 She was formerly a high-profile writer at a fashion magazine named Women's Digest, which recently went out of business, and she is now reduced to writing a consumer-assistance column, "Helpline", helping to expose substandard business practices and products and the often uncaring reaction of government to these problems.Her boss, Managing Editor Frank DeMarco (James Farentino), concentrates on sensationalism as he is convinced that that is what really sells papers.He is also quite a ladies' man, and is attracted to Mary, as she is to him, but she finds dealing with that situation to be quite awkward.