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The lives of the middle-class Lawrence family in Pasadena, California.
“A MOVING, COMPASSIONATE GLIMPSE INTO THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THE LAWRENCES.”
1976
Buddy hears Kate say something about her, and isn't happy. Also, Nancy walks in on Jeff with another woman.
Kate has to wait until Monday to find out whether she has cancer; Buddy and her friend Laura Richardson have until Monday, when the latter's family is scheduled to move to Detroit.
Willie meets, and starts spending lots of time with, Salina -- leading to a tiff with Buddy, right when she needs him to help conquer her fear of diving.
Kate's mother comes for one last visit.
As Timmy Jr.'s christening approaches, the whole family (especially Buddy, who stubbornly refuses to take part) relives the painful memories of Timmy Sr.'s death.
Doug resents Willie's attitude towards work, the universe, and everything; a string of burglaries sweeps through the neighborhood.
1978
Annie's sole surviving relative dumps her into the Lawrences' lap -- where she doesn't feel quite comfortable, at first.
Zack tells Buddy that unless she sleeps with him, he will have to satisfy his manly needs with another girl; Doug thinks of buying a flashy sports car.
Nancy is all set to re-marry Jeff; Annie, heretofore known as ""Annie Cooper,"" decides to add ""Lawrence"" to her name; Buddy, ever the traditionalist, is bothered by it all.
Kate, in the hospital for a physical, meets a burned-out former rock star; Annie needs Doug's help to impress her classmates with magic tricks.
Willie considers an affair with a married woman he met in a writing class; Nancy, sick of living in a ""fishbowl,"" decides to move out of the guesthouse and into an apartment of her own.
The family decides to spend Thanksgiving at Hattie's farm where Kate faces ghosts from the past. Buddy is intrigued by a local boy.
Nancy's new boss pressures her to sleep with him; Buddy tries out for the cheerleading squad.
Annie, who still misses her parents, can't relate to the Lawrences' holiday cheer, and decides to run away until Christmas is over; Willie runs into his old barber, who is about to close up shop for good.
A colleague and friend of Doug's is cheating on his wife; Annie suspects a next-door neighbor of having murdered his.
After Buddy stars in a high-school play (Shaw's Saint Joan), her interest in acting is strongly encouraged by a friend of Kate's, a professional actress; Annie gets a telemarketing job to pay for a new bike.
A man he once helped put in jail threatens Doug; Buddy and Audrey have a fight about who copied from whom on an algebra test.
Nancy considers a marriage proposal from Timmy's daycare provider -- until he gets accused of child abuse; Willie falls in love with a cat.
Buddy's invitation to a sorority becomes a sore point in her friendship with Audrey when Audrey isn't invited to join. Willie sleeps with Kate's musician friend, leading to a serious mother-son rift over casual sex.
Buddy sneaks into a disco club, with the help of an older acquaintance, and finds it more than she bargained for; Annie has a date with a jock.
Buddy, volunteering at a hospital, encounters a star high-school basketball player who is there for a broken leg -- or so he thinks; Annie runs for class president against her nemesis, Emmy Sheldon.
Buddy learns the price of competition when an overachieving classmate commits suicide after losing a history competition to her. Annie's cookie-selling strategy is a riot.
Willie has a fling with a ballet dancer; Doug purchases a workout set by mail order.
While studying for the bar exam, Nancy's attention is diverted by a charming and seemingly accident-prone neighbor.
Kate's teaching career gets off to a rough start, when a student decides to continuously annoy her; Annie borrows Buddy's ""lucky"" ring to help during a spelling bee, and promptly loses it.
Buddy has a crush on her swimming instructor, much to Zack's displeasure; Kate is tempted to call an old boyfriend.
Willie hires Bambi Deering, the stripper he met on his 21st birthday. Doug attempts to save hefty plumber's fees by repairing the household pipes himself.
Kate acts as escort to, and highly impresses, a visiting Ukrainian composer; Buddy and Annie play Monopoly to determine who gets Willie's old room.
1977
While Nancy and Buddy prepare for their parents' 25th wedding-anniversary party, Willie meets, and falls in love with, a physics student named Lizzy -- who, as he soon finds out, has radiation sickness.
Lizzy dies, but not before Willie convinces her to marry him first.
Kate unhappily contemplates her 49th birthday; T.J. asks Buddy to go steady with him, but she's not sure.
Nancy is jealous of Jeff's new fiancée.
Doug gets propositioned by a female lawyer.
Buddy's English teacher gets outed; Willie suspects Nancy of being a home-wrecker.
Willie fails to understand a black thing; Buddy develops an interest in genealogy.
Buddy's friend Laura returns for a visit, and -- guess what? -- she, too, is now an alkie; a friend of Doug's, a divorced father, is apprehensive about seeing his kids again.
Doug's colleague and protégé turns out to be a child-beater; Nancy finds a puppy; Buddy finally gets into the Thanksgiving spirit.
Buddy, upset by a lack of attention from T.J., tries to make him jealous by hanging out with a geek; Willie catches the eye of his cute über-boss.
Nancy hits it off with Willie's former writing teacher, but things get awkward when he pans Willie's script.
Kate, slightly sick of family life, checks out a model apartment in a brand-new high-rise condo -- and gets trapped overnight, along with a very pregnant younger woman; Buddy has the bright idea of dyeing her hair blonde.
Willie can't stop reminiscing about Lizzy, so he hooks up with her former roommate; Audrey is depressed because her parents are splitting up, and angry that Doug is representing her mother in the divorce.
Kate volunteers to help a moody (and arithmetic-obsessed) young patient at the Braille institute; Willie works on installing Timmy's new bed; Buddy leaves for a week-end of skiing with T.J. and his parents.
Nancy plays hot-line operator when her classmate attempts suicide, to get back at her married boyfriend for breaking up her; Buddy baby-sits a whiny kid.
Nancy and Jeff aren't sure whether to get back together; Buddy is disgusted that Audrey has fallen for the cheap ploys of the school Casanova.
Willie has an appointment with a big-shot film producer, on the eve of his 21st birthday; then, he and Doug make friends with a stripper.
Medical crises abound in the family when James reveals to Doug that he must soon undergo exploratory surgery, and Nancy begins to miscarry Jeff's baby.
A somewhat unscrupulous former friend of Willie's drops by; Buddy needs driving lessons; Kate and Doug consider taking separate vacations.
Kate has a recurring nightmare about running over a little boy; Buddy gets a pet raccoon.
Everyone at school dislikes Buddy's bohemian friend; Kate gives Doug a plaid jacket he doesn't much care for.
Kate has to go back and repeat a class she flunked the previous semester, and gets picked on by a snobby professor; Doug contemplates early retirement after his tennis partner has a heart attack.
1979
Doug's father starts showing his age.
A pre-Christmas argument with Willie nearly gives Doug a heart attack; Buddy invites her school's janitor to her house, where he quickly endears himself to everyone but Kate.
Buddy and Nancy find themselves in a love triangle; Annie dabbles in the occult.
Kate finds out she's pregnant; a friend of Buddy's, on vacation from her all-girls school, picks Willie as a seduction target.
Two friends of Buddy's who have been going steady for 3 years are having relationship problems -- and when she tries to help, the results aren't quite what she expected; Nancy is having trouble at work, which starts to affect even Timmy.
Buddy's friendship with a teacher gives rise to rumors; Annie uses questionable tactics to get Willie to let her interview him for her school paper.
Willie finds the director of his play more interesting than Rachel; Buddy insists on buying an old sports car, over Doug's objections.
Buddy has an ambiguous relationship with a nerdy schoolmate whom Kate is training for a piano recital; Nancy begs Annie to teach her how to roller-skate, so she can go to a party with a handsome fellow lawyer.
A schoolboy has a crush on Kate; Jeff, now an in-over-his-head rock manager, blows into town with his band.
Elaine resurfaces in Kate's life after being dumped by Fred for a younger woman. Meanwhile, Annie experiences abandonment issues, too.
Buddy tries to make everyone think she didn't get into any of the schools she applied to; Doug wants Annie to share his obsession with baseball.
Annie gets picked on by her classmates, for being too smart; Buddy, studying for her SATs, worries that she's not smart enough.
Doug is upset when Buddy starts dating a 21-year-old; Annie is jealous of an old friend who has matured much faster than she has.
1976
Buddy gets a job at a bakery, and introduces Willie to her boss, ""Big Al""; Nancy gets involved with Peter, while she's finalizing her divorce from Jeff -- despite the latter's pleas for a reconciliation.
Salina drops by, at a time when Willie is having problems with Alex; Doug is offered a great job in New York.
Willie drives everyone crazy by following them around and filming them; Buddy has difficulty with a school assignment -- writing a speech on the topic of ""How I intend to leave my mark on the world""; Kate runs into a former roommate, who has become a successful author.
Buddy officially reaches puberty; Nancy is caught between Kate's resentment of her thoughtlessness, Peter's proposal of marriage, and a come-on from a complete stranger.
Kate is subjected to widespread abuse for being the lone holdout; Buddy captures first prize, T.J.'s heart, and (for good measure) the real killer.
Kate is subjected to widespread abuse for being the lone holdout; Buddy captures first prize, T.J.'s heart, and (for good measure) the real killer.
Buddy completes her orthodontal treatment; Salina returns to town once again, only to be plunged into a custody battle with her daughter's father; Kate finds out that Elaine's husband is cheating on her.
Doug must face his sister Emily's alcoholism. Buddy tries to help a senior citizen she spots shoplifting food from the supermarket.
Doug is suspicious when his father introduces his new, and much younger, girlfriend; Nancy and Jeff have a fight over who gets Timmy over Christmas.
A friend of Willie's comes out of the closet; Buddy, after getting invited to the ""Junior Jump"" by a popular boy, asks Nancy to teach her to dance.
Buddy (as ""Diamond In the Rough"") gets heavily into the CB scene; Kate decides to go back to college; Doug does a stint as a judge.
Willie gets cradle-robbed by a visiting movie director, and takes it much too seriously; Doug gets a dog as a birthday present.
Maggie Calder, the woman who nearly destroyed Doug and Kate's marriage 20 years ago, is back for a second attempt. Buddy feels she's being treated like a baby.
A daughter whom Elaine gave up for adoption years ago finds her, through Kate; Willie is intrigued by a pretty client at the photo studio where he works.
A series of anonymous gifts eventually makes Nancy feel threatened; Buddy's motor-mouth school-project partner uses the Lawrences as his surrogate family.
A former friend of Willie's, now an outlaw, gives him a call; Buddy thinks she has a great scoop for the school paper.
Nancy attends her high-school reunion, meeting the guy she dumped to marry Jeff; T.J. asks Buddy to a formal dance, causing a rift with Audrey.
When Doug loses his sight after getting hit by a car, opinions are divided as to whether he should undergo an operation that could either restore it, or kill him; in the meantime, Willie has second thoughts about having quit his job.
After spending an eternity as a blind man whose youngest daughter despises him, Doug finally musters up the courage to have the operation -- and, of course, all's well.
Willie and Salina search for an apartment together. Jeff's mother Sylvia is confined to the Lawrence home following a back injury and a quarrel with Jeff's father.
Kate is shaken by what a supposed psychic says about her long-missing aunt; Nancy lands a prestigious legal assignment, and suspects her looks are the reason.
A recently-divorced friend wants to hang out with Kate; Nancy gets upset when a classmate asks to use her place for an affair with a married man.
Sada Thompson
Kate Lawrence
James Broderick
Doug Lawrence
Meredith Baxter
Nancy Lawrence
Gary Frank
Willie Lawrence
Kristy McNichol
Letitia "Buddy" Lawrence
Quinn Cummings
Annie Cooper
Jimmy Weldon
Mary Grace Canfield
Mrs. Hanley
Season Hubley
Salina Magee
