Patty Lane (Duke) is a normal teenager living in the Brooklyn Heights section of New York City, who loves boys, ice cream, and sleepovers. Her father is the managing editor of the New York Chronicle. In the unaired pilot episode, her "identical cousin" Cathy Lane (also played by Duke), whose father also works for the Chronicle as a foreign correspondent, arrives in the United States from Scotland to live with Patty's family and attend school.