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Designed to keep you laughing!
Julia Sugarbaker, Mary Jo Shively, Charlene Frazier-Stillfield and Suzanne Sugarbaker are associates at their design firm, Sugarbaker and Associates. Julia is the owner and is very outspoken and strong-willed. Mary Jo is a divorced single-parent whom is just as strong-willed as Julia, but isn't as self-confident. Charlene is the naive and trusting farm girl from Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Suzanne is the self-centered ex-beauty queen whom has a number of wealthy ex-husbands.
After cousin Allison leaves Sugarbakers, Julia needs cash but is refused a bank loan. To cheer themselves up, the women play poker with a wealthy client -- who wins the business from them. Sugarbaker's could use an infusion of cash, and at a rowdy party given by potential new client B.J., the gals kick up their heels in wild abandon.
Carlene allows herself to be seduced by her ex-husband, then admits she was just using him for sex.
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.
In an attempt at spontaneity, a carefree Mary Jo takes off for Nashville on ""a hen party on wheels"" with Julia and Bernice, but become terrified when a trucker Bernice flirted with at a diner pursues them. Meanwhile, back at the office, Carlene and Anthony put their noses to the grindstone studying for midterms.
Julia fears the emotional roller coaster of menopause -- just as her affair with Phillip heats up, and is upset when she discovers a Sugerbakers ""Change of Life"" surprise party.
After Vanessa calls off their wedding, Anthony joins the gang on a getaway to Las Vegas, where he nurses his broken heart -- in the company of a show stopping showgirl he impulsively weds.
BJ offers to help a desperate Anthony, who invents various schemes to extricate himself from his hasty marriage to a Las Vegas showgirl.
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.
Etienne drives Anthony crazy trying to be the perfect wife, and the Sugarbakers crew throw a Las Vegas style wedding shower for them.
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.
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.
Anthony and Etienne renew their vows for Etienne's visiting parents and Anthony's grandmother at a ceremony at B.J.'s, where anything that could go wrong does.
Julia's old mentor for her bohemian art school days in New York unveils his nude portrait of Julia.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
