y in Red", "Lady in black"Lady in Yellow", etc.). Like its source material, each character deals with a different personal conflict, such as love, abandonment, rape, infidelity, and abortion. The characters are represented by a color: Jo/Red (Janet Jackson), Juanita/Green (Loretta Devine), Yasmine/Yellow (Anika Noni Rose), Tangie/Orange (Thandie Newton), Alice/White (Whoopi Goldberg), Gilda/Gray (Phylicia Rashad), Crystal/Brown (Kimberly Elise), Nyla/Purple (Tessa Thompson), and Kelly/Blue (Kerry Washington). Each of their stories are different, but the characters interact within each other's lives. The show opens with Tangie throwing her latest lover out of her house. Right after that, as Juanita arrives to piss Frank off with a houseplant, Kelly, who works for child welfare, attempts to visit Crystal on behalf of the children, but she does not get very far. As she flees Beau Willie, she gets some good advice from Gilda. Meanwhile, Alice shows up to beseech Tangie for money, but gets rebuffed instead. Alice goes out to raise money, and encounters Yasmine, who gives her a little money. Yasmine, a dance teacher, is boasting of how dancing gives her underprivileged girls opportunities, a way out of the ghetto, and in to college. Nyla tells her friends in the class about her graduation night with a pack of cousins, then has to throw up. Kelly's husband comes over and arrests two men, one of whom is Jo's husband. Juanita is waiting in Jo's office, with Jo's terrified assistant, Katina, running scared and making tea, and Crystal running late for work. Jo rejects the work of her photographers, demanding work of the highest caliber. Juanita is let into the office, and attempts to interest Jo in her work at starting a medical center. But Jo refuses, asserting that everyone rises and falls by their own merits. Juanita tries to warn her about the suffering in the community she cannot even see. She asks Jo what the price she has to pay to be so powerful, yet so self-centered, then forcefully storms out. Kelly and her husband visit a physician, who reveals she had an untreated STD that has stripped her of the ability to have children. So Kelly runs off. Juanita gives condom advice to a group of women, only to be bothered by Frank. She brushes him off and returns to giving the women sensible talk about how to avoid unwanted consequences from sex. Tangie, who works as a bartender, finds a man and decides to show him a night of pleasure. That night, Crystal implores Beau to stop drinking, while he cares only for her accepting his marriage proposal, in the hopes of increasing his welfare benefits. Jo, meanwhile, implores her husband to call her, revealing to us that they'd had a fight that night. At the same restaurant, we also see Yasmine and Bill having a magical night. Alice comes home, grumbling that Nyla moved her box. But Alice shows Nyla the money she has been collecting and asking for, and gives it to her, believing that it is for Nyla's entrance into college. It is not enough, and asking Tangie is discussed, but Alice instead tells Nyla that her god will provide. Yasmine continues her date, explaining that she loved dance more than anything, until she met Bill. Meanwhile, Tangie is having a great time, until she discoveres the man thinks she is a prostitute. She throws him out only to be met by Nyla in the hall. Nyla requests money, which angers Tangie. Tangie correctly diagnoses Nyla as pregnant, which Nyla denies. Tangie relishes her cruelty, enjoying the idea Alice will hate Nyla the way she hates Tangie. So she tells her about an abortionist, and how to find her. Jo is in her house when her husband returns. He claims his battery died, but that does not stop her. We learn that he took money from her bank account for an investment that failed; the source of the fight she mentioned earlier. He feels emasculated, stripped of his automatic right of command of the house, in favor of him submitting to her will. Kelly's husband comes home and sees Kelly, so Kelly decides to pour her heart out to her husband in a refreshing breath of honesty. Long before she was married, she and a friend were dating the same man, unbeknownst to her. He also gave her a disease which caused her infertility. Despite this, her husband loves her, and stands by her side. Frank attempts to bother Juanita again, seducing her heavily resistant will into taking him back. The next day, Crystal makes an appointment for Jo, then delivers flowers and phone call from Jo's husband. He allows himself to go to the opera, which she loves and he hates, as a means of an apology. However, he is clearly looking at men, desiringly. Yasmine is elated by flowers when Tangie comes to pay Nyla's three-hundred dollar bill. She warns Yasmine about her suitor's intentions, and offers to pay on Nyla's behalf, but Yasmine informs her that there is nothing she has to pay for in any way. Tangie realizes Nyla's gone to see the abortionist, Rose (Macy Gray), which indeed she has. The abortionist is terrifying, and probably drunk. While Jo is at the opera, watching as her husband and another man give each other the eye, Yasmine lets her suitor into her house. He removes his clothes, then hers, and savagely rapes her. The next morning, Jo angrily demands Crystal find a list of advertisers, which Crystal realizes, horrified, that she left in her house. So Jo takes her home. Seeing a male driver in the car, Beau Willie believes Crystal is having an affair. The abuse begins, and can be heard in Gilda's house as she watches the kids. She tries to calm their fears by telling them about her husband. Going to Gilda's house, he captures the children and drops them out the window as Gilda goes to find help. Jo and an arriving Juanita all serve as witnesses, along with Gilda, to the brutal murder of the children. Kelly's husband interviews Yasmine in the hospital about the rape, to which she gives him a blistering poem as her answer. Alice storms into the hospital to find Nyla with Kelly and some cops. Nyla was found alone and badly wounded. Kelly, walking through the hospital, discovers the grieving Crystal, along with Jo, Gilda, Juanita, and Kelly's husband. Remembering these people and learning of the children's murders, she tells her husband exactly who to go after, and where. Alice storms Tangie's house and confronts her, violently, about Nyla seeing the abortionist. She throws Tangie's newest conquest out of Tangie's house, and they argue about sexuality. They also recite poem and counter-poem against each other. We learn that Tangie's grandfather, Alice's father, had his way with her, too, causing Alice to send her to the abortionist. But Alice was watching her, supervising and protecting her, whereas Nyla was unsupervised. She reveals that her father not only took her virginity, but at fifteen, forced her to make granddaughters with a white man. Finally, Tangie screams that Alice, thinking herself so holy, let their grandfather molest her. She sees Gilda in the hall. Gilda calls her "nothing", then intrudes on her apartment, which Tangie accidentally locked herself out of. Gilda treats Tangie's shiner with some ice. She tells her that it is not just sex; she needs to find the root if she is ever going to be healed. She knows this because she once was just like Tangie. Juanita comes home to find Frank gone, but he soon comes home. Jo informs her husband, who comes home far too late, about the murder of Crystal's children. Her tears wash away some of her blindess to the suffering of others, (which Juanita had earlier tried to talk with her about) as she realizes how she failed to notice the clear abuse Crystal was going through. Alice and Nyla come home, and Alice forces Nyla to pray for forgiveness while anointing her head with dust and oil. She attempts to exorcise her daughter, to which Nyla slaps her and flees. She tries to seek help from Yasmine, who does not sleep, but sits in bed with a knife, causing Nyla to flee again. Crystal tries to scrub away the blood from her children on the sidewalk, with assistance from Kelly. She weeps for her babies' blood, finding life no longer feels real. It angers her when people walk through it, and Nyla runs through the blood. Kelly recognizes her. Crystal and Kelly get Nyla cleaned up. Tangie shows up with a new man of the night, so Nyla confronts her about the abortionist. The man takes an interest in Nyla as well, so Tangie accuses him of pedophila and turns him away with disgust. Tangie and Nyla argue, again. Tangie admits she has lost touch with reality, and that she is too hurt to love anyone else. Yasmine dances alone, to the poem of Sashita, a powerful goddess of creativity. The dance helps her begin to retain the power taken from her in the rape. Kelly's husband leads her to Bill's body. He was stabbed to death by a woman after he had raped her. Yasmine slaps his face, regaining more of her strength. Crystal attempts suicide by taking some sleeping pills. While Kelly, Gilda and the sisters wait, Juanita comes in, revealing she had been saved but still needed some rest. Kelly berates herself for not saving Crystal's children because she was wasting her time at a doctor's office. Juanita comes home on Frank's birthday to discover all his things gone, and some of hers, too, in a metaphoric sense which a poem helps her express. As Yasmine continues her classes, and Juanita continues hers, Crystal is fed, then taken home from the hospital, and Jo makes a donation to Juanita. Tangie invites Crystal to a party in Nyla's honor at Juanita's center. Frank tries to come back, but Juanita does not break down this time and sends him away for good. Gilda goes in, forces Crystal to face herself, and accept the fact that she did not protect her kids. She gives her a rebirthing experience. Jo confronts her husband about his infidelity with men, forbids the word 'sorry' from her life, reveals she has HIV, and tells her husband that he is to be gone before she gets back. Jo goes to the party, and everyone is there. Even Crystal. Alice shows up briefly, giving Nyla some books, and telling her how proud of her she is before the music drives her out. Jo and Juanita withdraw to the roof, where Juanita gives Jo some advice about HIV. All of the girls except for Alice join them on the roof, where Juanita says "My love is too beautiful to have thrown back in my face." They begin to share "Sorry" stories, which Crystal wins. Crystal reveals that she is the most healed of them all.

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