Kiss my grits!
Original title
Alice
Released
8/31/1976
Origin country
US
Genre
Comedy, Drama
Production companies
Warner Bros. Television
Status
Ended
Number of seasons
9
Number of episodes
202
Alice is an American sitcom television series that ran from August 31, 1976 to March 19, 1985 on CBS. The series is based on the 1974 film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. The show stars Linda Lavin in the title role, a widow who moves with her young son to start her life over again, and finds a job working at a roadside diner on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. Most of the episodes revolve around events at Mel's Diner.
Alice gets her hopes up to be a big star when a talent agent comes to town.
Alice falls for an ex-football player, who is now an actor.
Alice meets her late husband's beneficiary.
Alice is mistakenly picked up by the five-0 for prostitution when she is performing in a nightclub.
A sleepless night of obscene phone calls prompts Alice into considering packing a piece.
A famous food critic dies in Mel's Diner, which freaks out everyone.
Aliec feels that Tommy is learning about sex too early when she finds a picture of a naked woman in Tommy's wallet.
When Alice helps Flo get a man, the Man tries to help himself to Alice.
Alice and Flo try to keep Vera from O'Ding on sleeping pills.
Alice is proposed marriage from an old boyfriend from the old neighborhood.
Alice is thrilled that Mel is taking Tommy camping, until she finds out that it involves hunting as well. Alice refuses to let Tommy go, but he runs away to go camping anyway. It isn't until he shoots an animal that he realizes that his mother was right all along.
Rose Hyatt comes to visit Alice and Tommy, much to Alice's chagrin. And now she's talking about staying there....
Alice does all that she can to stop Rose from becoming a permanent Phoeniz resident.
Vera's boyfriend might very well be a married man.
Mel falls in love with a young nature hiker from New Jersey.
Mel leaves Alice and Flo his car when he goes on a trip, but Flo gets it totaled in an accident that is spread out over several blocks. Will they fix it time before Mel gets back? Nope, Mel comes home early and finds out about his car from an angry Hispanic neighbor!
A robbery heist gets messed up when the cash register is stuck. The robber thinks he is a failure, but he gets a chance to redeem himself when he helps a lady deliver a baby in the diner.
A fake Gypsy is caught stealing the silverware by Alice, and she puts a curse on the gang.
Alice might be in trouble with Uncle Sam when she learns that her recently decease husband never paid his back taxes.
Flo's trailer is stolen, and Alice has the heart to let her stay at her house for a spell. The spell is broken when Alice finds out that Flo is an all-out slob and have unwelcomed visitors (Flo's latest boyfriend, not roaches).
Alice and Flo try to find Vera a man.
Alice unknowingly donates Mel's old Navy Trophy to a rummage sale.
A Bag full of money is found in the diner, and Alice is the only one who wants to find the owner.
Alice gets her chance at stardom as a hamburger on a TV commercial for the diner.
A suspected flasher and Flo's third ex-husband (Rod McCary) stir things up at Mel's Diner.
A Native American who claims Mel's diner is built on sacred ground refuses to leave.
Mel incites his waitresses to quit by giving a new waiter better wages than theirs.
Alice's moonlighting job as a nightclub singer is taking its toll on her waitress job.
The girls accept an invitation to visit a new singles bar.
Alice suspects that a diner regular is really an incognito mobster.
Mel can't be moved after his bad back flares up at Alice's place.
Endearments replace the insults in Flo and Mel's relationship after they attend an out-of-town game together.
Alice and friends are snowbound en route to her cousin's for Christmas.
When George Burns stops into Mel's, Vera believes that he's actually the Deity he played in the movie Oh, God!
Flo's vanity keeps her from getting the eyeglasses she obviously needs.
An amorous high-school basketball star starts putting the moves on Alice.
Hostility rages at Mel's after the workers decide to vent their petty grievances.
A pharmacist protesting food additives threatens to take his life in Mel's Diner.
Flo fixes up Alice with her bronco-busting brother (Burton Gilliam).
An investigative reporter seeks refuge in Mel's Diner.
Flo is courted by a rich Arab (Richard Libertini) who, unknown to her, already has three wives.
Alice mediates a squabble between a womanizing photographer (Desi Arnaz)and his fed-up wife (Janis Paige).
To Mel's disappointment, the girls take him at his word when he says he doesn't want a 50th-birthday party.
Mel wants to know who's stealing food and making long-distance phone calls from the diner.
Because she once baby-sat Jerry Reed, Flo is hounded for tickets to the singer's concert. Jerry plays himself.
Mel and the staff prepare for a bus load of hungry customers.
Mel considers firing a waitress to save money.
Everyone's rattled when a Native American predicts an earthquake.
Alice takes Mel up on his boast that he can raise her son better than she.
Mel sells the girls a car that won't start.
Mel identifies a holdup man who has a record for assaulting a previous witness.
Vera meets a new boy friend at the movies, but refuses to bring him to the diner.
The diner personnel try to kick their bad habits.
Flo's night life interferes with her night-school studies.
While Mel is sleeping in the storeroom, Alice is robbed at gunpoint at the counter.
Mel mistakes Alice's intentions when she invites him for a family dinner.
Mel unwittingly buys stolen turkeys for a Thanksgiving dinner he is having for orphans.
Mel is unhappy because Alice's second job — delivering singing telegrams — makes her late for the diner.
Despite his skepticism, Mel tries to find a way to exploit Vera's knack for foretelling the future.
Tommy wants Alice to stop dating his school principal (Gary Collins).
Flo finds herself without a date on New Year's Eve.
Alice's date gets two extra tickets to a celebrity ball and everyone wants to go.
Flo and Mel's brother (Carmine Caridi) decide to take a chance at marriage — even though it's the fourth time for each.
Alice is angry when Tommy conducts his first romance on her telephone.
Mel's pushy mother winters nearby, and Mel's not sure that he'll make it to spring.
Vera is heartbroken after her boyfriend tells her that he's marrying someone else.
Alice's long-awaited break, a chance to fill a vacancy in a traveling trio will break her heart if she has to hit the road without Tommy.
Mel tells the girls to ""stow it"" for the last time, then sells the diner to a humorless martinet.
Unable to buy back his diner from the new restaurateur, Mel opens an eatery in Alice's apartment.
Alice and Vera vie for a role in a production being cast by an attractive director(Fred McCarren).
Acclaimed as ""brilliant"" in her role as Cinderella, Vera is asked to audition for a part in a supermarket commercial.
Alice tries to bridge the rift between Flo and her father, who is now sorry for deserting the family when she was a little girl.
Telly Savalas gives star-struck Vera a thrill when he stops by the diner while she's working there alone. When no one believes her story, she quits in a huff.
Alice's sour reaction to Tommy's matchmaking efforts threatens Mel's new promotional gimmick which is free meals to customers if his waitresses don't smile.
Mel gives a big engagement ring to his girlfriend Marie, but the sparkle quickly fades when he insists that she sign a premarital agreement.
Just one dance lesson and Tommy falls head over heels for his instructor, Vera.
Mel is convinced that his chief competitor is romancing Flo just to get the recipe for Mel's Texas-style chili, rated by a food critic as being ""the best in the West.""
Vera's boyfriend objects to her sketching nude males in art class.
The return of Mel's domineering mother does nothing for his ego because after his back goes out, the customers flock in, for his mother's cooking.
Things get hotter than Mel's chili when Dinah Shore invites Mel to prepare his recipe on her show and bring along one, but only one waitress.
Mel, his girlfriend and the waitresses spend the weekend packed like sardines in a fishing cabin.
Vera asks Art Carney, a sixth cousin on her father's side, to endorse Mel's chili, so it can be marketed frozen as Chili con Carney.
A yule tale (with a touch of O. Henry's ""The Gift of the Magi"") finds the girls pooling their meager resources to celebrate Christmas at the diner.
Flo takes the wheel herself when she learns that her trucker beau has a female partner.
Tommy stirs up trouble by candidly discussing his elders on a TV talk show.
Mel installs a time clock which prompts the waitresses to demand overtime for the Sunday cleanup they used to do for nothing.
Mel is delighted that his mother is planning to remarry until he meets his prospective stepfather.
Tommy has his heart set on taking his girl to a formal Valentine's dance and he needs a tuxedo.
Mel plays host to a buddy whose wife has just left him.
A wealthy Houston restaurateur offers Flo a job she finds hard to refuse.
Mel hires Belle, a Mississippi belle who rings Mel's chimes as ""one of the best waitresses I've ever had."" However, Belle is now aiming for lusher pastures as a country-music writer.
The new waitress Belle is making big points with her old boss Mel, but she's scoring zero with Alice and Vera.
Heartbroken over her boy friend's sudden lack of attention, Vera begs Belle to transform her into a sex goddess.
Mel signs a profit-sharing agreement with the girls just before learning he'll get a tidy sum for letting the city condemn his property.
Mel is receptive to an infatuated tour guide, as long as she keeps steering tourists into his diner.
Alice allows Tommy to stay with Mel, prompting a wager between Alice and Mel, she bets that he will kick Tommy out and Mel bets that Alice will snoop on her son.
An automated bank teller accidentally spews out $24,675 to an astonished but delighted Mel.
After his safe is stolen, Mel rents the services of two very efficient guard dogs.
Robert Goulet makes an appearance when Vera wins a free trip to Las Vegas and Alice, Mel and Belle tag along to try their luck.
Mel may get his diner back if Belle can get Robert Goulet to perform for a Las Vegas casino owner but when it seems she can't get him, Alice steps in and impersonates him.
Vera's Aunt Agatha, a freewheeling sexagenarian, makes a pit stop in Phoenix while motorcycling to Mexico. This prompts Vera to make a life altering decision, whether or not to ride off into the sunset with her aunt.
Against Alce's expressed wishes, Mel secretly teaches Tommy how to take care of a school bully.
The sparsely attended funeral of a buddy persuade Mel to become Mr. Nice Guy and ensure a decent turnout at his own burial.
Mel's mother is singing the blues because her husband of six months has just left her.
Henry's convinced that his wife of 20 years is suddenly being nice because she's having an affair, so he tells her he's having one too, with Alice.
As the new manager of her apartment building, Alice has the unenviable task of locking out a delinquent fellow tenant, Belle.
Vera goes out on a limb to save a century old tree in front of the diner from being cut down for a road-widening project.
The waitresses cut up a huge fish they find in the refrigerator, unaware that singer Jerry Reed had left it there until he could have it stuffed.
Mel gets into a nose-to-beak yelling match with Vera's new pet parrot.
Tommy is cutting classes to pursue a singing career and his first job is singing at a juice saloon.
During a visit, Carrie plans to help out at the diner and cook but a fed up Mel kicks her out and she goes to work for a competitor.
When, Mel recounts the story of the little old lady who mugged him, the old lady becomes four thugs.
A trucker chooses Mel's Diner as the place to tell her amorous driving partner to hit the road.
Alice thinks she has found her main chance when she lands a gig singing at a big banquet with a 1940's theme and an influential audience of restaurant owners.
Mel suddenly takes a romantic interest in Vera, who doesn't realize it's just a ploy to make his girlfriend, Marie, jealous.
Vera refuses to give up the baby girl someone left in her pile of wash at the laundromat.
Mel borrows $10,000 against the diner to bet on a 90-to-1 nag.
Determined to leave her mark on the world, Vera sets out to break the tap dancing endurance record.
A towel boy from the Russian ballet takes refuge in Mel's storeroom.
On Halloween, Alice's latest heartthrob asks her to shepherd his four kids for the evening.
It's Alice's 40th birthday, and for the milestone she gets a millstone, a visit from her meddling mother.
Smooth operator Mel teaches his shy cousin, Wendell, how to score with Vera.
Against Mel's orders, Vera cashes a check for an old flame, who's nowhere to be found when it bounces.
Mel becomes despondent when he realizes he has no heirs.
The ghost of a partner past gives Mel the dickens on Christmas Eve after Mel fired Alice, Jolene and Vera.
Alice's spirit inspires a biker to recruit her as his ""old lady.""
Alice blows the whistle on Tommy's basketball playing when his grades start to slip.
Mel gives Tommy advice on how to charm the ladies, which Tommy promptly applies to Mel's niece.
After getting hooked on soap operas, Vera becomes a washout at work and later quits.
Mel has a beef with his mother who wants to publish his secret chili recipe in her new cookbook.
Valentine's Day promises anything but hearts and flowers for the diner staff, who all quarrel with their dates.
A book on building self-confidence inspires Vera to become ""the best little waitress in the world!"" Later, Mel leaves a newly confident Vera in charge of the diner.
Alice is visited by a high-school chum who's still suffering from her teenage inferiority complex.
To help Jolene's exhausted good buddy, the girls drive his rig to a mining town, blissfully unaware that they're hauling dynamite.
Mel considers getting a nose job while undergoing surgery for a deviated septum.
Alice's actress friend from New York persuades Tommy that he has a brilliant future on Broadway.
Vera returns from her high-school reunion with stars in her eyes and a sparkler on her finger.
A jilted acquaintance flips for Alice on the first bounce and when she doesn't reciprocate his feelings he threatens to jump from the Mel's Diner sign.
To counter a competitor whose contest is drawing customers, Mel launches one too and ups the ante to $3000.
Mel happily envisions a rent-free future when his mother buys his apartment building but surprises him when she announces a $50 rent increase.
Debbie Reynolds plays an actress whose torrid memoirs convince Mel he's the one she remembers as the greatest kisser in her life.
Mel tries to outdo an old buddy who shows up boasting a track record of fast living and sporting a blonde on his arm as proof.
There's gold in them there walls, or so Mel reckons after learning that the eccentric who built his diner left $20,000 stashed in another building.
Joel Grey offers his services gratis as the leading man in a musical revue bankrolled by Mel and featuring Alice. Mel, however, has never heard of Grey and gives the role to his bookie.
Joel Grey walks out after producer Mel turns a revue about New York into a desert musical with tunes like ""Two Tootsies from Tucson"" and ""Ramona from Arizona.""
Alice's meddlesome mother knocks the stuffing out of her daughter's Thanksgiving dinner.
Carrie is slow to come out of a depression after a quickie divorce.
Jolene's brother pays a surprise visit, but the surprise is on him, he gets an icy reception from his sister.
Everyone takes with a grain of salt Alice's claim that she saw a UFO.
Vera, whose cello playing can reduce a virtuoso to tears, is asked to play in a local string quartet.
The waitresses pit their musical knowledge against that of three plumbers on a TV quiz show.
Alice fears that freshman Tommy is abusing his new freedom away from home by majoring in extracurricular activities.
Jolene can't bring herself to bruise the tender feelings of a bruiser who saved her life and now considers her his girl.
Mel is stripping his gears over his jazzy new Porsche he purchased for a measly $20.
Mel has had it up to his keister with the way things are going so he absconds to his apartment for a beer and pizza binge.
Vera wishes her landlady the worst for evicting her pets then feels responsible when the old crank's apartment catches on fire.
In role reversals, Mel becomes an employee by accepting an executive position with a catering firm, and the waitresses become owners by buying his diner.
Afraid that he's lost the ""right stuff,"" Tommy quits the basketball team.
After Mel decides to have the waitresses bonded, Vera owns up to a criminal past and takes it on the lam.
To steal a competitor's secret sauce recipe, Mel persuades his cousin to pose as a woman and apply for a job as a Burger Baby.
Mel's experiment with a computer goes well until Vera enters a transaction and erases every trace of Mel's financial existance.
Using Tommy's marketing advice, Mel increases his business but also learns he's heading for bankruptcy.
Jolene's hair is standing on end with a cat burglar prowling her neighborhood.
Boss Hogg and Deputy Enos of ""The Dukes of Hazzard"" pay a surprise visit. Up to his usual low tricks, Boss makes an offer to lease the diner that Mel can't refuse but should.
A secret lover is sending Vera everything from poems to balloons.
Everyone's up in the air over Jolene's maiden flight as a part-time stewardess.
Alice's dinner date with a high-school flame who's now blind turns into a delightful trip down sensory lane.
A popular singer stops for directions at the diner and ends up proposing to Mel.
Both Carrie and Alice are turned down as singers by a supper club owner who thinks they're too old for the job.
Who would have thought Vera would find love in a greasy spoon? Especially with a cop who just ticketed her for jaywalking.
After a whirlwind courtship, Vera walks down the aisle with her intended.
After Alice quits in a huff, Mel replaces her with a very efficient and popular robot named Blanche.
Working undercover as Santa Claus, Vera's new husband spots her kissing her former fiance.
No one can corral Vera after she discovers that a miniature horse is being mistreated by its trainer.
Trophy winner Jolene throws Mel a curve when she won't pitch on his softball team.
After 40 years, Mel learns that his mother lied when she told him his dog was a war hero.
When Alice chips a tooth eating Mel's chili, he sends her to his dentist who takes one look at her X-rays and falls madly in love.
Alice gets a ride but hardly a rise out of a sexist ballonist whose hot air isn't confined to his balloon.
After a winning first day at the track, Tommy bets he'll score in the betting business.
By proving she's a better cook than Mel, Vera's acerbic landlady may have found the elusive way to his heart through his stomach.
Vera takes a tumble trying to rescue a nest of baby blue jays from the diner sign before Mel gets to them with a broom.
Jolene has second thoughts about marrying a TV game show host especially after a dab of permanent glue bonds her firmly to Mel.
A gift piano comes between Vera and Elliot when she can't pry him away from it.
Mel disdains accommodating the handicapped until two sprained ankles give him a different view, from a wheelchair.
Vera and Elliot buy a charming old house that comes complete with fireplace, furniture and antiques one of which is a shocking surprise.
Jolene and Vera play Cupid for a dateless Alice by putting an ad in a magazine's personals column.
Mel gets a little spaced out after he thwarts a bank robbery while he's dressed up as Captain Galaxy for Halloween.
Mel gets an F for buying a day school to raze for a parking lot.
Jolene loves her family, but finds it too much of a good thing when her father, five brothers, grandmother and family dog park themselves in her one-bedroom apartment.
Alice is worried that Tommy's partying is leading to a serious drinking problem.
At Elliot's suggestion and lured by a $5000 reward, Mel goes undercover to smoke out rustlers selling stolen beef.
Mel 86es a group of ""hoodlums,"" unaware that they're the break dancers expected to perform at the diner as part of an arts festival.
Vera yearns for a romantic first wedding anniversary, but it gets off to anything but a romantic start and goes rapidly downhill from there.
Jolene's appearance on the ""Working Women"" talk show does nothing to boost business at Mel's Diner.
Vera's secretly moonlighting as a sultry deejay called Nightbird and she's turning on all the males in Phoenix in the process.
A country singer takes a personel as well as professional interest in Alice and begs her to join his band on the road.
Whether Alice likes it or not, and she's not sure, country singer Travis Marsh gives her a chance to reach for the stars in a performance with him.
Answering a room-to-rent ad, Vera and Elliot's pushy landlady pushes herself and her kitschy furniture into their home and lives.
Mel is a taskmaster in training Jolene for tryouts with a pro basketball team.
After getting shot accidentally with his own gun, Elliot quits the force and looks for a career more suited to his meager talents.
On the final day at the diner, Mel closes the blinds and gives away the cow creamers as the gang reminisces about the last nine years.
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