When high-school heartthrob Michael receives an unsigned love letter, his guy friends convince him that it's from knock-out prom queen Deborah Anne. He then enlists his best friend, pretty honor student Toni, to help him pass his own anonymous letter to Debbie. But when Michael's younger brother snatches and misplaces the original letter, as well as the second letter also being mishandled, the mysteriously romantic words soon make their way into the hands of the adults in their families, touching off a scandalous soap opera of mixed-up motives, mistaken identities and misled emotions.
The story involves newscaster Rodney Pointsetter (Shawn) who is so depressed between his job and his family that he tries to make a film about his life, which he intends to culminate with his own suicide. It is often interrupted with irrelevant comic sketches that an emcee claims that the audience prefers to see.
A sports promoter tries to matchmake for a pair of ski champions and, as a result, they end up trapped in a derailed ski-lift car along with a gangster and the hitman sent to kill him.
Intended to be about the passing of the torch from Stewart to Cevert; One By One is a documentary chronicling the lives of Formula 1 racers in the seventies.