S1 • E1
In the small town of Rome, Wisconsin, the daily life of the quiet townspeople is disrupted when the Tin Man drops dead during a local production of the "The Wizard of Oz" from nicotine poisoning. Sheriff Jimmy Brock's investigation of the "accident" is further complicated by the fact that his wife Jill, the local physician, has privileged information pertinent to the case. Meanwhile, Officer Kenny Lacos and Sheriff Brock's daughter Kimberly, from his first marriage, make the acquaintance of a lounge singer passing through town. The other members of Sheriff Brock's family are his and Jill's sons; borderline juvenile delinquent Matthew and sensitive young Zack. The authority figures introduced are elderly defense and semi-senile public defender Douglas Wambaugh, stern Judge Henry Bone, fellow police officers Lacos and Maxine Stewart, and elderly diminutive receptionist Ginny.
S1 • E2
A student brings a detached human hand to school for show-and-tell, which alerts Sheriff Brock and his department that a serial killer called the Green Bay Chopper has come to town, and Maxine is reluctant to hand the investigation over to an shady FBI agent whom she thinks knows a little too much about the case.
S1 • E3
Maxine gets very involved with a diminutive circus performer who has arrived in Rome with a stolen elephant he claims was being abused in the circus. Meanwhile, Jill and Kimberly are in an uncomfortable position when a gifted teacher in Kimberly's high school loses his job and faces losing his life to a brain tumor.
S1 • E4
The Mayor investigates a crooked citizen and crashes his car just before elections start; Wambaugh runs for mayor with brass band and drums--and unexpected drama.
S1 • E5
The "Serial Bather" strikes again, leaving a plastic duck in the bathtub; suspicion falls on Frank the Potato Man who is homeless.
S1 • E6
On Halloween, the only witness to a 10-year-old suicide case breaks her silence to announce "murder" which sends Maxine off to dig into a local history of the victim's life. Meanwhile, Kimberly is reluctant to join her friends in a Halloween prank on Howard the confessor.
S1 • E7
Jill declares herself a candidate for mayor when Pugen ignores the Rome Woman's Coalition, but her candidacy reveals something in her past life which she has kept hidden. Meanwhile, Kenny agrees to box with a former middleweight champion in a boxing match for charity.
S1 • E8
A woman who is terminally ill dies at the nursing home with an orange in her mouth. 'The singing Nun' is suspected as a serial mercy killer. Judge Bone declares that assisted suicide is under constitutional protection.
S1 • E9
As Sheriff Brock and his family plan a big thanksgiving dinner, Jill has to deal with the much younger woman that her father brings along for the dinner party. Douglas Wambaugh later appears at the Brock's for he has left his wife after finding out that she was cheating on him. Meanwhile, Kenny and Maxine, alone at the police station with a break in crime, share a meal during their shift.
S1 • E10
A woman is found dead after an apparent suicide, and suspicion falls on both her husband and her sister, the 'Snake Lady'.
S1 • E11
When a local rabbi takes the entire public school to court for presenting a Christmas pageant to the town (the town of Rome happens to happens to be 50% Jewish), the repercussions reveal that a music teacher who refuses to obey Judge Bone's ruling not to bring on any more Christmas pageants isn't really who she seems to be.
S1 • E12
The Christmas chaos of the year only begins when the family returns unexpectedly from a Christmas Eve outing and finds Kimberly in bed with her boyfriend, and Brock arrests him for statutory rape. This brings Brock's first wife, Lydia, to town to try to talk to Kimberly about the comings of womanhood. Meanwhile, Maxine and Ginny finds themselves held hostage for the night in the police station by a crazed homeless man in a Santa suit.
S1 • E13
The Frogman strikes again with a fake bomb and apparently shoots at Kenny in a jewelry store.
S1 • E14
Sheriff Brock and the rest of the town are in a uproar after a middle-aged woman kills her husband by running over him with a steam roller, and Wambaugh attempts to build a temporary-insanity plea around the premise that she was going through menopause.
S1 • E15
Kimberly tells her parents that she believes that her girlfriend Jody is pregnant by her own father. Meanwhile, Maxine pursues a killer of ducks at a pond; and Kenny becomes involved with a most unusual young woman he stops for a traffic offense: her name is Ellen and she's one of a set of twins.
S1 • E16
Jill and Sheriff Brock are on opposite sides when it's revealed that a local dentist is HIV-positive. Meanwhile, Maxine investigates neighbors reports that a new man in town is actually hiding the comatose body of his wife so he can keep her alive until their child is born. Also, Kenny is officially and unofficially chastised for dating twins Ellen and Elena concurrently.
S1 • E17
Sheriff Brock is shot with an arrow in his buttock. Maxine suspects the serial killer called Cupid and places a personal ad to meet him.
S1 • E18
A citizen gets worse from Parkinson's disease, and the whole town gets engaged in discussions about transplants from aborted fetus organs.
S1 • E19
The local doctor/corner, Carter Pike, finds himself the center of controversy when he makes an official note that a dead vagrant may have been exposed to radiation from a UFO and refuses to let the body he buried immediately in accordance with his Orthodox Jewish tradition.
S1 • E20
Sheriff Brock and Mayor Pugen find themselves facing a group of angry Native Americans barricaded in the courthouse as a protest against the municipal golf course planned on an ancient tribal burial ground. Meanwhile, Jill is confronted by an angry Ginny leading another protest of other dwarf people offended by her use of hormones to stimulate the growth of an undersized little boy.
S1 • E21
Kimberly develops serious questions about her sexuality after she and another girlfriend of hers, Lisa, have shared a romantic kiss, and Matthew reveals the news to his parents which sends them in a panic. Brock's first wife, Lydia, arrives back in town to teach Kimberly about where she really stands on her sexuality. Meanwhile, Maxine and Kenny compete with each other for the post of under-sheriff. When Kenny is chosen to be the one, she responds by filing a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the whole station.
S1 • E22
Jill finds herself in conflict with an aging blues singer with liver cirrhosis who collapses during a concert in Rome, and is deeply offended when she orders a pig's liver transplanted into her as a stopgap measure to save the singer's life. Meanwhile, Maxine undergoes a profound change when she helps deliver a baby girl and is later asked to care for the newborn by the fugitive mother.
Sheriff Jimmy Brock
Dr. Jill Brock
Kenny Lacos
Maxine Stewart
Kimberly Brock
Matthew Brock
Zachary Brock
Douglas Wambaugh
Judge Henry Bone
Carter Pike