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.
A Vietnam vet is denied government assistance, despite having lost a leg and an arm.
A sequence of tragedies leads to the death of three cowboys, one of them an old friend of Matt's.
