Joe

WWII vet Joe Curran, who lives in Astoria with his wife Mary Lou, is a working-class bigot, the primary targets of his tirades being liberals, homos, Blacks, and hippies. Bill Compton, married to Joan Compton, is an upper-middle-class Madison Avenue ad executive, and he and Joan live in an upscale Park Avenue apartment. The lives of Joe and Bill intersect when Bill goes into a bar, one of Joe's regular hangout, to calm his nerves with a few drinks after he accidentally kills his junkie daughter Melissa's artist/junkie/dealer boyfriend Frank Russo in a fit of rage in which he blamed Frank for Melissa's situation: she's currently in the hospital going through withdrawal after a near-overdose. Bill, who eventually only tells Joan about what he did to Frank, feels initial remorse and guilt. In a moment of weakness in front of the barflies including Joe, who was going on one of his alcohol-fueled tirades at the time, Bill announces that he just did what Joe is talking about, namely kill "one of them", which they are all able to laugh off as Bill ribbing Joe. When news of Frank's unsolved murder hits the airwaves three days later, Joe knows that that was who Bill was talking about killing. Joe contacts Bill, who initially believes it is to blackmail him. However, Joe sees Bill as his hero: he did something Joe had only talked about doing. Despite Bill's uneasy feeling in associating with Joe, the two men begin a friendship as they discover that they have similar outlooks on life, despite expressing them in different ways due to their class differences. This friendship doesn't sit well with Joan, who believes that Joe is the type of person who can easily snap and continue Bill's legacy--or get even with Bill if Bill ever wrongs him.