Family Episode Rating Graph

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.

Elaine resurfaces in Kate's life after being dumped by Fred for a younger woman. Meanwhile, Annie experiences abandonment issues, too.

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.

Doug's father starts showing his age.

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.

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.

Buddy's English teacher gets outed; Willie suspects Nancy of being a home-wrecker.

A schoolboy has a crush on Kate; Jeff, now an in-over-his-head rock manager, blows into town with his band.

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.

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 has a crush on her swimming instructor, much to Zack's displeasure; Kate is tempted to call an old boyfriend.

Salina drops by, at a time when Willie is having problems with Alex; Doug is offered a great job in New York.

Doug resents Willie's attitude towards work, the universe, and everything; a string of burglaries sweeps through the neighborhood.

Annie's sole surviving relative dumps her into the Lawrences' lap -- where she doesn't feel quite comfortable, at first.

Kate unhappily contemplates her 49th birthday; T.J. asks Buddy to go steady with him, but she's not sure.

Lizzy dies, but not before Willie convinces her to marry him first.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Willie has a fling with a ballet dancer; Doug purchases a workout set by mail order.

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.

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.

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.

Doug must face his sister Emily's alcoholism. Buddy tries to help a senior citizen she spots shoplifting food from the supermarket.

A series of anonymous gifts eventually makes Nancy feel threatened; Buddy's motor-mouth school-project partner uses the Lawrences as his surrogate family.

Kate has a recurring nightmare about running over a little boy; Buddy gets a pet raccoon.

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 hears Kate say something about her, and isn't happy. Also, Nancy walks in on Jeff with another woman.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

A former friend of Willie's, now an outlaw, gives him a call; Buddy thinks she has a great scoop for the school paper.

Kate's mother comes for one last visit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The family decides to spend Thanksgiving at Hattie's farm where Kate faces ghosts from the past. Buddy is intrigued by a local boy.