The first day at Boatwright College is full of complications for John-Boy Walton.
The Walton household is upset when John-Boy brings home a teenage college-student genius with a photographic memory.
Ponch and Jon try to intervene between the surfers and "valley" kids before things get out of hand and someone gets seriously hurt. Later, they try to apprehend the person behind a string of tape deck thefts.
A sequence of tragedies leads to the death of three cowboys, one of them an old friend of Matt's.
A Vietnam vet is denied government assistance, despite having lost a leg and an arm.