Alice Spivak Hyatt (Lavin) is an unemployed widow after her husband Donald is killed in a trucking accident, and with her young son Tommy (played by Alfred Lutter in the television pilot, reprising his role from the film, but portrayed by Philip McKeon thereafter) heads from their New Jersey home to Los Angeles to pursue a singing career. Her car breaks down in Phoenix (from a presumed engine fire, as seen in the opening credits), and we meet her soon after she has taken a job as a waitress at Mel's Diner, in Phoenix. (The later seasons' exterior shots were of a real diner, named Mel's, still in operation in Phoenix). Alice works alongside Mel Sharples (Vic Tayback), the grouchy, stingy owner and cook of the greasy spoon, and fellow waitresses and friends, sassy, man-hungry Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry (Polly Holliday), and neurotic, scatterbrained Vera Louise Gorman (Beth Howland).