Family

Willie meets and falls in love with Lizzy, a fellow old-movie buff; when he learns that she may be fatally ill with radioactive poisoning, he convinces her to marry him. Although Buddy is going through a marriage-is--an-anachronism stage, she and Nancy prepare for Kate and Doug's 25th wedding anniversary by setting up a Historical Society Exhibition tracing the history of their marriage.

Willie and Lizzy are married and the signs that she is suffering an irreversible relapse become obvious. Lizzy joins in the preparations for the Exhibition, seeing Kate and Doug's 25 years as the years she and Willie will never have.

The Lawrence ladies are gifted with bracelets: Doug gives Kate a diamond bracelet for her birthday, and T.J. asks Buddy to wear his ID bracelet.

Doug's adversary in a tough legal battle is a pretty young lawyer, Annie Webster; when their clients suddenly decide to merge, the adversaries become allies and, potentially, more. Buddy is the first to see the danger, and in the related subplot, Willie helps her to deal with her consequent fury.

Buddy has a crush on a wonderful teacher, Miss Jessup, whom some school parents are trying to have dismissed because she is a lesbian. Willie jumps to the wrong conclusion when he sees a friendship developing between Nancy and a married friend.

Willie befriends a poor, 13-year-old boy, then wants the Lawrences to adopt him when the boy has to move away.

When Buddy's good friend Laura Richardson--- who moved to Detroit a year ago-- comes for a weekend visit-- she gradual-ly reveals herself to be an alcoholic.

The Lawrences suspect a child Buddy baby-sits is being abused by his father, a protege of Doug's. In the subplot, an "orphaned" puppy is left on Nancy's car seat.

An ad agency executive, a woman in her forties, hires Willie on the spot as a $225-a-week photographer, but Willie soon discovers her ulterior motive. To spite T.J. for his recent inattention, Buddy accepts the friendship of Ernie and then finds his attentiveness becoming uncomfortable.

The Christmas cheer of the Lawrence household turns to gloomy apprehension when Timmy Maitland becomes gravely ill. The illness colors all other issues, large (Nancy and Jeff's heretofore improving relation-ship) and small (Willie's and Ruddy's plans for each other's gifts).

Nancy becomes involved with a friend of Willie's, a teacher and writer who is evaluating Willie's screenplay.

Kate finds herself locked in a model condominium with a young pregnant woman.

Willie runs into Ellen -- Lizzy's roommate -- and the two of them share their grief, and more.

Kate becomes overprotective of a young blind man she is supposed to be helping. In the subplot, Willie and Doug build a unique bed for Timmy.

Nancy's friend Susie Robinson displays erratic and eccentric behavior which, on reflection, Nancy decides could be symptomatic of suicidal intentions; by the time Nancy comes to this conclusion, Susie is nowhere to be found.

Nancy discovers that she is pregnant and refuses to tell Jeff -- the father. In the subplot Audrey is about to give herself to her boyfriend when Buddy discovers that the boyfriend is a three-timer.

On the eve of his 21st birthday, Willie questions his dependence on the family and the direction of his life. His feelings throw Nancy and Buddy into a quandary over a surprise birthday party they were planning for him -- one he vehemently opposes.

On the eve of an operation he may not survive, James Lawrence is determined to resolve an issue that has strained his relationship with Doug for over 30 years. In the subplot, Nancy has a miscarriage.

An unscrupulous former, childhood friend of Willie's makes an unannounced visit to the Lawrences. When he charms Buddy into a crush on, him and when money is found missing in the house, Willie suspects him, much to Buddy's anger and the consternation of the rest of the family.

Kate fears a nightmare she had in which she hits a child with her car is precognitive.

Kate's scholastic progress -- perhaps her whole professional future -- is jeopardized by a professor who resents Kate's presence in a class meant for students with "serious" intentions. When a friend and contemporary of Doug's has a heart attack during a tennis game, Doug questions the value of his own professional life, and briefly retreats to the passion of his youth, astronomy.

Buddy's friendship with an oddball classmate puts Buddy in an awkward position with her friends, who are put off by the girl's nonconformist ways.