Stark Raving Mad

- Season 1

(1999)

Phobic book editor Henry McNeely reluctantly takes a job editing eccentric horror author Ian Stark's new manuscript.

Ian goes snooping and discovers some disturbing details about Henry's sex life.

When Ian renames a character in his latest novel, Henry concludes that he's in love with the waitress he took the name from. Meanwhile Maddie's professor presumes she's hot for him.

When a beloved children's author dies due to complications from the common cold, Henry believes he's responsible.

During Halloween, Ian helps Henry to pay back his cousin Lori for an old prank she pulled on him, while Maddie's date may or may not be a humpback for real.

Henry plans to dazzle the other guests at a dinner party, but complications arise when Tess falls ill and Ian plays a practical joke with the host's prized fish.

After Henry and Tess announce they're "engaged to be engaged," a practical joke gone wrong leaves Tess believing Henry slept with Maddie. Meanwhile Jake uses Edgar, Ian's dog, to try to pick up women.

Ian befriends a creepy fan who threatens to replace Henry.

Tess attempts to fix up Ian and Maddie.

The coffin that Ian buys as a conversation piece for his living room arrives complete with a corpse.

Tess tries to cheer up Christmas for a bunch of social outcasts.

Ian develops a crush on a girl he keeps seeing in the bar, but it's Jake who winds up in her bed.

When Ian, Henry and Tess go out, they are nearly mugged and Ian saves them. That's when Tess can't help but be turned on by his actions and even dreams about him which drives Henry mad. That's when Ian and Jake try to make Henry be the hero by letting him smack a guy in front of Tess, only it's Tess who does it.

Jake and Tess vanish after Ian hypnotizes them into believing that they're Romeo and Juliet.

Ian and Henry go to a therapist. After the session Henry wants to know what the therapist told about him. Ian lies that she thinks Henry is paranoid.

A young intern begins snooping around in Ian's past.

When Ian helps Maddie with a paper for her English class. But when the professor gives her a low grade, Ian confronts the man to the point of saying he wrote the paper which lands Maddie in hot water. So Henry has to step in and try and convince the professor that Maddie did write it and the man claiming to be Ian Stark is a impostor.

Through a friend, Tess arranges for Ian to meet with her father, an author Ian admires. But when he accidentally knocks a pigeon's nest which had eggs in it off the ledge, Jake warns him the pigeon will have it in for him, which he ignores. But when he thinks the pigeon is following him wherever he goes, he doesn't think he will be OK for his meeting with the author. And Maddie finds a mink in the bar and decides to wear it.

Henry throws Tess a birthday party and invites her sister without knowing the two sisters don't get along. And she and Ian go at it literary, Tess feels that she's just trying to upstage her. And when she lets her sister know that she retaliates by banging Ian more.

Henry loses Ian's dog, Edgar. He tries to find him by putting up a flyer with Edgar on it. Eventually he is found. But shortly after, a woman who saw the flyer claims that Edgar is her dog whom she lost around the same time Ian found him, and she wants him back. Ian tries to make Edgar less desirable so that she won't take him.

The gang goes to see a psychic doorman whose predictions come true, causing Henry to worry about "traveling and blood" in his future.

Ian has just finished his book but refuses to give it to his publisher. But Henry who's being pressured by the publisher to submit it, is egged on by Maddie and Jake to just take it which he does. Later Ian wants it back but Henry already gave it. So Ian goes to her office to get it as does Henry who's worried she might not like the job he did on it.