Carlson, Tarlek and Travis head out to Dayton to the Hotel Oceanview (Dayton doesn't have a view of any ocean that I'm aware of) to attempt to get the sponsorship of Vicki Von Vickey jeans. The account is not merely lucrative it is for a product that will reflect well on a station with a Rock N' Roll format.
Tarlek hits it off with Vicki Von Vickey's assistant Nikki Sinclair (Linda Carlson), a very tall, slender blonde and is led to believe he can mix business with pleasure i.e. extra-marital sex with the side benefit of a good word put in with the client.
It is unprofessional as Tarlek accurately points out just before he and Nikki couple. To his horror the side effect is Nikki Sinclair used to be Nick Sinckler, a guy who Tarlek went to high school with.
Carlson suspects Mickey, the bartender they have hired for the meeting is "The Dayton Poisoner" (A fictional menace whose murderous rampage happened off screen in the insane universe where WKRP takes place) and is afraid to have a drink. When he pulls a gun and says he is going to investigate a scream he thinks he heard in another room the Big Guy is nearly certain that Mickey is a murderous psycho.
Vicki Von Vickey (Dr.Joyce Brothers) finds Carlson, Tarlek and Travis on the floor in the dark afraid for their lives thinking that Mickey is going to shoot them all.
Travis's slide projector, which earlier on burnt out its bulb finally does work again but he has the wrong slides in it including a pornographic image and his trip to Jamaica. Not very logical given the fact Travis obsessed over the meeting and tested out his slide projector so many times that the bulb burned out. Plus Travis's mistakes, though numerous, don't tend to be careless ones like that.
When other employees ask how the meeting went "She's not gonna sue us if that's what you mean" is the reply. Why Vicki Von Vickey would sue remains a matter of conjecture and in my own view must have been from something we have not seen happen during the meeting at the hotel. Our view of it abruptly ends when Travis's slide projector shows the wrong slides.
Lucky for them it is just three people in a town just outside the city. Usually WKRP manages to alienate much larger groups that are actually in Cincinnati. This episode shows the first steps of station management progressively working that alienation across the state.
While the episode utterly defies logic in countless ways it is at very least a return to the screwball roots that made the show famous. I for one never really cared for the episodes which tackled serious social issues or delved deep into the lives of the respective characters.
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