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 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 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 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.