having while he is in bed with Jenny Wasserman. Claudia Stedelin and John Hill are customers. 1/19/23
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