The family all pitch in to help Jack make and bottle his special barbecue sauce for a food fair. The inexperienced bottlers wake up that night to the sound of barbecue sauce explosions coming from the kitchen. Sheldon offers financial aid but Jack is reluctant to take it. Paul, a young man helping the family with the production, asks Carly if she thinks he should ask Nicole out. Carly says yes, not wanting to admit that Nicole might not consider him for a date because he's overweight, an assessment Jack agrees with.

Jack and Carly are getting tired of exes Stephanie and Sheldon hanging around the apartment so much, so Jack manipulates Stephanie into taking out Sheldon. While out on an errand, Will sees the two in a restaurant sharing a kiss. This news upsets everyone in the family, so Jack tries to undo the relationship, this time with much less success.

At the supermarket Jack and Dante tease Will about his attraction to the 20-year-old checkout clerk Tina, but both men encourage him to ask her out. Meanwhile at home Nicole is asking Carly if it would be all right for her to go out with Preston, Sarah's 22-year-old trumpet instructor. Carly says Jack would never allow it. When the men return telling the story of Will's crush on Tina, Nicole angrily demands to know why it's OK for Will to date an older person, but not her. Carly, disdainful of Jack's double standard, sides with Nicole. Trapped by his hypocrisy, Jack declares that if Will gets a date with Tina, Nicole can go out with Preston. Jack thinks he's safe with this solution, but Tina promptly accepts Will's invitation to go out.

Carly has a big job catering a party for the mayor and she's so busy that she doesn't notice Sarah is acting preoccupied herself before leaving for school. When Sarah arrives home, she is still acting a bit odd. Jack asks what's wrong and she tells him she got her first period that day. Jack, who had just been bragging to Will about having it all together while Carly is out of the house, is thrown for a loop and bumbles around trying to find the right thing to say and do. Stephanie shows up at the apartment and leads Sarah in some strange New Age-type ritual to commemorate the event. Jack calls Carly to tell her the news. Carly feels that she should go home to Sarah, despite the importance of her job.

Jack is worried because his marraige to Carly is entering the ""red zone,"" the fourteen-month mark around which her other two marriages began to fall apart. At this inopportune time Gail, a woman who Jack once had a short, scary relationship with, shows up. Gail announces she's getting married and wants back a watch of hers that Jack kept when he fled from her. Jack tries to get the watch back from Will, to whom he gave it as a gift, but Will gave it to his father Dante. Trying to hide it all from Carly, Jack folows the torturous route the watch has taken from a pawn shop to Stephanie to Sheldon to Sarah. When he finally gets his hands on it, both Carly and Gail see it, too.

A booby trap set by Jack and Dante catches newspaper-stealing neighbor Mrs. Ross redhanded (or blue-faced, actually) and she promptly sues Jack. Meanwhile, Sheldon has cancelled plans with Sarah one too many times, and she's ready to do something about it. While Jack is seeing one lawyer, she goes to another to try to get Sheldon to disown her and make Jack her legal guardian. Sheldon is furious and thinks Jack is behind it. He comes to the apartment and tries to reconcile with Sarah, asking her to come along to Paris with him and Stephanie, but Sarah refuses. Jack tries to calm Sheldon down and talks to him about what it takes to be a good father. The talk only spooks Sheldon into thinking he'll never make a good dad and he now wants to sign the papers. Carly talks Sarah into travelling to Paris, but Stephanie and Sheldon have already left. Rushing to the airport, Carly boards the plane to talks to Sheldon, who then leaves the plane with her. Meanwhile Sarah has boarded and the plane

Will has a new girlfriend, Jennifer, and he's nervous about her well-to-do parents meeting his own, especially his father Dante. The Hadleys come over for dinner at Jack and Carly's one night and all goes well until they depart. That's when Carly discovers a decorative egg that Lorraine Hadley was admiring is suddenly missing. This sends Jack, Carly and a reluctant Will on reconnaissance missions to locate and retrieve the egg.

Jack and Carly have been married a year, but anniversary plans aren't quite working out the way they want them to. They're having a hard time being alone between kids and ex-spouses. Will hasn't bought them a present, and at the instigation of his friend Davis, he attempts to shoplift a gift and gets caught. When they finally are alone, Dante brings his son Will over to Jack and Carly's with the news. He grounds Will--at their apartment.

Stephanie is a wreck--she's being written out of her TV series ""Thena"" and is to be replaced by a younger warrior goddess, Zora. To make it worse, her character will be killed off on a special live broadcast. Carly wants to offer sympathy and support, against Jack's advice. The two of them see Stephanie and try to cheer her up by telling her she'll have more time for Nicole and Sheldon. Steph takes the advice to heart, smothering those two with attention that is driving them nuts. Nicole comes home with the news that Stephanie wants her to live with her.

Before the show begins, Jack and Carly visit Stephanie backstage to wish her luck. She pries out the news from the couple that Nicole doesn't want to move and that Sheldon is distancing himself from her, which doesn't exactly help her already fragile state of mind. The broadcast begins and it quickly turns into a fiasco, as Stephanie begins to ad lib and refuses to let Thena die. Finally Zora convinces her that she must go through with

An angry Jack is on the train from Philadelphia with Nicole. The story is told in flashbacks. Carly plans for the family to help out at a homeless shelter, but Nicole wants to go to a party. Nicole convinces Carly to let her go if she'll find a substitute for the night--who turns out to be Jack. The next night, Nicole is supposed to help again at the shelter, but she has a chance to go see the Rollling Stones. She takes advantage of Carly's desire to be liked as a stepmother, borrows $150 from her and gets permission to go to the concert, telling Carly the show is ""downtown somewhere"" and conveniently neglecting to mention the downtown is Philadelphia's. Jack is angry at his daughter and goes to retrieve her. He thinks the best punishment for Nicole will be facing up to Carly.

Sheldon puts Jack and Carly in an uncomfortable position when he asks them to provide an alibi for him to keep Stephanie from knowing he was with his wife Marianne, who he's in the process of divorcing! It's a poor alibi, and the three of them end up going rock climbing with Stephanie in order to preserve it. When Steph finds out the truth there is a big blow-up between her and Sheldon and they quit speaking. Jack and Carly have their exes to dinner to try to get them to at least be civil for their children's sake. Stephanie and Sheldon are at first reluctant, but soon get turned on again by each other and leave.

Carly's free-spirited, globe-trotting New-Agey friend Rachel Travers is in town. The kids are excited and Jack looks forward to meeting her, but Carly is afraid she might be a mite too free-spirited for Jack. However, Jack insists that Rachel stay with them while she's in town. Jack is a little uncomfortable with Rachel's hugging, vegetarianism and dung-cured Pakistani rugs, but when she counsels Nicole to take some time off before entering college, he can't abide it any longer. Rachel and Jack argue and she storms out of the apartment, leaving Nicole and Carly both upset with Jack.