As hostess, McGlade played the role of straight man, frequently dealing with annoyances and interruptions from chatty sidekick Lisa Ruddy, affectionately nicknamed "Motormouth" and stage Director Ross Ewich (Les Lye). Ross enjoyed putting the hapless McGlade in unfortunate situations, which often resulted in her being green-slimed (after being tricked into saying the trigger phrase, "I don't know"), pied, or watered. However, she was known to turn the tables on him every so often. In her interactions with Ross, she was often depicted as a sort of ombudsman or representative for her fellow cast members, articulating their concerns and speaking eloquently on the unfairness of studio policy; often the episode in question would turn, at least in part, on her efforts to persuade him to change that policy in the cast's favor - as in "Holidays" (1984), in which she takes the lead in attempting to convince him that there ought to be a "holiday for actors" (and furthermore that the cast members do indeed fall into that category), and "Marketing" (1984), in which she spearheads an effort to find something to "merchandise" so that the show can remain on the air. Ruddy's on-screen relationship with McGlade veered back and forth between antagonism and cooperation, quite often within the same episode; however, McGlade later wrote that the two "were definitely friends off cam[era], even though she was quite a bit younger than me."