Maxine Stewart is chosen as the new acting mayor of Rome and she immediately becomes highly unpopular despite her honest efforts to do what's best for the town. Her support for a highly controversial and extremely unpopular plan among the townsfolk, and especially the small business owners, to let a national chain store open one of its mega-stores on the town's main street creates a lot of enemies. Meanwhile, popular local shock jock Chuck Dante starts using his show to publicly smear, insult and humiliate Maxine and call her names. The town's rage over Maxine's support for the chain store brings Chuck many new fans and he becomes the voice of the people despite his crassness, open sexism and calls for violence against Maxine. Secretly, he doesn't care about her or the issues and is only using the town's rage to boost his ratings. Jill tries protesting against this kind of public behavior but her friend Rebecca simply points out that it's a Man's world. When Maxine is shot in her office in front of reporters, the perpetrator, Stubby Muller, who's also one of the disgruntled small business owners, tries to blame Dante's show for his actions and pleads insanity. A difficult trial begins.