<P> The wealthy Tate family employs a sarcastic butler / cook named Benson (Robert Guillaume). Benson clearly despises Chester, but has a soft spot for their son, Billy (Jimmy Baio). He also gets along with the Tates' daughter, Corinne (Diana Canova) as well as their mother, Jessica; but doesn't speak to the other daughter, Eunice (Jennifer Salt), although that later changed . Benson became a popular character and in 1979 left the Tates' employ to work for Jessica's cousin, Governor Gene Gatling, on the spin - off series, Benson, wherein his last name, DuBois, was revealed . The Tates had to hire a new butler / cook named Saunders (Roscoe Lee Browne), whose attitude is similar to that of Benson, but has a more formal personality . </P> <P> Mary's family, the Campbells, are working - class, and as the series begins, her son Danny Dallas (Ted Wass), a product of her first marriage to Johnny Dallas, is a junior gangster - in - training . Danny is told to kill his stepfather, Burt Campbell (Richard Mulligan), Mary's current husband, who, Danny is told, murdered his father Johnny, who was also a mobster . It is later revealed that Danny's father was killed by Burt in self - defense . Danny refuses to kill Burt and goes on the run from the Mob in a variety of disguises . This eventually ends when Elaine Lefkowitz (played by Dinah Manoff in one of her earliest roles), the spoiled daughter of the Mob Boss (played by Sorrell Booke), falls in love with Danny and stops her father, who then tells Danny he will have to marry Elaine or he will kill him . In the fourth season, it is revealed that Chester is Danny's true father, the product of a secret affair between him and Mary before his marriage to Jessica . Mary's other son, Jodie (Billy Crystal, in an early role), is gay, having a secret affair with a famous professional football quarterback, and contemplating a sex - change operation . </P> <P> The first season ends with Jessica convicted of the murder of Peter Campbell . The announcer concludes the season by announcing that Jessica is innocent, and that one of five characters--Burt, Chester, Jodie, Benson, or Corinne--killed Peter Campbell . Chester later confesses to Peter's murder and is sent to prison . He is soon released after a successful temporary insanity defense . </P> <P> Other plot lines include Jessica's adopted daughter Corinne courting Father Tim Flotsky (Sal Viscuso), who ended up leaving the priesthood, and the two eventually marrying and having a child who is possessed by the Devil; Chester being imprisoned for Peter's murder, escaping with his prison roommate Dutch, and being afflicted with amnesia after a failed operation; Jessica's other daughter, Eunice, sleeps with a married congressman, and then falls in love with Dutch; Mary's stepson Chuck (Jay Johnson), a ventriloquist whose hostilities are expressed through his alter ego, a quick - witted dummy named Bob; Jessica's love affairs with several men, including Donahue, a private investigator hired to find the missing presumed - dead Chester, her psychiatrist, and a Latin American revolutionary known as "El Puerco" ("The Pig"; his friends just call him "El"); Billy Tate's confinement by a cult called the "Sunnies" (a parody of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, called the "Moonies" by its critics), and then his affair with his school teacher who becomes unhinged; Danny and his romantic trials with the daughter of a mobster (Elaine, who is murdered in a botched kidnapping), black woman, a prostitute, and Chester's second wife, Annie; and Burt's confinement to a mental institution, his abduction by aliens while being replaced with an oversexed alien lookalike on Earth, and getting blackmailed by the Mob after becoming sheriff of their small town . </P>

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