The Cosby Show

Vanessa comes home from college and reveals her year-long relationship and six-month engagement to Dabnis, a college maintenance supervisor who is, by his own admission, "knocking on 30." Clair voices concern about how far apart Vanessa and Dabnis are in age, while Cliff questions Vanessa's "back door presentation of both her relationship and her fiancé."

On the eve of co-signing a loan to help Elvin and Sondra to purchase their own home, Cliff reveals his plans to build an extension on the house. Finally, Clair will have a room of her own but when Elvin and Sondra's closing is postponed indefinitely, they are left with no place to live except a cheap motel.

Expansion of the Huxtable kitchen begins, Theo faces his first parent-counselor night at the community center and Rudy encounters her first love. Theo gears up for one-on-one conversations with his students' parents by rehearsing with Cliff and Clair but nothing can prepare him for the more-than-passing interest one young mother takes in him!

Construction on the Huxtable kitchen progresses, despite Cliff's help. Pam laments her low grades. Now a senior, Pam wants to attend a college like Hillman with her best friend, Charmaine. Only two things are holding Pam back; her low GPA and her low SAT scores.

Rudy and two girlfriends don makeup and trendy clothes to crash "The Exchange," an over 16 dance club in New York City. Cliff and Clair overhear the plan and decide to let them go...with Pam, Lance and Charmaine as secret chaperones.

With Elvin, Sondra and the twins living in the Huxtable home for several weeks, nerves have started to fray. When Cliff temporarily confines the twins in an overturned playpen while he vacuums up cookie crumbs, Sondra explodes, accusing him of cruelty. Tempers flare and recriminations fly between the four adults.

Russell hears from reliable sources that Vanessa is engaged. Unfortunately, those sources also report that Dabnis is a 45-year-old janitor. Alarmed, Russell and Carrie confront Cliff and Clair, who confirm the engagement and try to set the record straight on Dabnis, but the grandparents are not satisfied.

When Rudy entered junior high, Cliff thought he was finally done with field trips. Wrong. Olivia's class trip to the natural history museum lacks one chaperone. Provided there is no singing on the bus, Cliff agrees. His fellow chaperone? Know-it-all neighbor Jeffrey Engels.

Cliff leads a "For Men Only" guidance class at the community center, giving the boys some plain talk about living, working and surviving in the real world. Meanwhile, Russell's adventures in babysitting for Olivia include an eye-popping, ear-splitting indoctrination into the wild world of video games.

Olivia is upset because Martin is leaving for the Orient. After extracting a promise that he will not leave without saying goodbye, Olivia hides herself in the living room closet, hoping to delay his departure indefinitely. The rest of the family prepares to welcome legendary African singer Miriam Makeba to the Huxtable home.

Kenny arrives to console Rudy, when word around school is that Rudy and Stanley are no longer dating. Rudy's old friend sees this as an opportunity to further his own chances. Trouble is, Stanley may not be as out-of-the-picture as Kenny thinks.

It's time to hang Christmas lights and bake Christmas cookies but it will all have to happen without Clair, who is safely tucked away from noisy grandchildren, nosy husband and whiny children in the Clair Hanks Huxtable Room, complete with private phone and secret security code access.

Even with his job at the community center, making ends meet is still hard for Theo. When Tim tells him about a corporate mixer, Theo's first in line at the buffet table. In between bites, he expresses his opinions about corporate image and employee management to corporate recruiters from a large soup company. Impressed, they offer to fly him to their San Francisco headquarters for an interview.

Pam, Lance and Charmaine discover that talk is cheap and action speaks volumes. When a group of senior citizens complain of the higher prices and poorer quality at the supermarket chain store in their neighborhood, Pam drives them to the chain's store a few blocks away where the conditions are better and she wonders, how can the neighborhood store get away with it?

Eager for extra cash, Pam fills in for Cliff's regular assistant. Everything is under control until Mrs. Minifield bypasses the hospital and arrives on Cliff's doorstep with contractions less than four minutes apart. Meanwhile, Kenny shows up to work on a school science project with Rudy and Stanley.

Clair searches Cliff's favorite hiding places for chips and cookies before she leaves for a business trip. When all she finds are fruits, greens and other healthy items, Cliff promises he has turned over a new leaf. With the help of every condiment in the refrigerator, the girls manage to make a palatable dinner of boiled chicken, brown rice and steamed broccoli.

The boxes are packed, the moving van is loaded, Sondra and Elvin prepare to move to their own home in New Jersey but Cliff still has his doubts. While Elvin and Sondra supervise the unloading in New Jersey, Winnie and Nelson remain with Cliff, who would rather take a nap than look after the twins.

When their boiler expires, Sondra and Elvin move their housewarming party to the Huxtable house. Russell arrives with gossip about Vanessa that may give the family even more to celebrate.

Preparing for a school project, Olivia seeks out a more reliable source after Cliff tells her a bunch of outrageous stories about himself at age six. Among other things, it seems that Cliff's first bicycle hangs in the Smithsonian next to the Spirit of St. Louis! Olivia brings Russell on as a consultant, who relates some interesting stories about the young Cliff that even Cliff has forgotten.

Clair hosts a group of Hillman College alumnae who have gathered to plan a testimonial for a much-loved professor. While trying to come up with a way to describe the colorful woman, Clair and her friends reminisce about their fun-filled college days. Meanwhile, Olivia persuades Cliff to get a "beauty makeover" in her new hair salon.

Parenting is the topic of the day around the Huxtable home. Sondra and Elvin want to provide for the twins in their will. After seeing a lawyer to draw up a will, Sondra and Elvin narrow the field of candidates for guardianship of the twins. Will it be Cliff and Clair, or Theo?

While Clair provides some last-minute legal aid for a public radio station, Cliff finds himself sitting in on a live radio broadcast with Latin Jazz stars Graciela, Willie Colón, and Mario Bauza and His Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra.

In her annual plea, Clair begs Cliff to just hand over his receipts and let her and the accountant thrash out the tax return but first, Cliff wants to stake his claims to Elvin, Sondra, the twins, Olivia, and Cousin Pam as Huxtable dependents. Caught without an appropriate gift for Deirdre's birthday, Kenny tells her he has planned a party for her at the Huxtables.

Cliff invites a host of relatives and friends to celebrate Theo's graduation from NYU and despite a scarcity of tickets, Cliff just keeps on inviting people. Theo's protests fall on deaf ears. Eight years of magic, love and laughter with the Huxtable family come to an end as Cliff's invitation list for Theo's graduation continues to grow.