It's a Living - Season 2

A visiting pro baseball team is staying at the hotel where Above The Top is situated at and since they are playing in a championship series, the team is dining at Above The Top every night, which causes problems for the waitresses as a few of the ballplayers start hitting on Jan and Cassie.  Meanwhile, Dot befriends the Costa Rican pitcher on the team who's afraid that his village will hate him if he loses the big game the following night. 

Note: Cast changes occur on this, the second and, ultimately, final season of It's A Living on the ABC television network, as Susan Sullivan("Lois Adams"), Wendy Schaal("Vicky Allen"), and Bert Remsem("Chef Mario") were let go from the program in order to revamp the series and help it increase its ratings.  Louise Lasser, of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman(1976-78) fame, joins the cast as Maggie McBurney, the newest waitress at Above The Top, along with long time character actor Earl Boen, who plays Dennis Hubner, the new chef at the restaurant.  Also, the show's name is changed to "Making A Living" in another effort to attract audiences, and, the show is placed on the Saturday night schedule instead of Tuesday nights as it had been since episode No. 12, "Kids," the next-to-last episode of Season 1.  Later on, ABC places the show on their Friday night lineup, beginning with episode No. 10, "The Garden Of Countess Natasha"(February 12, 1982), where it will remain for the rest of the 1981-82 television season. 

A woman who had a brief one-night encounter with Sonny at a New Year's Eve party in 1972 shows up at Above The Top in order to tell Sonny that he could be the father of this woman's child, which later turns out to be a rouse by the woman in question so she can get some money from him due to her not being able to find an adequate job for herself and her son Arthur.  Meanwhile, Dot brings a brown mouse to work which later escapes from the shoebox that it was in, causing panic amongst the waitresses.  Later on, Nancy accidentally kills the rodent in question while she questions Dot about it. 

The hotel where Above The Top is situated at has recently experienced a series of muggings against women and Maggie McBurney, the newest waitress at the restaurant, has now become the latest victim.  After the entire staff of Above The Top receive some instruction on the use of mace from an LAPD detective, Dot confronts the mugger at the hotel parking lot one night after dinner service and sprays some mace at her would-be attacker, who then bumps hard on a support beam that is next to Dot's car and falls to the concrete floor unconscious.  A few days later, the mugger and his lawyer meet Dot at the restaurant where he demands that Dot apologize for the incident, or else, she'll get sued for damages. 

A wedding is about to be held at Above The Top, which causes a problem for Cassie, when she finds out that her old boyfriend from Kansas, Tom Morton, is the groom in question.  During the wedding ceremony the next day, Tom tells his bride-to-be that he can't marry her and then goes up to Cassie and tells her that he's still in love her, despite the fact that their relationship ended 10 years ago when she left Kansas to start a new life in California.  Meanwhile, the sister of the bride is hit upon by Sonny, who rejects his advances, but then, when the ceremony is interrupted by Tom's decision not to marry his fiancée, she starts hitting on Sonny after she's had a few too many glasses of champagne.

Note: In this episode of It's A Living, the viewer finds out that Cassie Cranston's actual name is Katie-Lou Cranston, a name she stopped using upon arriving in California years ago. 

Jan's ex-husband Lloyd shows up at Above The Top one night during dinner service, which causes some mixed feelings for her, especially when the both of them start going out together and have a great time on their dates.  Meanwhile, Dot takes care of an elderly dog that she is to appear with for a dog food commercial that she auditioned for, only to replace it with another dog after the original dog died in the bathroom of the waitress lounge at age 15 years (105 in human years). 

The staff of Above The Top have been informed by the new management company that runs the restaurant that they are all to be fired within two weeks time and that Above The Top is to be converted into a high-class private gym.  Worried about their future job prospects, the girls(Cassie, Jan, Dot, and Maggie) go to an employment agency where they fill out application forms and get interviewed by the individual agents, where they tell each one of them their work history, skills, and their ambitions in life.  But good fortune reigns upon the girls, as an irate customer named Mr. Mackinaw, who happens to be a millionaire, buys Above The Top within days of the restaurant's closure, saving the girls' jobs. 

Sonny's obnoxious brother Buddy arrives in L.A. for a visit, which doesn't please Sonny one bit, but when Buddy introduces his fiancée Suzy to his kid brother, she makes it quite plain that she rather prefers Sonny's company to Buddy's by making erotic overtures to him.  Meanwhile, Nancy and the girls search for a missing raffle ticket in which they have won a new car. 

Chef Dennis has been quite depressed lately as his wife Mildred has just left him for being "dull."  After dinner service that night, he and the waitresses, along with Nancy, discuss his situation in which the girls come up with the idea of having Dennis date a woman in front of Mildred at the restaurant that she frequents often for lunch so that she'll get jealous and return to Dennis.  Dennis agrees with the idea and chooses Cassie as his date over Nancy.  The next day, Cassie and Dennis have their date at the restaurant in question and he spots Mildred at another table with her date, who turns out to be Mildred's hairdresser (not the young man that Dennis saw her with days earlier).  After applying her wiles at Dennis at their table, Cassie sees that Mildred's interest has been peaked and tells Dennis to go over to Mildred's table and have it out with her.  He does, but he returns to his and Cassie's table with a plate full of linguini and clam sauce spilled all over his person (Dennis then tells Cassie that Mildred just told him that she is filing for divorce). 

After not showing up for work at Above The Top for three straight days, Nancy calls Dennis at his apartment and threatens to fire him if he doesn't show up for that night's dinner service.  While discussing Dennis' plight amongst each other while setting up the tables, Cassie, Jan, Dot and Maggie agree to go to Mildred's mother's apartment after work (Mildred is staying there temporarily while she's preparing to file her divorce against Dennis) so they can talk to Mildred and save her and Dennis' marriage.  All four ladies try to reason with Mildred, but to no avail (Cassie and Jan have objects thrown at them by Mildred, which hit the inside of the apartment's front door).  Dennis then shows up at the apartment and tries talking to Mildred; he, too, fails.  Later at Dennis' apartment, Nancy show up and apologizes to Dennis for her behavior over the phone while using her wiles to seduce him (Dennis is oblivious to this while looking at his old high school photos).  Just then, Mildred shows up at the apartment and catches Dennis and Nancy sitting together on the couch and leaves.  The following day, Dennis comes back to work at Above The Top and explains to Nancy, the girls, and Sonny that he and Mildred have talked things out and are both back together again, which slightly embarrasses Nancy, causing the restaurant to return to normal. 

Maggie invites the girls, Nancy, Sonny, and Dennis to a party at her house (Maggie calls it "a thing") as a gesture of thanks to all concerned for being nice to her as the new waitress at Above The Top, but the party (or "thing") is actually a rouse to get Dot to date Maggie's young college student brother Bobby, who is 22 years of age.  At the party, everyone there is bored silly (Cassie, in particular, who tells Jan that she's "bored out of my mind") and Maggie's plan to fix Dot up with Bobby back fires as he becomes attracted to Jan, who is in her early thirties.  Both Bobby and Jan have three dates with each other before Jan breaks up with Bobby because of her being concerned with the age difference between them. 

  After being rejected at an audition for a TV commercial for floor wax, Dot is extremely excited that another audition she went to has become successful: she gets the female lead to a play called The Garden Of Countess Natasha, which tells the story of a Hungarian countess who comes to America and falls in love with a union organizer.  Dot invites the gang(sans Nancy) at Above The Top to see a preview of the play and when they do, they are shocked at how awful Dot was as Countess Natasha.  When Dot shows up at the theater lobby to see if the gang liked the play or not, the girls lie through their teeth by telling her how terrific she was.  As the play continues to be presented, Dot develops a bit of an uppity attitude as she tells Nancy upon arriving to work late, as usual, one day that she's giving a two-week notice of severence from Above The Top, as she tells Nancy and the girls that the play is going to Broadway soon.  At the kitchen, Jan, Cassie, and Maggie tell Dot the truth about her acting in the play, but Dot perceives their comments as nothing more than a fit of jealousy.  

  At a party that the theater company holds at Above The Top a few nights later, the girls read Dot some reviews about The Garden Of Countess Natasha, which says the same thing that the girls have been saying all along: that Dot was no good in the play.  She goes to the director of the play who is seated at another table at the restaurant and tells her that both he and Dot have been fired from The Garden Of Countess Natasha company.  Saddened and dejected by what just transpired, Dot excuses herself to the girls and goes to the waitress lounge to be alone, but Nancy shows up and tells Dot that she is actually a good actress, despite the fact that the lead role in the play was all wrong for her(Nancy saw the play the week before).  After telling Dot a personal story about her wanting to be a dancer years earlier, Nancy tells Dot that she should continue to pursue her dream of becoming a successful actress and that she should keep her job at Above The Top while doing so.  Nancy ends the conversation by saying that if Dot tells the girls about their little talk, she will slap her so hard that her future kids will come out dizzy like her.

Note: beginning with this episode, as mentioned in the 1st episode synopsis of Season 2, It's A Living(known during this season as "Making A Living") is moved to the Friday night lineup, where it will stay until the network cancels the program for good at the end of the 1981-82 television season. 

Unable to make friends at her jogging club which causes her to have a sore foot, Maggie accepts Dot's invitation to join her theater group, where she quickly becomes the new assistant to the theater director, but the director falls in love with Maggie, which creates a lot of mixed emotions for her as she still has feelings for her late husband Joseph.  Meanwhile, an undercover detective from the LAPD(Los Angeles Police Department) acts as a busboy at Above The Top in order to capture a male & female criminal duo, who pose as restaurant customers and rob the eating establishments in question of their money. 

During dinner service one night at Above The Top, Jan overhears a jockey and a gambler fix a horse race by making horse No. 2 as the "winner" of the race in question.  So Jan and Maggie decide to each make a bet on horse No. 2 at the racetrack the next day and the both of them win their respective bets of $100 and $10 each(Jan wins a cool $1,000 while Maggie wins $100).  After telling the other girls and Sonny about their recent fortune, Jan and Maggie make another bet on another horse after they overhear the same jockey and gambler make another fix.  At the racetrack the next day, Maggie overhears the gambler make a bet on another horse and tells the gang, including Nancy, who invites herself over after Sonny tried to borrow some money from her for the race, that they made a mistake, but the horse that they betted on wins the race by pure dumb luck. 

Depressed over her acting career and the recent break-up with her now ex-boyfriend, Dot gets more upset when her doctor calls her at work, telling her that she needs to get her nose operated on because of a diviated septum, but when she's at the hospital, Dot has to put up with an overly friendly roommate who has a penchant for singing "Kumbaya, My Lord," which annoys Dot greatly.  But after insulting her roommate for her constant "entertaining," Dot starts feeling guilty when the nurse informs her that the girl in question is about to have a serious heart operation which may not be successful.  When her roommate returns, Dot tells her that they should hold hands together so that they can get over their fear of their respective operations.  Meanwhile, a group of World War I veterans host a dinner at Above The Top where two brothers refuse to accept an award in their honor because of a grudge over a girl that one brother stole from the other 63 years earlier. 

Maggie invites Jan, Cassie, and Dot once again to her home, but this time she wants the girls to help her clean out her basement so that Maggie can host a yard sale to sell off most of her junk that she and her late husband had accumulated for years.  In the process, Jan, who has a hot date later that evening, gets her arm stuck in one of the basement walls while trying to retrieve a charm bracelet that Maggie accidentally dropped into a hole(the charm bracelet in question was a present to Maggie by her late husband and was thought to be lost for years).  When the girls try unsuccessfully to pry Jan's arm from the hole, they contact Sonny to call the fire department and act as both a lookout for the firemen and a host of sorts for Jan's date when he arrives at Maggie's house while they get her ready for the evening. 

Note: This episode was the series finale on ABC, which broadcast the series for 27 total episodes.  Despite changing the name of the show from "It's A Living" to "Making A Living" for Season 2(1981-82), a radical change of cast members from the previous season, as well as a couple of schedule changes to boost the show's ratings(which were low to begin with from the show's debut in 1980), ABC canceled the series after the attempts to improve the program failed considerably, despite a loyal fan base.  In 1983, one year after It's A Living was canceled, all 27 ABC network episodes were sold to independent TV stations across the country for syndication, where the program did very well in local ratings(the 14 episodes of Season 2 were reedited to include the original title of "It's A Living").  As a result of this, the original creators of It's A Living decided to revive the show as a first-run syndicated program, which would not happen until 1985.  For many television viewers in 1983, both It's A Living and Ann Jillian were first time discoveries, while for original viewers of the show, they were very pleased that their favorite program was back on the air.