She and her six-year-old daughter Lauren (Karle Warren) move in with her widowed mother, Maxine Gray (Tyne Daly) who is a caseworker for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.

Her older brother Peter (Marcus Giamatti) juggles the operations of their late father's insurance company along with the struggles he and his wife Gillian (Jessica Tuck) are facing towards starting a family due to fertility issues.

At the same time, Amy's younger brother Vincent (Dan Futterman) an aspiring writer, struggles to jumpstart his career while working odd-end jobs.

Later on, Amy's cousin Kyle McCarthy (Kevin Rahm), a former med student, returns to help cope with the rehabilitation of his drug addiction.

On October 21, 2005, five months after the series ended, 16-year-old Tara Correa – who played Graciela Reyes in the final season – was shot to death outside an apartment complex in Inglewood, California, where she lived with her gang member boyfriend.

Since February 2016 it has aired more intermittently on the network, mainly in the form of all-day marathons (episode removals have been relaxed under a more secular programming direction that included fellow Connecticut-set series Gilmore Girls being added to UP's schedule).