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Private Notes
Becker tries in vain to see a movie without the experience being ruined for him, while Margaret has trouble coping with her marital problems.
Becker's super dies and Bob takes his job, and the diner is packed, but no one is a paying customer.
Challenged to do so by his friends, Becker changes his routine with disastrous results. When he eats at a new Chinese restaurant, Linda gets a stalker, Margaret gets food poisoning, Bob gets punched in the nose, and Reggie and Jake lose $80 to a scam artist.
When Becker has a high school student shadow him for a day, it turns out to be the most boring day ever at the office. Meanwhile, Reggie, Jake and Bob find that they have told each other all of their stories and have nothing to say to each other anymore. They decide to start sharing more personal stories, and Reggie and Jake learn a little more about Bob than they wanted to know.
Becker's office is vandalized, and many, many people appear to have a plausible motive. It turns out that it was just Linda throwing a party, but she goes on a date with the clueless cop assigned to the case to keep him quiet. Meanwhile, Bob has been hanging out in Becker's apartment during the day and impersonating the doctor.
"The one who got away" comes back into Becker's life looking to rekindle the flame -- even though she's married. He entertains an invitation up to her hotel room, but after he hallucinates his friends mirroring his own guilt, he makes the hard decision to leave shortly after getting there. Meanwhile, Margaret struggles desperately to get Linda and Becker to sit still long enough to have a staff meeting.
Becker's car is stolen and things work out to his benefit with the insurance company; Reggie receives a very unexpected marriage proposal on her second date with a new guy.
Becker decides to quit smoking -- unfortunately, on a day when nothing goes right; Margaret is worried that her marriage is falling apart when her husband plans a trip to Atlantic City without her; when Linda keeps screwing up an X-ray, she convinces an old woman that she's crazy to get the woman to keep coming in for new X-rays; Bob, instead of fixing Becker's broken radiator, sleeps in Becker's bed and breaks his clock radio; and Reggie makes Becker do a memory test for a school project.
Dr. Becker's back goes out on Christmas Eve, stranding him in a holiday nightmare. Trying to cut through a crowded department store on Christmas Eve, Becker stumbles into a Christmas display and knocks his back out, leaving him immobilized in Santa's Village. While the same grating Christmas tune plays over and over again, Becker waits for the paramedics and lives out his worst nightmare as he is assaulted by toy trains, cheerful pandas and really irritating kids. Meanwhile, Reggie decides to one-up an annoying woman who collects presents for orphans by organizing an unusual toy drive at the diner.
Margaret has an erotic dream about Becker; Jake accidentally signs for a keg of beer, so Reggie can't return it. Since Reggie also doesn't have a liquor license and therefore can't sell it, she, Jake, and Bob decide to drink it all.
Everyone makes fun of John when he starts dating an attractive 27-year-old lawyer (Angela Shelton) and even he begins to wonder if everything is fine after he experiences chest pains when the subject of sex comes up.
John has his hands full when a former patient dies and leaves him his ashes, and a current patient suffers a puzzling rapid heartbeat. Elsewhere, Reggie turns a blind eye to her handsome new boyfriend's glaring flaws
Dr. Becker sails off on a gay cruise because of Linda; Jake's girlfriend is letting her looks go due to his blindness.
John's former flame, Megan (Jaclyn Smith), appears unexpectedly at his door and announces that she has left her husband and wants to move in with John.
John is honored when he's asked to fill in for the mayor and be the commencement speaker at his old high school, until he discovers why the mayor dropped out.
Jake's grandmother (Adrian Ricard), who insists she has a heart murmur, gets angry at John when he declares her to be in good health; Reggie goes through an old high-school yearbook and gets more depressed by the minute; Margaret becomes concerned about Linda's relationship with a young boy.
Reggie secretly conducts a psychology experiment on John to see if he treats attractive patients the same as unattractive ones. Also, Jake gets into a jam when he's accidentally sent a driver's license.
John doesn't know what to do when he accidentally learns that Linda and Reggie are dating the same guy; Bob tries in vain to figure out who the hooker is in his building.
John, for once, is at a loss for words when his godson (Marc Valera) seeks his advice on how to tell his father that he is gay; Reggie gets caught up in a game of one-upmanship with a snooty acquaintance (Molly Hagan).
John is crankier than normal when he suffers a bout of insomnia, which he believes can be cured by watching mindless TV shows. Unfortunately, his TV set is broken and he refuses to buy a new one.
John is excited when he learns that his favorite college professor from Harvard is coming to town. But when John meets him, he's shocked to discover that the man doesn't remember him.
John takes an out-of-shape patient (Alan Blumenfeld) to a gym to work out, but the man has a heart attack there and then sues John; Linda dyes her hair blonde and suspects that's the reason people think she's dumb.
John refuses to settle Vinny's lawsuit against him, despite the advice of his lawyer, Ruth, because he feels like it would imply guilt. Ruth impresses upon him that he could lose, and would then more or less have to shut down his practice. He finally decides to settle when he realizes how many people, both patients and employees, depend on him. Unfortunately, his decision doesn't sit well and he goes and tells Vinny that he will absolutely not settle. Jake and Bob try to think of the worst way to die. Linda pretends to like an ugly sweater/vest that Margaret's unemployed husband knits for her, and Margaret catches Linda in her lie by giving her one of her own to wear.
As the series' third season comes to a close, John Becker is being taken to court by a patient who claims the doctor almost killed him. The patient, Vinny, is suing John for allegedly causing him to have a heart attack by taking him to a gym for a workout. John maintains that Vinny would have had the heart attack anyway and that going to the gym had nothing to do with it. Defending John from his insurance company is a pretty attorney, and, of course, John finds fault with her, too. She refuses to let the hot-tempered doctor take the stand, fearing that he won't be able to keep a lid on his anger.
