A lonely Suzanne digs through her old pageant connections for a best girlfriend, not realizing that her friend's "coming out" meant that she was a lesbian and not just the oldest living debutante.

While she is helping the Sugarbakers women choreograph a Supremes lip-synch routine, Charlene's favorite cousin inadvertently reveals that she is a victim of domestic violence.

Julia's nineteen-year-old son, Payne, is bringing his girlfriend home from college for a visit, and Julia wants everything to be perfect for her ""baby."" Payne then presents his girl, Primmie, who is tall, attractive...and forty years old!

Everyone at Sugarbakers is baffled to discover that sensible Julia has covertly been singing evenings at a nightclub, Anthony tries to muster the nerve to ask out a girl who works at the bookstore.

Anthony, concerned with his masculinity after working with the women so long, tries standing up to his bullying neighbor, and is further humiliated when the women come to his rescue.

While preparing for Charlene's baby shower, the Sugarbakers women are surprised by a visit from the Director of Pageants for Miss Georgia. Due to a clerical error discovered in the 1975 balloting, Suzanne must relinquish the crown she won 15 years earlier.

After Charlene unwittingly puts a bug in Suzanne's ear by relating the success story of Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express, Suzanne flits off to Atlantic City with Charlene and Anthony in hopes of winning a bundle to pay off debts by employing Anthony's gambling expertise.

While touring Graceland on VIP tickets, Julia is touched when a truck driver tells how the King influenced his life.

While in Reese's office to sign legal papers, Suzanne off-handedly volunteers to keep a Vietnamese boat child, Li Sing, who is being adopted but needs an interim home for the next four weeks while final papers are being completed. Suzanne becomes attached to Li Sing quickly and doesn't want to give her over to her new family.

Amateur painter Julia inadvertently becomes the darling of Atlanta's art scene when someone tries to buy her handbag while she's attending a gallery opening; Suzanne inadvertently glues her lips shut.

Bernice gets an extraordinarily bad eye tuck and rhinoplasty from a plastic surgeon whose work leaves something to be desired.

With her husband away on a mission, Charlene guiltily draws close to a man in her support group for military spouses who wife is also away. Meanwhile, lottery fever sweeps Sugarbakers.

When Mary Jo attends church with Julia and Suzanne, she ends up dating Gene Chapman, the minister, but feeling guilty about her sexual interest in him.

Fat as a feminist issue surfaces when Suzanne endures cruel jokes about her weight at her high-school reunion; Anthony enlists Julia and Mary Jo to join him in a two-day fast to focus attention on world hunger.

Charlene sponsors Mary Jo's daughter in the Miss Pre-Teen Atlanta contest, and despite her depression over her own upcoming 30th birthday, Suzanne coaches Claudia on how to walk and smile.

The news that Charlene's family--all ten brothers and sisters--will be in town at the same time is overshadowed by the news that she is going to become a recording star!

Suzanne and Julia clash over a posh club's offer of membership when Suzanne discovers discrimination in the club's by laws.

Suzanne's intimate dinner party, planned to impress an important client, goes awry before it begins when she arranges a date between a more-than-hefty man and a reluctant Charlene.

Charlene's baby, Olivia, auditions for a modeling job, Mary Jo finds one of her former teachers in a nursing home.

At a plush spa, the sparse diet, vigorous exercise program and thermal mud baths bring out the worst in Suzanne -- especially when Julia and Mary Jo are encouraged to gain weight.

Desperately single Mary Jo, worried that her busy schedule will condemn her to a life alone, accepts coaching from Suzanne as she plans a weekend manhunt.

It is New Year's Eve, and everyone is dressed in their finery, anticipating a fun-filled night on the town. The identity of Charlene's date is kept secret until a news flash reports that the infamous ""Shadow"" is the subject of a massive manhunt.

Mary Jo borrows and loses a string of pearls flaunted by Suzanne, subbing as a lifestyles reporter for local TV news. Meanwhile, a recurring dream about Julia upsets Anthony.

Since Suzanne has money invested in Sugarbaker's and is tired of her image as a front bimbo for the firm, Julia assigns her to do the decorating of their next project. Unfortunately, the house burns to the ground while Suzanne is working on it.

"Killing All the Right People" is the 26th episode of the sitcom Designing Women. Originally airing on October 5, 1987, as the fourth episode of the second season, it features Tony Goldwyn as Kendall Dobbs, a young man dying of AIDS who asks the women to design his funeral. Series creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason's mother died of AIDS and her experience with her mother's disease and the prejudice associated with it inspired the episode.

Mary Jo runs across the man who mugged her the year before, but faces horrendous judicial red tape to bring him to trial.

Arriving at work one morning, Suzanne tells Julia, Mary Jo, and Charlene that when she tried to fire her maid, she put a voodoo death curse on her and proclaimed that Suzanne would be gone by midnight. Mary Jo invites Charlene, Julia and Suzanne to help her with Claudia's slumber party.

A scruffy gas-station owner wins free interior decoration from Sugarbakers, Charlene consults a psychic about her future.

When her maid Consuela is threatened with deportation, Suzanne puts Anthony in a dress and pays him to impersonate the terrified woman. But he performs too well, awakening romantic interest in the Immigration and Naturalization Service examiner.

Mary Jo is brooding about her ex-husband's interference in her life, while Charlene distrusts her doctor's cavalier attitude toward the lump he found in her breast.

A romantic ski weekend becomes a battle of the sexes when an avalanche sidelines the Sugarbakers ladies and their boyfriends.

When Mary Jo's divorced father arrives in Atlanta for a four-day visit and dances cheek to cheek with Charlene, Mary Jo becomes very protective.

When organizational confusion leads to Suzanne winning a date with Anthony in a bachelor charity auction, the two reluctantly try to make the best of a very awkward situation.

Julia is not pleased to learn that Payne is graduating early in order to marry his pregnant girlfriend. Upset at becoming a grandmother so soon, Julia gets tipsy at the wedding, then wakes up mortified -- and scantily clad -- the next day with Payne's frat house roommate (Young).

Suzanne didn't spend one week and $2,000 at a spa to be asked out by a blind client who can't appreciate her radiance -- especially since she finds it difficult to believe that he is attracted by her personality.

A full moon coincides with strange occurrences, including Mary Jo's sudden conviction that Claudia and her boyfriend are up to no good.

Charlene becomes a part-time saleswoman for ""Lady Jun"" cleaning products, and when she repeatedly succumbs to psychological pressure from her friend Libby despite her stated intention to quit, Julia determines to rescue her from this ""cult"" -- and winds up taking on Lady Jun herself. Meanwhile, Anthony receives an unusual nomination from his junior college -- as homecoming queen -- and gets unexpected support from Suzanne.

When her boyfriend Mason takes a job in Japan, Charlene finds she has chemistry with another man, a man who happens to be married to one of the Sugarbaker clients.

Julia intervenes when Bill's grief over the loss of his first wife threatens his relationship with Charlene -- and she becomes convinced he is having an affair with his new cockpit partner, Gail.

When Anthony saunters into the shop wearing an enormous cowboy hat, followed by a breathless Mary Jo who has obviously been out all night as she is wearing the same clothes ahe had on when she left the day before, the others clamor for an explanation. It seems their appointment with Sugarbaker's newest client turned into an all-night bash, complete with Cajun buffet and country-western band.

Reese's fitness demonstration - arm wrestling an old buddy and sometime-rival -- causes a heart attack, and subsequent different treatment from Julia.

It's the mercy date from Hell when the female Sugarbakers staff accompany dateless Howard the nerd to his high-school reunion. Their sympathy quickly wears off when he begins to boast about handling his ""four women.""

Suzanne visits a new gynecologist, Mary Jo's ex-husband Ted, and a maelstrom of emotions is unleashed when she announces she is dating him.

Julia strolls down memory lane while awaiting the results of hysterectomy tests at a hospital whose workers are on strike, and a surgeon turns out to be her prescription for romance.

Attempting to prove himself when Mary Jo hires him and some of his ex-convict friends to finish an incomplete remodeling job, Anthony gets a new girlfriend -- an ambitious young woman who sees him as an upwardly mobile vehicle.

Charlene withdraws after being dumped by her boyfriend Bill, who is still grieving the loss of his first wife.

Perky Sugarbaker, Julia and Suzanne's mother, and her friend Bernice hope to escape the dull routine of their lives in the retirement home by joining the girls and their ex-con handyman Anthony for the festive occasion, considering it an exhilarating change.

The dinner is perfect, the champagne flows, Julia is presented with a single rose, and on a lark she and her current beau Reese get married. The next morning both parties regret their hastiness, and Reese appears with annulment papers. An argument ensues, and Julia finally agrees to sign the papers, thereby annuling their marriage and their entire relationship.

Perhaps the most famous episode, and a rare instance of a situation comedy making direct political comment on a current issue. The Sugarbakers women take sides on the controversial confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill's accusation of sexual harassment: Mary Jo and Julia side with Hill and Allison with Thomas. Conflict spills over into Allison's birthday party, where Mary Jo and Julia turn up in costume just in time to hear a television interview about the hearings with Allison.

A tough-talking, hard-drinking, temperamental Broadway has-been promises to make Julia rue the day that she stole the role of Mame from her in Anthony's community-theater production. But on opening night she is too drunk to perform and Anthony is pressed into taking on the role.

A visit from Julia's meddlesome former schoolmistress is extended -- on ghostly instructions from her deceased husband, it turns out -- until the desperate Sugarbakers women hold a seance to try to force her to leave.

Anthony is jealous of Etienne's successful writer friend, who shares a vivid past with her, but tries to be gracious by throwing a signing party for him.

Worshiping hordes gather outside Sugarbaker's after the face of Elvis mysteriously appears on a snow shovel belonging to Mary Jo, who attracts the attention of a ""paraspectacular"" expert (Gilpin) -- especially when she apparently restores her neighbor's damaged hearing.

With Sugarbaker's in such bad financial shape, the ladies are grateful when B. J. gets them a job redecorating a house that resembles the great home from Gone With The Wind --- until they find out that the new lady of the house plans to rip out the grand staircase and replace it with an elevator. To make matters worse, B. J. finds out that their client is trying to take over Poteet Industries and plans to give Sugarbaker's to his young bride Kiki --- renaming it ""Kikibaker's"".

Cousin Alison Sugarbaker buys out Suzanne's share of the business and then moves in, complete with an enormous desk and a take-charge attitude, Charlene's divorcing younger sister Carlene arrives.

Julia accompanies Mary Jo and her mother Darla on an overnight bus trip back to South Carolina; meanwhile, the other employees get locked into the storage room while doing inventory.

When Mary Jo is mugged, the Sugarbaker women take a self-defense course.

Charlene aims to make Anthony's 30th birthday a memorable one -- by hiring a private detective to find his long-lost father.

Carlene moves into her own apartment on the wrong side of town, where space is at a minimum and burglars roam free, so the Sugarbakers staff visit to try to persuade her to find a better home.

With Julia continuing to fight to save the antebellum Kearney mansion, B.J. struggles to save Sugarbaker's and Poteet Industries from a take over from the Kearneys. However, despite their efforts, Kiki Kearney announces her new plans for ""Kikibaker's,"" Lester Kearney announces that the purchase of Poteet Industries is complete, and the modernizing of the mansion gets under way. Though Anthony and the women are fired for insubordination, when Craig, a friend of Mary Jo's, stumbles on some embarrassing news about the Kearney's illegal financial activities, Poteet Industries and Sugarbaker's are saved from the take over.

Suzanne and Mary Jo become romantic rivals while doing a job aboard a cruise ship.

There's no skirting the fact that Carlene is confused by new beau Eric (Kean), whose unusual habit (cross-dressing) she begins to understand only by tapping into her own masculine side.

After Julia completely rewrites a letter Mary Jo asked her to proofread, Mary Jo comes unraveled on a fashion-show runway, where she just plain has her fill of know-it-all Julia. Meanwhile, back at the office, B.J. has her hands full with angry vegetarians.

When the Sugarbakers women are persuaded by Anthony to help with an outreach program at his former prison, they find themselves in the middle of a prison break and are held hostage by Anthony's old cellmate T. Tommy Reed -- who takes a liking to Allison.

The designers are determined that a recently deceased client's last wish be honored -- to leave her millions (and the ladies' prepaid services) to her cat.

Mary Jo turns to a sperm bank to get pregnant, prompting mixed reactions at work. Meanwhile, Julia threaten to rip the draperies from the windows of the home of a wealthy client whose payment is overdue.

Julia's second date with electrician Rusty becomes a group outing with Carlene and Allison dating junior-college guys, and Anthony tagging along to the drive-in with Bernice to keep an eye on things.

Mary Jo and Julia are trapped under anchorman Chuck Tremain's bed when a Christmas design contest inspires them to examine a competitor's handiwork for evidence of plagiarism.

BJ offers to help a desperate Anthony, who invents various schemes to extricate himself from his hasty marriage to a Las Vegas showgirl.

B.J. goes overboard showering everyone with gifts, and law student Anthony gets carried away trying to help Mary Jo win a small-claims case involving her defective freezer.

Mary Jo dates a handsome idiot, a to-die-for toyboy male model who seems to have few toys in the attic and little in common with her.

B.J.'s contribution to the Democratic Party gets the Sugarbaker crew invited to the Inaugural Ball, but the trip proves to be a party for no one, even Julia, who struggles to maintain a cheery disposition in the face of disaster as bad weather forces a change in plans.

Julia's old mentor for her bohemian art school days in New York unveils his nude portrait of Julia.

When an eccentric client harasses the women with bizarre decorating requests, they decide to matchmake him with Bernice.

Charlene and Anthony scheme to outsmart Mary Jo's disbelieving son on Christmas Eve -- until their hired Santa beats them to it, by swiping the Sugarbakers' Christmas gifts.

Anthony goes to extremes to impress his girlfriends' wealthy parents, inventing a pedigreed family -- then an uninvited dinner guest informs him he is the father of her child.

A penniless Suzanne faces stiff fines for back taxes, so after trying to charm Ray Don at the IRS, she sells off her possession and considers marriage to wealthy octogenarian Wilmont Oliver.

Charlene, now happily engaged, dreads meeting Bill's intimidating mother and aunt, Mary Jo gives the dating game another try, with a much younger man.

A nearby newsstand selling pornography offends Julia, to the point where she drives her car straight through it, and pits her against an equally determined publisher in the ensuing court battle.

Mary-Jo overreacts to J.D.'s losing his job and moving in with her, but a psychic helps her sort out her feelings.

A terminally-ill high school classmate's last wish is to spend one night with the girl of his dreams -- Julia. The catch is, she doesn't remember him at all.

After Bernice gets a local public-access cable TV show, Mary Jo has her heart broken by a client and decides that Bernice's show is the ideal arena to air her views on men.

Mary Jo forbids her nearly 18-year-old daughter to date a 34-year-old, then dates him herself, Julia is forced to crash the men's room at a football stadium.

The Sugarbakers women use Anthony as ""date bait"" to reel in a big account involving a hotelier's flamboyant debutante daughter, who's angling for a whopper of a deal, then Anthony announces he is marrying Vanessa, who intends to become a partner in Sugarbakers.

Mary Jo can't face her children being with her ex-husband's new wife, who is spoiling them.

A voluptuous maid disrupts a romantic Thanksgiving at the beach.

Cousin Alison Sugarbaker buys out Suzanne's share of the business and then moves in, complete with an enormous desk and a take-charge attitude, Charlene's divorcing younger sister Carlene arrives.

Mary Jo protectively takes divorcee Carlene under her wing -- going overboard with a lie about Carlene's latest flame -- when ex-hubby Dwayne shows up to sweep Carlene off her feet again.

When Mary Jo's womanizing brother visits, falls for Allison, and takes her and Quinton on a deer-hunting trip, the women secretly tag along.

Julia stages a sit-in at the mall to protest racial mistreatment of Anthony by brutish cops who accosted him for window shopping near a jewelry store -- and television coverage links Anthony romantically with Allison.

On an overnight Girl Scout outing, Carlene's leadership abilities take a beating, while Allison's methods seem to charm the spoiled troopers, and Mary Jo and Julia advocate roughing it.

A steamy love letter from another woman found in James' safe-deposit box shatters B.J.'s image of her late husband as a faithful companion worthy of her trust. Meanwhile, reveling in the destruction of her old car, a symbol of her days as a suburban housewife, Mary Jo goes wild in a new red convertible.

After eye surgery, Bernice overhears the gals talk of putting Mary Jo's dog out of its misery and figures they're planning her own mercy killing, so she barricades herself inside the storeroom. Meanwhile, Julia gets caught listing to a London phone line which plays tapes of Princess Diana's private conversations with her boyfriend.

Charlene dreams the Sugarbakers back to WWII and the USO.

Suzanne and Mary Jo rush Charlene to the hospital when she goes into labor on New Year's Eve and conceives a desire to deliver the first New Year's baby. Dolly Parton plays Charlene's ""guardian movie star,"" who comes to her in a dream with news of her baby's birth, and Bernice goes for an unexpected ambulance ride.

When Mary Jo undertakes the decoration of Hence Winchester's new home, she finds herself the object of sexual harassment by her wealthy client.

When she discovers him working as a bellboy/pianist, the accountant who absconded with her life savings offers Suzanne a deal.

B.J.'s dating adventures take a turn for the worse on her birthday, when a bad-hair day and two miserable blind dates have her vowing to give up men, so Julia tries to cheer her up by getting her a date with a really nice fellow.