Jesse Warner (Christina Applegate) is a young woman trying to reorganise her life following her divorce from Roy – who she caught in bed “with that chick from the video store”.
She lives at 346 McCord Avenue with her divorced father, John Warner (George Dzundza), and brothers Darren (David DeLuise) and John Junior (John Lehr). Jesse is the mother of ‘Little’ John (Eric Lloyd) and works as a waitress at her father’s pub, Der Biergarten, in Buffalo, New York, where the waitresses wear Bavarian-style dresses.
Jesse is a Sagittarian and is always the boot when she plays Monopoly. She drinks Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee and when she has a cheese sandwich, it has to be ham, cheese, ham “because if the cheese is on top it means it will touch the mustard – and two yellows can’t touch.”
Jesse and her brothers attended Fledgemore High School although she dropped out of school to get married. She has now returned to get her diploma and become a nurse (she later receives a scholarship to the Rochester Nursing School).
Junior worked as a gas station attendant, then stopped talking for a time; he now washes dishes at the pub. Darren is a hopeful actor whose only credit appears to be a TV commercial for Freddie’s Electronics Store.
Jesse is dating Diego Vasquez (Bruno Campos), her next-door neighbour, a college art teacher and hopeful artist.
Linda (Liza Snyder) and Carrie (Jennifer Milmore) are the pub’s waitresses. Carrie is bad at making change and sometimes lets customers make their own change.
The second season changed the premise somewhat. The bar and Jesse’s brothers and father were gone (as if they never existed) and Jesse now attended nursing school and worked part-time at the Student Health Center.
Carrie was now a keeper at the Buffalo Zoological Society and Linda, who lived next door to Jesse in Diego’s house, was a bartender (later a security officer) at the Buffalo Airport.
Jesse Warner
Christina Applegate Carrie
Jennifer Milmore Linda
Liza Snyder Diego Vasquez
Bruno Campos Little John Warner
Eric Lloyd John Warner Jr.
John Lehr Darren Warner
David DeLuise John Warner Sr.
George Dzundza Kurt Bemis
Darryl Theirse Dr Danny Kozak
Kevin Rahm
