Four soccer moms struggle to balance their busy schedules, family lives, and sanity: Meg, an overachieving people pleaser; Barbara, a recent divorcee; Rocky, a high-maintenance diva; and Connie, a curvaceous and big-hearted mother.
Televangelist Bobby Paradise "saw God" in some space debris when he was returning to Earth as an astronaut. Or at least he was convinced he did by his wife, a Cape Canaveral groupie at the time Bobby was with NASA. Now they have built up an extensive TV empire. When their proposal to merge with a somewhat tarnished mogul is investigated by the government, skeletons in the Paradise closet come to light and the family either rallies behind or disparages the enterprise.
A neurotic L.A. building contractor (Mike Binder in his best Woody Allen imitation) pushes his wife (Mariel Hemingway) into entering into a three way sexual relationship. Unfortunately for him, his wife gets more out of it than he does and becomes a tigress seducing every female she meets including the contractor's secretary.
A ruthless businesswoman, Tracy Lance, returns to her childhood home in Texas after hearing her father, Jake Lance suffered a stroke. The two have been estranged for years, and Tracy is just in Texas to collect her inheritance, thinking (and hoping) her father will die. She makes plans to sell her inheritance, the Wounded Heart ranch, to an unscrupulous land developer. Her father does die, and her step-brother Sean Donnegal helps her discover her true, caring self again.
Both Danny Stein and Tony Vilachi are drug lords in a struggle to gain control of the same territory. Jonathan and Mickey are ex-cons who come in wearing white hats and attempt to settle the dispute.
성당의 대주교에 이어 앤 수녀가 연쇄 살해되는 사건이 발생한다. 이들의 손에는 하나같이 묵주가 쥐어져 있었다. 살해된 시체를 처음 발견한 케슬러 신부(Father Koesler: 도날드 서덜랜드 분)는 경찰과 신문기자들에게 도움을 주고 싶지만 사건의 경위를 알지 못해 안절부절한다. 그러던 어느 날, 고해성사를 하러 온 범인이 자기 딸이 3년전에 자살했다는 말과 함께 자신의 주머니에 묵주가 하나 더 있음을 고백한다. 이 자가 범인임을 직감한 캐슬러 신부는 사건과 관계되는 이야기를 유도하려고 하지만 범인은 황급히 달아난다. 막막해진 케슬러 신부는 앤 신부로부터 우연히 건네 받았던 그림 속에서 다음 살인 표적을 눈치채게 된다.
