Bob Newhart is Dick Loudon, an author of Do-It-Yourself books, who along with his wife Joanna (Mary Frann), moves from New York City to a small town in rural Vermont to operate an inn. Though Dick is a mild-mannered, urbane guy, he's surrounded by a community of awfully strange people in a country town run by rules that elude him.
Joanna convinces Dick to use a play he had written years before in a local production. Friction develops when Dick casts her as "Joanna's Mother" instead of the role of "Joanna."