It stars Julie Kavner as a working class single mother trying to break into stand-up comedy who struggles to juggle her newfound fame with her existing responsibilities as a parent.

Dottie Ingels is a single mother in Queens who works on a Macy's cosmetics counter but aspires to be a stand-up comedian.

She also makes friends with other struggling comics on the local club circuit, who are shocked and impressed when she lands a meeting with eccentric mega-agent Arnold Moss via his assistant Claudia Curtis.

While initially excited about Dottie's rapid rise, the girls are quickly frustrated when she gets home and chooses to return to LA immediately for more shows.

However, when Dottie then appears on a chat show to promote her upcoming residency at the Tropicana casino in Las Vegas she mentions that Erica dislikes her stand-up career and wants to change her name out of embarrassment, leaving Erica angry at Opal for betraying her trust, and enraged that Dottie is only paying attention to her daughters' lives for the sake of material for her act.

Even worse, after the opening show of the residency the girls overhear Dottie coming back to their shared hotel suite with a man.

They hire a private detective to find Norm living upstate in Albany and debate whether to visit him, despite Erica barely remembering him and Opal having no memories of him at all.

One night Dottie and Moss return home from a date and walk in on Erica delivering her own furious "stand-up" monologue to Opal and the babysitters about how they only get to see their mother on TV.

Erica, suddenly remembering the moment herself, immediately ends the reunion and insists that Norm drive them back to the station.