Seasons & episodes

While Nell is out getting the Chief's clothes cleaned, Addy Wilson, Nell's childhood friend arrives at the house. She meets the girls, and says Nell's real name is ""Nellie Ruth"". When Nell comes home, she is intrigued by Addy, and begins to think Addy considers her as a women who is illiterate and one who had a chance at a singing career but failed and is now a housekeeper. Nell then goes to night school to get her diploma, but Addy is the teacher there and Nell decides to drop out. In the end, Nell flips out when Addy comes over and then the two reconcile, when she tells her she would never call Nell illigitimate, and is happy for her that she is who she is, and Nell decides to go back to night school to get her diploma.

Nell, the girls and the Cheif fix up the spare room at the house and await Grandpa's arrival home from his trip to Poland. When he returns home, he is in happy spirits about the trip, yet sad because he knows how much Mildred would have loved to go, but passed away not too long ago. When Grandpa finds out that he is to live with the family he won't stand for it one bit, yet when Joey comes into the room and watches him pack, they talk about things they share intest in, and Grandpa decides to stay and live with the family and room with Joey. In the end, the Cheif says he loves his father and the two hug.

Joey's first Christmas might be a disaster if Nell doesn't get the whole family together. Samantha is going to babysit for a couple, Julie is going out with a boy, and Katie is going skiiing in the mountains. As Christmas night continues, the family surprises Nell, and tells her it was all a scam to have time to bring her Christmas present home for her. Nell is overjoyed to see her mother at the Kanisky house.

Herbie, Samantha's unseen new friend, puts ideas of judgment day into Samantha's head. An earthquake causes Samantha to freak out, and she says she is going to live everyday as if it her last. However, during a storm, their neighbor Wendy rushes over and gives birth, giving Samantha a new meaning to life.

James wants to start over again with Nell after she meets him at a fancy restaraunt during a girls night out with Addy and Angie. She is upset though that her ex- husnband, Tony, has ran off and married an 18 year old girl, and tells James she needs more time to think about getting back together with him. In the end, she decides to get back together with him.

Samantha protests against demolition of an historic Spanish site after Nell tells her she did the same thing in Alabama when whites would not serve blacks. When the cheif and Officer Simpson arrive at the scene, the mob doesn't move, and they are all arrested, including the entire Kanisky family, who decides to step in and help Samantha protest. In the end, the site is saved from demolition, everyone is still mad at the cheif for arresting them, and they finally realize that he was only doing his job.

When the Chief tells Samantha that she cannot go out on a date with a boy, Nell decides to tell the girls the story of how she met their mother and how she became a second mother to them. Nell goes to perform in California in 1974, and Margaret remembered Nell from when she saw her sing before and caught her performance. Nell then quits her job when her boss gets kinky with her, and Margaret takes her home to stay with her. She meets the family and she sleeps in Carl's room. When Carl comes home he is shocked to find another woman in his bed, and then grows sick of Nell, since she doesn't have a job. After a few days, a job offer in Bakersfield is thrown upon Nell, and when she gets the aceptance, Margaret tells her she is dying and wants her to raise the girls. She madly regrets it, but deep inside Margaret knows she loves the girls. Nell then refuses the job in Bakersfield and decides she will promise to be there for the girls from then on.

Nell gets hypnotized to remember where she put Katie's ring for graduation, but she ends up remembering a whole lot of the girls' dirty laundry, since the doctor forgot to remove the hypnotic transe, and whenever she heard three knocks, she'd tell the absolute truth. In the end, she tells everyone that she is going to marry James, but tells him the truth that she can't marry him yet, that is until the kids are all grown up.

Nell gives advice on Valentine's day to the entire family as she waits for James to come home from his visit to Sanfransico. However, in the end the advice goes awry, since everyones dates turned on them. Each date goes back to the house to appologize for ruining the evening, and Nell storms off to pick James up from the airport. When she gets home, the family tells her that after she left everyone made up with their Valentines and she promises not to be matchmaker again until Joey tells her he is having a problem with his girlfriend.

Nell & Addy appear & compete on Wheel of Fortune during Best Friends week. Nell has $7,600 & wants to win a car. But after commercial, she accidentally says ""GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME A CAR!"". However, in the end, Addy gets $2,700 & solves it correctly ""GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!"" She buys a trip for 2 to New York. However, they are scared after the Chief says New York is not a safe place, and Nell thinks someone stole her suitcase as they take another man's who she thinks took hers. When they get to the hotel, they find out that it wasn't her suitcase at all, and that it was actually the man's. They find drugs and a gun in it and are worried sick that the guy will come back and kill them for taking it.

Nell calls the Chief for help and he says he will tell a policeman friend of his about it and he will come up to New York as well, but his flights are delayed three times. Nell then learns that the man they took the suitcase from is a few doors down from them, and gets scared and escapes to get rid of it with Addy. The man is actually a policeman, and thought Nell and Addy took the suitcase for the drugs. However, the policeman who the Chief is friends with arrives and says that they are innocent and friends with a police Chief in California. The two policemen know they must protect them. Out in the street, Nell and Addy leave the suitcase and run to a taxi, but into Tony Randall instead, who lets him take his. Thinking they got rid of the suitcase, they go back to the hotel, learning that Tony saw their suitcase on the street and rushed it back to them. In the end, the policeman runs into their room as Nell decides to fire the gun so the police can hear it outside in the streets and

After the chief & Nell couldn't take Joey to the rodeo in town, Grandpa decides to take him. But that day, it was raining & Grandpa came down with bad pneumonia. At the hospital, the whole family wants to see him, but the nurse instructs Nell that Joey is underaged. Nell then sneaks Joey in the hospital room. Joey gets out a tape recorder & sings ""Swanee"". Just when Nell and Joey have given up hope, Nell tells Grandpa that he's lost his will power and if he dies she will have to tell Poland that he ""bit the sausage""! Grandpa wakes up and tells Nell that she will never be able to do that and that Joey mispelled Dixie. The two are overjoyed that Grandpa hasn't given up when they see he is up to his old tricks when a nurse comes into the room and he teases her.

Katie decides to ditch college and open her own busines with friend, which the Cheif agrees to. However, Nell doesnt like the idea, because she promised Margaret that she would see all three of the girls go off to College. In the end, Nell tell Katie it is her decision only,and Katie decides to open up her own boutique with her friend, and decides she doesnt need college after all.

Nell decides to take Grandpa to the senior citizen Center to have some time to spend with people his own age. While there, the seniors find out that they have to share their space with the youth center since it had just burned down. The director has an arguement with her new love interest, and it is up to one of the teens to help her and her new crush get back together to make his own crush see that he is a man who is full of love. At the dance that the two groups put together, the director and her crush reunite after being locked and handcuffed in a closet.

Nell helps write a book report for a straight-A student who has several children to take care of, and is aways exhausted in class. At her graduation, the man she wrote the report for says he owes it all to Nell, and he cheated, ad the two loose their diplomas. As this is going on, Addy has chanel 3 do an interview on Nell, and she admits she cheated anddidnt graduate. However, Nell is givenher diploma, since she successfully passed all of her classes, and the man gets his as well, who passes an oral exam, and gets a surprise from his wife that she is pregnant again.

Nell and Joey go to New Orleans where Nells sees a man she hant seen in 15 years. The two take Joey to the World's Fair, and when they go to visit a jazz club, he proposes to her. She is baffled by his proposal and doesn't know what to say. As this is happening, a man is watching Joey in the jazz club. When Joey finally sees him looking at him, he goes to Nell and tells him he thinks that the man is his father. The man happily says ""Joey"" as Joey says ""Dad"", and the two embrace, as Nell stares in shock.

Joey and his father reunite, and he takes Joey on a day at the World's fair. He then asks Nell if he can have Joey sleep on his boat, which she agrees to. In the morning, there is no sign of Joey, and Nell finds out the boat went back to Gnome Alaska. She and the man that asked her to marry him quarrel, and she madly accepts his proposal, but then ditches him in the end. As she walks along the boardwalks in New Orleans, desperatly thinking of Joey, he returns to her, and says he went to the hotel but she was gone and he looked all over for her, and the two reunite in a hug.

Nell gets the bitrhday blues at turning 33. Addy is mocking her as the two are going on a cruise for singles 18-32 years old and she can lie about her age. When the two return home from dinner, the family surprises Nell with a cake and tell her that her birth certificate says she was a year younger than expected. Nell is overjoyed, but Addy is mad, since Nell is now doing what Addy did to her by mocking her about her age. In the end, the kids tell Addy they lied just to make Nell happy, and Nell is accepting of the news, although still wishes she was younger.

An old Polish man finds Grandpa and forces him to marry his daughter. He finds out that Grandpa was the man that came over on the steamship Krakaur in the early 1900's, and that he and his daughter did the hanky panky together. When Nell meets the man's daughter, she tells her that she doesn't care about Stanely, and that she is afraid of her father. When Nell brings her to the house, she finally faces up to her father, tells him she doesn't want to marry Stanely, and says she is in love with an Italian man.

Sam is in love with a boy who just happens to be a big heel. He borrows money from the whole family, and when Nell tells him to leave the house, he and Sam decide to run off. Nell is shocked to find out that Sam's love Jeffrey had left her on the beach and had taken all of her money. Sam sears to never love again, but Nell tells her it will only be her first love and there will be many more.

Nell and Ray Parker, Jr. have a difference of opinion over giving CPR to a fallen man. When the man dies, Nell and Ray decide to give a show for his wife. What they didn't know was that he was a gangster.

When Katie needs money for her business, Joey helps her out by breakdancing at the beach. Nell finds out Joey's grades are slipping in school, and when Addy finds sand in his shoes, she realizes he is going to the beach afterschool. When Nell gets there, Joey tells her Katies buisness is in trouble, and she decides to help her by pawning the couch and tv set, which make the chief devastated to lose. Nell then says she will call the pawn shop back and get them back.

While at Skipper Dwayne's for dinner, Addy finds out her car is being towed away as Nell is approached by a sleezeball who wants to go out with her. A man at a neaby table tells him to leave her alone and she is swept away by him. When he drops by the house while Addy is there, she is shocked to see that he is her long-lost father who left her mother when she was younger. Addy doesn't want Nell to date him after what he did to her mother and her when she was 8 years old. In the end, Nell takes Addy to dinner and her father is there as Nell sings ""People"" as Addy decides to give her father another chance.

It's a case of sexual harassment when a female officer wants a raise and the Chief will not give it to her. SHe takes the case to Addy's Congress of Determined Women, and the chief fears she will take him to court. The cheif worries for nothing when the female officer tells him she had a dream of him seducing her, and knows he is not the type of man who would do a thinkg like that and drops the case. The chief finally gives her the promotion she had long waited for.