Present: Mary Elizabeth Sims, a Birmingham wife, mother, and aspiring writer, reaches out to her estranged childhood friend Rene Jackson, a prominent Washington attorney, when she returns home upon the death of her father. The friends reconcile, and Rene decides to remain in Birmingtham and take over her father's law practice. Past: It's 1962, and Mary Elizabeth and Rene strike up a friendship over a shoplifted pack of cigarettes. Rene, a recent transplant from Detroit, has difficulty adjusting to the segregated South.

Present: Rene represents a woman whose rapist is suing her for shared custody and visitation rights to the child conceived during the rape; M.E. confronts Kelly about her failing grades at school. Past: After M.E. learns something about black families from Rene, she begins to confront the bigoted attitudes voiced by her parents and their opposition to her friendship with Rene.

Present: Rene falls for the reporter assigned to do a story on her for the ""Birmingham Daily"" while turning down both Garrett and Graham; Colliar gets a job as a car salesman after he discovers that his back injury means that he can't do manual labor any longer; M.E. and Colliar sue their litigious and cantankerous neighbor after she has Scout impounded for knocking her down while trying to protect Davis and Kelly when she attacked them with a rake. Past: During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, M.E. becomes very frightened that Birmingham will be bombed and stays close to home, leading Rene to question whether they're still friends. Grandma Otis invites the girls over for a slumber party.

Present: Approaching their 26th wedding anniversary, M.E. and Colliar are at odds and they each seek out Rene for answers about the other; Rene struggles to interject a note of friendship into a relationship with a new man who doesn't seem to want anything but sex; Colliar's plans for a romantic anniversary celebration turn out well, if not out quite the way he expected. Past: After M.E. gets into a scrap with Tully, Catherine insists that she attend charm school; Colliar and M.E. share their first kiss.

Rene helps plan a ceremony honoring her father. She asks M.E. to write a biography of her father to present at the event. In doing her research, M.E. discovers information about Rene's father's past that could be emotionally scarring for Rene. Past: ""Project C"" is going on in Birmingham (the week leading up to the march on Birmingham) and Rene and M.E. help the Jackson family prepare. Also, Rene develops her first crush, only to have her heart broken

Present: When an old family friend who is now a city councilman asks Rene to defend him against corruption charges, Rene agrees after being convinced by some members of the black community that the charges are baseless and rooted in racism; M.E. is appalled that her friend would represent someone so lacking in ethics, and is further dismayed when Colliar excuses the man's dishonesty as ""the way of the world""; after being lied to by her client and realizing that he is guilty of the charges, Rene withdraws from the case and is subjected to hate mail and a brick thrown through the window of the Jackson home; M.E. and Rene decide that politics will be one of the very few things they don't discuss. Past: As the Jackson family prepares to participate in the March on Birmingham, M.E. gives Rene her St. Christopher medal for protection.

Present: After M.E. finds an empty beer bottle in the living room the morning after Kelly's party, she grounds her daughter for three weeks, even though Kelly tells her she didn't see anyone drinking; Rene pleads Kelly's case to M.E. by reminding M.E. how wild her own teenage years were and M.E. tells her to mind her own business, so she remains silent when she sees Kelly sneaking out of the house; Kelly is arrested for underage drinking when the driver of the car she's riding in is pulled over for driving under the influence, and she calls Rene from jail instead of her parents, which causes another argument between M.E. and Rene; Rene represents a woman whose son was threatened by a fellow student with a gun and who tragically takes matters into his own hands when the school administration fails to move quickly enough to help him; M.E. patches up her differences with Kelly and Rene. Past: Teresa takes her revenge after she discovers M.E. and Rene spying on her makeout session with her

Mary Elizabeth solicits the help of her family and Rene in caring for her aging Grandma Otis. Meanwhile, Rene is asked to represent a boy whose family refuses to give him his inheritance because he belongs to a spiritual group they believe is a cult. Past: With Rene's help, Grandma Otis teaches M.E. how to have a loving heart.

Rene is representing the parents of a child who has died of AIDS. M.E. tries bringing her friends and Rene's friends together. Past: Rene decides she wants to be a lawyer after watching her father in court. M.E. feels threatened by Rene's new black friend.

Present: Rene represents a white couple prevented from adopting their black foster daughter; M.E. has an ectopic pregnancy which leaves her feeling a mixture of sadness, guilt, and relief; Rene tells M.E. about getting an abortion while she was in law school; M.E. starts an internship at a local paper. Past: Johnny gets grounded for taking M.E. and Rene to a drive-in for a soda and then protesting when the manager refuses to serve Rene; M.E. feels responsible for her father's migraine after she wishes he would get a new brain that wasn't hateful; after Johnny becomes ashamed when he concurs with his girlfriend's bigotry toward Rene, he stands up to Uncle Jimmy's racism and asks M.E. to tell Rene that he's sorry; Uncle Jimmy threatens the O'Briens with Klan retaliation over M.E.'s friendship with Rene.

Rene represents a lesbian couple who are forbidden to marry on public property. M.E. suspects that Colliar is having an affair. Past: Rene and M.E. learn about sex.

When Rene defends a black family that has been kicked off their property, she must confront the Alabama law that states that interracial marriages are illegal. M.E. rediscovers her writing. Past: Rene is left to care for her father and brother for the weekend. M.E.'s parents discourage her from writing and encourage her to focus on meeting a man.

Present: Rene gets fixed up with a man who turns out to be a stalker; Teresa visits Mary Elizabeth and Colliar, and things go awry. Past: M.E. bosses Colliar and Rene around; M.E. and Rene try to pull a prank on Teresa and Rene gets hurt; Catherine is horrified and outraged when she takes Rene to an all-white hospital and they refuse treatment because Rene is black.

Rene's stalker is still around and she has to get a restraining order. M.E. and Colliar are beginning their own construction business. Past: Rene and M.E. sneak out to a carnival and stumble upon a Klan rally.

Rene is reunited with her cousin who has spent the past 20 years passing for a white man. M.E. and Colliar bid on a construction company. Past: Rene worships her aunt who encourages her to sing in the church choir, while M.E. gets pushed aside.

Rene represents a white man who was beaten by the police. When Kelly brings home her black boyfriend, M.E. and Colliar react. Past: Rene has her first boyfriend.

After Rene agrees to hire a youth whom her boyfriend Bill mentors, she discovers that Bill is not divorced - only separated. M.E. feels guilty when she develops a crush on another man, but Colliar is confident that their marriage is safe. Past: M.E. and Rene witness Martin Luther King's march on Washington.

Tully, a childhood friend of Rene and M.E.'s, offends Rene when he takes part in a bigoted, tasteless prank during a parade. M.E. and Colliar try to keep Tully from being fired from his job, only to find that they have alienated Rene in the process. Past: Rene experiences her first crush. M.E. accidentally breaks Colliar's leg when competition gets the better of her in a soapbox race. She makes it up to him by writing a love letter on his cast.

Rene sends some of M.E.'s stories to a publisher friend in New York. When the publisher visits M.E. on a trip to a Southern women's writing conference, M.E.'s writing career gets a jump start. To fight off her writer's block and help her finish the first chapter of her novel, M.E. returns to Port Dixie to revisit her childhood. Meanwhile, Rene and Detective Moody find themselves falling in love, and Rene is forced to deal with Bill's ex-wife and two children. Past: Rene and M.E. learn how difficult it is to be apart when M.E. visits her relatives in Texas. While there, M.E. must confront the horse that threw her during her last visit.

Mary Elizabeth and Colliar deal with Davis's suspension from school for ""sexual misconduct,"" and try to raise a son and a daughter in the '90s without gender-typing them. Meanwhile, Rene fights to have a strip club's billboard removed from the vicinity of her office, and Mary Elizabeth learns that Colliar plans to attend a friend's stag party at a strip club, opening the debate on what men see about these clubs that women ""just don't get."" Past: M.E. and Rene are determined to get into a ""boys only"" tree house. Then Rene's world is devastated when a friend from the church choir is killed when the church is bombed, and Rene realizes that she would have been there, too, had she not been sick.

Mary Elizabeth and Rene go to Los Angeles to visit Mary Elizabeth's sister Teresa, whom they must help come to terms with her fiancé's less-than-honorable motives. When lovesick Teresa returns to Birmingham with Mary Elizabeth, she confronts the chilling memory of being molested by her piano teacher - the same man who now gives Kelly piano lessons. Past: M.E. and Rene run away from home, forcing Matt and James to work together to find them

Mary Elizabeth helps Rene prepare to meet Bill's kids. Each year Mary Elizabeth debates whether or not to plan a birthday party for Colliar. She always does, despite his protests and arguing, and he always has a great time. This year, again, Mary Elizabeth and Colliar get into an argument about his party. When he doesn't show up the next afternoon after work - or for the party - Mary Elizabeth is furious. Her anger soon turns to fear, as there seems to be no trace of him. Bill begins to search as Rene tries to calm her friend. Finally, Colliar turns up at a hospital far away, apparently having been through a dramatic and violent ordeal. Mary Elizabeth is thrilled and relieved to have her husband back. Rene and Bill cannot hold back any longer, and end up making love, and then getting engaged. Past: M.E. and Rene desperately want to buy ""sea monkeys,"" but cannot come up with the money. Colliar says he makes money on his paper route, but M.E.'s mother, Catherine, tells her that paper rou

Present: Uncle Jimmy dies and M.E. ensures that he's not buried with any Klan insignia; Rene refuses to assist Joe with the case of a wheelchair-bound man who feels discriminated against when a strip club won't allow him to get a lap dance; Rene represents Ajoni's teammate Richie when he is arrested for manslaughter in the death of a teenager he hit during a post-game fight, and mounts a self-defense trial strategy based on Richie's fearing his life was in danger after the other teen hurled a highly charged racial epithet at him. Past: The O'Brien family continues to mourn the loss of Johnny; Teresa devises a highly effective plan to keep the O'Brien girls out of having to go to an all-girls Catholic high school; M.E. is outraged and disgusted when the veterans parade to which Uncle Jimmy invites the O'Briens turns out to be a Klan rally; Rene is excited at the prospect of being named valedictorian.

Present: Events put a damper on Rene's plans to move into a new office suite; Kelly brings a new dimension to nervous new motherhood and exhausts her parents with her constant, frantic calls; Rene loses an employment discrimination suit for her deaf client, but manages to gain a new case clerk and a new associate from the experience; inspired by Colliar's pillow talk and unwilling to sit down and take the absence of romance in their relationship quietly, M.E. devises an innovative way to spark up their marriage; Joe and one of his Harvard classmates become new associates in Rene's firm; at the first Jackson & Associates staff meeting, Rene discovers that her skills in researching and interviewing prospective employees could use some work. Past: Colliar, Tully and the girls endure the torture that is freshman hazing on their first days of high school; Rene joins Black Students Unite, and M.E. joins the pep squad.

Present: Stacy introduces Rene to a handsome and opinionated judge, who ends up hearing the case of a Native American artist Rene represents when a controversy arises over a Holocaust mural he painted for a museum; M.E.'s back goes out, and she wiles away her recuperation by making friends with her new neighbor's little boy. Past: Rene tries to keep her father from discovering that she's dating a senior.