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.

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.

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