Hannah decides to quit teaching and leave her boyfriend, Jack, and return home to Chicago to become a writer. On the flight home to Chicago, Hannah meets and helps Marty deal with his fear of flying and he tells her about a research job open at Chicago Monthly, the magazine where he is a writer. Hannah goes down the magazine to apply for the job, meets the editor and is challenged to write a 2,000 word article on ""the tortilla wars, does Chicago prefer corn or flour?"" for 9 o'clock the following morning.

If he doesn't already feel guilty enough about everything, Marty really feels guilty when his Thailanese foster daughter comes to attend college in Chicago and he is really attracted to her.

Hannah's first deadline prompts her first fight with Marty when she loses his article in the computer and he doesn't have a backup, much to Pamela's delight.

Hannah's old boyfriend and Marty's ex-college roommate are one in the same person, and Jack tries to convince her that he has changed. Meanwhile, Hannah and Marty are working on a story that will expose a charity scam.

Marty doesn't want anyone to know he is living in fear when he receives his first death threat.

Marty is in turmoil when his mother stops by for a visit and Hannah gets him face his relationship with her, so he can get rid of all the angst it generates.

Hannah is down in the dumps and Marty gets dumped, so the two of them go out together, for her birthday and the end of his relationship with Alice- but it's ""not a date"".

Marty and Hannah trade bylines to prove that Catherine is using favoritism in choosing articles for publication, and Marty winds up jail protecting ""his"" source.

Hannah sweet-talks Bradley, a fact checker, into letting a libelous quotation into her article, this all leads to a 10 million dollar libel suit and Hannah having to fire him.

Hannah loves Marty's psychiatrist to death and Marty finds it difficult to cope with being shrinkless. Marty has a final session with his shrink casket-side.

Catherine makes everyone take a lie detector test when she suspects someone on the staff is leaking gossip about her to an underground rag.

Marty nurses a bruised ego when he sings show tunes on a news talk show and Hannah makes a celebrity out of a woman who was thrown out of a restaurant for nursing her baby.

Marty is the unwitting weapon used by an aspiring young journalist against Hannah, after Hannah helped her get a chance to work for the magazine.

Hannah and Marty go out to dinner with Robin to help her celebrate her un-anniversary. After seeing Robin's ex-husband there, each has a different perspective on how the restaurant caught fire. Everyone turned their heads when they walked across the room.

Marty's girlfriend plans a surprise birthday party for him, but he surprises her and everyone else by breaking up with her, before everybody yells surprise.

Marty may become editor after a corporate trouble-shooter comes in, evaluates the magazine and decides Catherine is out and he is in, never mind that Marty slept with her. A little corporate blackmail may work wonders to save Catherine's job, using Marty as the tool.

A friend of Marty's, a Hollywood producer, decides to ""do lunch"" with Hannah when he wants to make a movie about one of her stories, something Marty has rejected for a long time.