Cathy MacDonald has always had a difficult relationship with her self-absorbed alcoholic mother, Tammy MacDonald, but one where there are some predictable actions such as the following. After Tammy's welfare money runs out at the end of the month, Cathy knows that Tammy will feign committing suicide by jumping off the same bridge, jumping which Tammy will never do as Cathy feigns to come and save her, Tammy not dying if she jumped regardless as the netting just below deck level as a suicide prevention measure would break her fall. In Tammy not being there as a mother in her formative years, Cathy has ended up in a dead end life in the service sector (she currently a waitress at a dive bar), she with self-esteem issues. Those self-esteem issues have resulted in Cathy having an affair with married and thus knowingly unavailable Reggie Seamus, and her boss and arguably her best friend, gay Doug Hughes, going on regular outings with her into the city to an upscale hotel bar where they pretend to be people other than their selves, with Jamie, the bartender, knowingly going along with whatever personae they choose that evening. Things between mother and daughter change when Tammy is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, she given, at the most optimistic, less than a year to live. While their interactions necessarily increase as they decide how best to proceed, things between Cathy and Tammy do not substantively improve. Needing validation, Cathy turns to a place where she thinks she can get such: The Gordon Baker Show, a television talk show which is advertising for potential guests for an upcoming segment dealing with loss.
—Huggo