Bored with her life, Rhoda's mother Ida decides to become a ""now"" woman and surprises Rhoda and Brenda by announcing she's launched a whole new career.
Brenda decides to break out of her ""nice, warm rut"" by moving to San Francisco, a plan that isn't discouraged by Rhoda, but one that Joe thinks is rotten.
Distracted by visitors who keep interrupting her work at home, Rhoda opens an office and soon learns about the problems faced by a woman launching her own business.
Rhoda and Brenda have to take their mother on her very first trip to the doctor, a visit that mama Ida faces with a combination of fear and embarrassment.
When Rhoda discovers Joe has been visiting a doctor without telling her, she begins to worry, but not as much as when she finds out what kind of doctor he is.
Rhoda and Joe work very hard at being the perfect modern couple, free of all jealousies and hang-ups until a man Rhoda once loved asks her out for dinner.
Rhoda's shy, retiring high-school chum, Myrna Morgenstern, shows up unexpectedly to demonstrate her new, Rhoda-like, head-on approach to life, and she begins a tumultuous non-romance with Joe's best friend.
At Ida's insistence, Rhoda talks Joe into asking her father for the money he needs to save his business, but then is surprised to learn things about her dad's financial state that are news to even her mother.
With his business on the verge of failure, Joe becomes ever increasingly worried, resisting Rhoda's advice to free his emotions, even if it means crying.
It's a case of mutual dislike at first sight when Rhoda meets Joe's friend Charlie Burke, a patronizing ""man's man"" who is not exactly thrilled with his best buddies wife.
Despite Joe and Brenda's insistence that she butt out, Rhoda continues to plunge ahead to prove to her younger sister that her new boyfriend is really a married man.
Rhoda thinks she may be pregnant, but she isn't sure enough to tell her husband Joe, especially when he comes home with the news that his business is facing economic troubles.
Unable to think of just the right gift to get Rhoda, Brenda decides to throw a shower for her soon-to-be-wed sister and uses the occasion to stage a small reunion for Rhoda with some of her old high school classmates.
Rhoda's smooth romance with Joe gets a little bumpy when he decides it might be best if the two of them begin dating other people as well as each other.