Aeronautical Engineer Steve Douglas and his youngest son Chip face a parallel problem -- how to rid themselves of two designing females: Widower Steve is introduced to attractive and eligible Pamela MacLish, and is pursued by her because she wouldn't mind being the new Mrs. Douglas. Steve's youngest son Chip, aged eight, has similar problems with his classmate Dorine Peters, who would love to be his steady girlfriend. Pamela decides to call upon Steve with some leftover cake from their dinner, only to be met with a rambunctious houseful of children. Michael O'Casey, Steve's father in law, affectionately known as 'Bub' attends to the household chores. The eldest son Mike, aged eighteen and named after his Grandfather, is talking on the telephone, while middle son Robbie, aged fourteen, plays with the family's shaggy dog, known as Tramp. Before long Steve is accompanying Pamela and Chip to Chip's grade school dance. Chip takes it upon himself to give his father some sonly advice. Me

The Annual School ragdrive starts Chip off on a scavenger hunt of the neighbourhood. Everytime Miss Pitts looks out the window she sees strange happenings at the Douglas household. She sees Bub outdoors waving a bottle that looks like whiskey,and later, Robbie carrying in a dummy that she thinks is Bub smashed to the nines. Later she goes over to talk to Steve about her concerns, and sees Chip in his bedroom hitting the dummy and when it accidentally falls out of the upstairs window, she faints on the sidewalk.

When Bub steps on the toes of each grandson in turn, Steve is about to rebuke him when the household returns to normal once again. Being chief cook, dishwasher and housekeeper to three boys is not fun for a grandfather as Bub soon finds out.

A Missile launch, sleeping in and Daylight Saving make for an interesting Monday morning. The Douglas household is a chaotic affair of lost indian arrow heads for Chip's turn in show and tell at School, Robbie's missing trumpet and some important lost plans of Steve's that Mike has nearly burned in the incinerator.

When Mike and Robbie cross swords over a blonde schoolgirl, the issue widens until the whole family is involved in the argument. But it is difficult for Steve to teach his sons that violence solves nothing with a pugnacious father-in-law around.

Steve's theory that 'life is just a small series of adjustments' is put to the test in just one day's discovered doings. Steve must meet with a top Air Force General to discuss plans for a rocket design, and in the process, he must borrow Mike's car, but gets a flat tire and must take the bus home.

Steve is enamored of his new business associate, an attractive woman who is strictly business. He is tempted to mix business with pleasure but finds that she thinks only about the job at hand and doesn't have any plans to expand her love life, despite this romantic interlude.

Thanksgiving Day's turkey dinner is threatened when the electricity is short-circuited throughout the neighborhood. Chip decides to bring along his Indian friend as his sole guest much to the annoyance of his brothers who say he is a bum who lives near the railway tracks in a rundown old shack.

Feeling left out when Mike and Robbie decide to go camping at Gunman's Gulch, a lonely Chip uses a raft his brothers helped make in the backyard, on which he and Steve spend a night, pretending to float down the Mississippi. They are accidentally locked out when it begins to rain. Steve begins to worry when he wakes up from a nap and thinks it is way past 4am in the morning and thinks that Bub has not yet returned from his pinochle game.

TV Star George Gobel is invited to dinner by Bub, who forgets to tell his son-in-law Steve who returns from an out of town business trip and arrives home late at night. He tiptoes around the house only to find a strange man occupying his bed.

Robbie is baffled when his girlfriend rejects the excitement of his new motor in favor of standard feminine frills. He tries to win her over by telling the boys on the football team that no girls are allowed, knowing this will upset her as she is considered one of the guys.

The boys want a raise in their allowance, but Steve tells them that they are spending money recklessly and not doing their chores. Bub has been picking up the slack and doing their work for them. Everyone has bad dreams that night.

Mike and the girl next door arouse the suspicions of Steve and Bub when secrets are exchanged and the two are seen leaving with suitcases. Meanwhile, Robbie is on a clock salvaging attempt to find historic clocks after he gets into a spot of bother with his teacher.

Constant comparison to his brother, Mike, leaves Robbie feeling inferior and angry—and their father has to face the consequences as Robbie and Mike are about to come to blows when Steve shows up just in the nick of time from work.

When Bub is suddenly called out of town, Steve seeks an agency to get temporary help—unaware that he may be recruiting a wife. With his older brothers passing the buck, Chip accidentally rings Domestic Bliss, Inc. - a marriage seeking department who send out a woman inspector right away.

When Steve invites his second cousin Selena to come and visit, Bub gets the strange impression that he is being neglected and isn't really needed. He decides to take up the offer of managing a movie theater in Plainview, and nothing the boys say or do can make him change his mind.

Mike prepares for the transition from high school to college and the question of joining a fraternity is one that complicates his life considerably. When Mike and Jean attend a party as prospective applicants, he later finds out the they have been dropped from the waiting list and suddenly the cold war turns pretty hot.

Chip falls foul of the school bully who isn't interested in fighting with him. Steve soon realises that Chip is deliberately provoking the boy each day in the school yard to prove a point, and feels the boy must must solve his own problems even though it costs him detention in the Principal's office.

Steve's ever efficient sister arrives for a visit, and immediately changes and complicates the entire Douglas household. The challenging aspect to the whole deal is a decision that Harriet soon regrets, especially once Steve returns home from his business trip.

When Robbie Douglas sees his new friend's home he is envious of what he thinks is really the perfect teenage home and becomes almost as envious as Hank is of the turbulent, happy-go-lucky Douglas household.

Mike Douglas and the family mongrel Tramp keep disappearing at night, and Jean becomes increasingly suspicious, unaware that Mike and his friend Tim are building her a hi-fi set for her upcoming Birthday.

On a dark night when Steve is away, Robbie and his date are frightened by a man in a trench coat. It all happens when Robbie is seen putting on the hubcap of his next door neighbour. Steve isn't too concerned when he hears about the incident as he thinks it all stems from Robbie's steady diet of spy and mystery stories.

Mike has to finish the layout and write a sports article for the school paper by himself in between running in a track meet and going to a dance with Jean.

Chip begins to think it would be great to be an older brother, so he wishes for a little sister. After the new Hawkins family move into the vacant house across the street, a wild sequence of events results from an improbable case of mistaken identity -- an infant is somehow confused with a leg of lamb left in the boot of Steve's station wagon.

Chip brags to his new playmate that his genius brother Robbie can fix almost anything. Soon Robbie is repairing a Grand Piano and has five minutes to have it fixed before the boy's mother comes in and wants to practise a new tune on it.

With Steve away in Seattle on a business trip, the Douglas household's version of man's best friend has been known to drag home anything he can get his jaws into. This time Tramp slinks in with a large stick of dynamite that has somewhere and somehow survived since the end of the Second World War.

Unaware of each other's problems, Steve and Robbie engage in what seem to be widely varied projects. Robbie is trying to construct a race kart and Steve is in a rush to help a missile manufacturer get his project off the launch pad in a race to beat a rival company.

Robbie and Mike want some extra pocket money but Steve tells them that they will have to earn it by themselves. The boys ask their neighbours if they could paint their front fence and before long several neighbors pitch in together to help restore the yard to its former glory.

Robbie can't seem to arouse the interest of the affairs of the heart with his classmate Maribel Quinby. So with the help of his best friend Hank Ferguson, he proceeds to try and get her attention by noting the theatrical method of approach that his history teacher employs to make a dull subject interesting.

Chip is so discouraged by his batting slump that he quits the baseball team. After his brothers encourage him to return, one of the parents, a volunteer umpire, calls in sick and Steve is asked to substitute. Chip thinks this will be the perfect opportunity to become the team hero.

Malcolm, a frog that Chip has captured for a school project is the focus of all eyes in the Douglas home. Bub discerns a marked resemblance to his his Uncle Clancey in Malcolm's face. Further evaluation of its character becomes quite difficult when he leaps out of sight.

Robbie's new girlfriend, lives in refined and elegant style, causing Robbie to turn a critical eye on his own home life. To impress her he tells her he really digs the classics, but in actual fact he doesn't know the difference between Puccini and Presley.

Bub sets out to find the mysterious person who sent him an old saddle... C.O.D.

Its final exam time and Mike and his girlfriend Jean have thought up a test of their own - to try the strength of their affection by not seeing each other the week before school has its graduation ceremonies.

Mr. Pearson's idea of a quiet drive in the country with his wife is altered by a station-wagon load of Douglases. Meanwhile Robbie is trying to avoid the clutches of a girl named Mary Lou.

Mike Douglas gets a Summer job with the Forestry Service and he thinks its going to be a barrel of fun until he learns that he's expected to do a real man's job. When his boss is stranded down at the creek and a wild storm brews up, Mike spends a harrowing time trying to stay calm.

When Chip announces Tramp is the father of six puppies, Steve is concerned because he has never explained the cycle of life to his son. But before long a confused Chip thinks that his teacher is going to marry his father.

The good neighbour policy gets a real workout when the boys, and later Bub, tangle individually with members of the new family across the street. Steve lectures them but on his way to work as he's backing out the driveway, he is delayed by a fender-denting idiot who turns out to be none other than Mr. Kaylor - the neighbor across the street.

Mike has found a girl at college, Mary Beth. But when he brings her home to meet the family, she makes a beeline straight for Steve, who is trapped into tutoring her in trigonometry. This gives Mike a few jealous moments until all is resolved.

When a boiling pot explodes Tramp's barking wakes the family saving them.

An old high school sweetheart calls for Steve while he is out. Feeling nostalgic, Steve tries to locate her in town, but never seems to be able to catch up with her as he reminisces about their past relationship. As he arrives home the door bell rings and he gets a disappointment then a surprise.

Bub and Mike are at odds with each other because both are trying to get into different, exclusive clubs. Bub is to be installed as the D'Artagnon of the East Door, while Mike is subjected to his initiation which involves pretend fishing in front of the local drug-store.

Mike wants to go skiing on the weekend with his friends but must also keep up his Spanish studies. So he adopts the learn while you sleep method via use of a pre-programmed record player. Steve's room has just been painted so he decides to sleep in Mike's bed. Mysteriously, he wakes up speaking Spanish, and the next night Bub does the same. Before long they are both uttering phrases they couldn't possibly know.

Robbie is heading for an ‘F' in world literature until the teacher assigns a beautiful blonde newcomer as his study partner. He is attracted to her right away but soon discovers that her looks don't even compensate for her loss of mind.

A composition titled ‘What My Mother Means to Me' has Chip baffled. After interviewing other mothers in the neighborhood, he makes a courageous effort to improvise by writing about his own Grandfather, whom he feels is the most maternal person he knows.

Steve and Bub are both called out of town and Mike urges them to leave him in charge, only to find the role of mother hen harder than it looks. His worth is really put to the test when he learns that Robbie and Hank have been taken to hospital after an accident at school.

Bub decides to go to night school when he finds that his grandsons keep asking endless questions that he simply cannot answer. He meets a fellow student and passes himself off as a former show business producer, while she makes out she's a high society dame, when in fact she's really a maid.

Robbie's band rehearsals upsets the household.

Mike's fraternity is looking for a band and Robbie tries to get the job.

When Robbie and his friend Hank decide they want to join a club at school, Robbie insists he does not want to join Mike's old club. When he gets an offer to join the Chieftains, the one school Club his brother never belonged to, he jumps at the chance.

Chip feels ignored by his family and decides to do them all a favour by running away from home. His solution is to strike away for far-east India very early the next morning. He takes fright while downtown and secretly returns home and hides in the attic, forgetting the farewell note he's pinned to Tramp's collar.

Steve takes a week's vacation from the family where he soon finds that he can fall in love with someone as easily as fall out of love with them. Sure that an older couple he's met are trying to play matchmaker, Fran is unsociable towards Steve at first until he points out that he only came along on the trip to appease his fellow campers.

Two dates, confused phone calls and name mix-ups create a tangled evening for brothers Mike and Robbie, when each get's the other's date. Mike gets a shock when he picks up a fourteen year old, while Robbie nearly croaks at the sight of his 'older woman'.

Attractive Pamela MacLish whom Steve took to Chip's grade school dance a year ago, is still trying to melt his bachelor heart. She arrives at the house on the pre-text of soliciting Bub's help to join an Irish Society called the 'Daughters of the Emerald Isle'. Soon Bub thinks that Pamela is after him.

Four beautiful airline stewardesses move into the vacant house next door and Mike and Robbie immediately are attracted to the glamorous career women. Meanwhile Steve is at the drawing board trying to meet a work deadline that requires his total concentration.

Bub reads an article in a magazine which is directed at bored homemakers and he begins to think that he fits the description. Steve warns him that he should control his Irish temper as it could lead to the demise of his position should he find one.

Steve is going to Chicago on business and he's promised to take Chip with him. A change of plans sees Steve boarding a military plane bound for Paris. Chip takes action when he finds out that he can't go on a trip to Paris with his father, by sneaking onto the plane. He gets lost in the city and is befriended by a little girl named Marie.

Bub fires Robbie's show business ambitions when he tells him to make the most of an opportunity when Robbie's 9th grade physics class is the subject of an educational film. He is excited when he and a fellow student are told they will be part of a close-up scene.

Chip tries to snow his teachers so he can win an art contest and almost succeeds with some help from Bub, who actually painted the artwork. Chip's teacher offers his painting to the Principal to show the school board. When Chip learns of this development, he plots with Sudsy to steal it back.

The Douglas family goes to the train station to meet Steve but when they prepare to leave, they can't find Tramp anywhere. Tramp has wandered into the cabin of a famous actress named Marissa Montaigne who takes a liking to him.

Robbie finds out that he won't be able to play in the big game unless he passes a math exam. Steve assures him that if he fails he will not be playing against his team's arch rival. When Chip comes down with the measles, it dampens Robbie's attempt to play even more than before.

Chip's schoolmates want to help him celebrate his tenth birthday with a party but he doesn't want to share the occasion with certain young ladies. However, Steve falls foul of the German measles and when Bub speaks to Sudsy's mother about it, suddenly the gossip mongers decide that they will not send their children to the house for fear of catching the disease.

Steve's friend asks him to come up with a solution when she thinks her daughter is dating an older man. Steve is shocked when he sees that the initials of the fraternity pin the man gave her identifies his oldest son Mike. However it is really Robbie who took the use of Mike's pin to fix his button-less shirt.

Chip puts his father into the uncomfortable position of defending the importance of his profession. Chip is unenlightened by the tour of the Air Force base until a full-scale emergency arises and Steve is asked to help a desperate pilot down from the air.

When Steve and an old boyhood pal discuss the time they ran away to another town, Mike and Robbie, who are continually in need of cash, decide that during school vacation they will go North to the next big town and try and get jobs.

At the suggestion of his best pal Hank, Robbie plans to earn some extra pocket-money by caddying at the local Golfing Tournament. He's assigned to the most temperemental golfer on the course. At the 18th hole Robbie accidentally kick's the ball out of the rough, immediately disqualifying his golfer from the competition.

Steve's wish for a calm life sends him on a chaotic journey into a parallel universe when on a typically rambunctious morning, the Douglas household noise is ruining Steve's day off from work. So he gets in his car to get away from it all, wishing that he'd had girls instead of boys.

Robbie's only real competition for winning a school scholarship in a model airplane contest is a young boy named Roly Bates, a studious lad who has his heart set on first prize as its his only chance to get a college education.

Mike has problems with his girlfriend's father when Mike tries to see another girl.

On his first day in High School, Robbie has some memorable highlights -- such as being assigned a locker with Chug Williams, the school's star senior athlete. When it is evident that Chug is using Robbie, Mike tries to warn him that he has become the victim of a dangerous case of hero-worship.

Steve pushes Chip to go on a week-long vacation with a boy he really doesn't like. The boy is very shy and timid, and when Chip calls him a chicken-clunk, he cops an unexpected black eye for his trouble. Meanwhile Bub tries his hand at painting.

Mike faces disciplinary action at the hands of the Board of Regents and the Dean of the College for a wayward fraternity prank in which several of the students have created a foot-print mould which bears a remarkable resemblance to the hippopotamus.

Two of Bub's cronies who are visiting for their usual game of pinochle, accidentally get an earful of the family's woes. Their mysterious interjection to try and solve the problems, leaves Steve and the boys quite baffled.

Steve is going on a business trip to Japan and thinks he might as well take his family along with him. Mike gets involved in a new romance with another beautiful girl named Kimiko and suddenly he forgets his girlfriend back home.

Robbie and Hank think there is only one thing in the whole world that impresses girls -- money! So they decide to open their own home help unit in the hope of making the big bucks that they are constantly in need of. However, they run into competition from Chip who organises baby-sitting as a means of increasing his allowance to buy a new bicycle.

Tramp supposedly takes a nip out of pampered young Alan Edgerton and the court case that follows, gives Robbie the chance to help out the family's lawyer with some special investigating when he realises he can prove that the dog acted in self defense.

College freshman Mike Douglas has invited the reigning campus beauty to his fraternity's Saturday night dance, but he sort of doubts that she'll accept. So to cover all bets, he invites another girl too, which lands him in more trouble than he bargained for.

Homeward bound from a long business trip Steve meets an old friend on the plane and he suggests that her daughter stay at the Douglas household while her mother gives a lecture in town, but unfortunately everyone else at the house has plans and Steve is left to entertain the girl.

Chip and his friend Sudsy see a Halloween spook carrying a candle in the neighbor's vacant house next door while out trick or treating, and are frightened out of their minds, but Steve and Bub will not believe them.

Robbie get in trouble with the big brothers of a girl he likes when he takes her picture.

A cooking contest at school upsets Chip when he realizes he doesn't have a mother to submit a recipe. But there is much rejoicing when Steve's favourite recipe reaches the finals. The prospect of winning keeps Steve on edge, much to the displeasure of the boys and Bub.

Chip is thrown out of the neighbourhood clubhouse because he cannot convince the older boys that he is all grown up. He makes a bargain -- he will fight one of the older boys for the privelege of becoming club mascot. But he doesn't count on being sent to hospital to have his tonsils removed the very day of the big fight.

Robbie goes on a date when he was suppose to write a term paper. Mike gives him a paper that Steve wrote and received an 'A'. Robbie copies it but gets an 'F'. When Steve talks to the teacher he finds out that the paper is plagiarized. Embarrassed Steve must explain to Robbie why he got the 'F'.

A summer heat wave has tempers flaring. Steve remains cool and calm until some important plans go missing and he thinks it might be in the pile of papers given to the boy scouts for its paper drive.

Mike is dragooned into acting as the sole judge of a campus beauty contest and discovers that the hazards of choosing a winner to be a formidable task. Especially when he realizes his girlfriend is a contestant.

Steve is in too big a hurry to get home to his family and spread the good news of his upcoming business trip to Bolivia, but hurts his back by throwing out his sacroiliac and is convinced that there is only one doctor who can help him.

Robbie wants to date a cute fifteen year old blonde, whose mother campaigns for Steve's co-operation to end the relationship, but this move almost ends in another romance. Robbie starts shaving and Steve realises Robbie is becoming a man.

Chip and Sudsy see a model auto at the toy store. When he is reminded that he is doesn't have a mother to nix the idea, he tries to persuade his father to buy it. But they both don't figure that Bub will have his say on the subject.

Chip gets a relief from boredom when Steve's friend invites him to a birthday celebration for his ""honorable"" grandfather, and Robbie finds it hard to keep up with a new girl at school who seems unimpressed with him.

Mike has the job of recruiting some campus models for a fashion show and when a gorgeous store representative stops by to give him help, he forgets there are any other girls in the world. With Robbie's help, he tries hard to capture her affections with displays of serenading on the guitar.

Steve's reluctance to make a business trip to Rome with the family puzzles everyone in the Douglas household except Bub. He remembers that Steve and his late wife were once there and that the place may hold too many memories for him.

Steve encounters a sweet, old-fashioned 16-year-old at the bus depot, who reminds him of someone from his high school days. After hearing about his family, the girl wants to go on a date with Robbie, who finds she is more wordly than his father had told him.

When he is badgered by one of his co-workers to join the company musical combo as a saxophonist, Steve, who is rather apprehensive about the situation, dreams of being chased by a man carrying a trumpet -- a man who looks very much like his workpal.

Chip volunteers Bub to be their Cub Scout leader.

Chip is overcome with loneliness when Sudsy starts spending all of his time with a new boy in the neighborhood. The entire household rallies together and their efforts to compensate the youngster succeed almost too well.

The members of Robbie's high school wrestling team need higher grades to remain eligible, so they choose Steve as their tutor. Soon the house is quarantined for Diptheria, and when Bub doesn't get his long-awaited rendezvous with ""Old Roy,"" the biggest catch in the lake, watch out boys.

Bub, representing the older generation, makes some suggestions for Robbie's school club carnival, but to the Committee they sound a mite old fashioned. The junior crowd scorns at the ideas until they see them in action.

Robbie's science master announces a special achievement award for being a straight 'A' student and to his embarassment, Robbie wins it. This causes more trouble than he could have imagined but Steve does his best to assure Robbie that he did deserve the award.

When Robbie and his friend complain about being broke, another student offers them a pig to fatten in a profit-sharing plan. When the time comes for it to be slaughtered however, nobody is quite sure that they want to do it.

With his Air Force Reserve crew depending on him for an engine maintenance exercise, Mike is faced with having to abandon a date, as well as a baseball match, all of which is just part of his same crowded weekend.

Bub, an inveterate contest buff, finally hits the jackpot, winning a prize worth $1,000 in a TV competition. But when the boys learn that a British butler will be part of the family for two weeks, they succeed in shaking the impeccable and usually unflappable gentleman.

While Steve and Bub are away, Chip, Robbie and Mike face the problem of caring for two sick foundlings, a wild bird and a frightened girl, who they learn is a runaway from a maid's job in Philadelphia where she has been unhappy.

Steve lays down the law to Chip, warning him he'll be grounded for a month the next time he loses or misuses someone else's property. Meanwhile a woman who is rounding up second hand items for a rummage sale visits Bub, who offers an old Tiger skin rug.

Mike learns the importance of indirect questioning in his psychology course when Robbie is sought after by eight classmates. Mike sets out to determine by voluntary questionnaire and graph who would be the most suitable scientific choice.

Robbie's economics teacher gives each student a fictional $10,000 dollars to invest in stocks but Steve's boss at work gets the impression that he has some really hot tips.

Bub's old classmate is returning to town to receive an award.

Bub condemns modern-day youth as he reminds his three charges how different things were when he was their age. The boys try to convince him that they aren't as lazy as he thinks they are.

Chip spots a runaway toddler and disobeys orders to stay home and wait for someone who is coming to pick up some plans.

Chip reads a news item about someone winning a date with an actress and gets the idea of raffling off a date with a big star - his grandfather Bub.

After a series of disastrous blind dates, Robbie and Hank set up a romantic employment agency that works to avoiding dull dates by matching couples with likewise interests.

To help Robbie gain himself of the attentions of a beautiful girl, Bub is willing to give up two tickets to a pre-sold sellout fight. However part of the bargain entails that he take the girl's disagreeable Aunt to the movies.

The family is so engrossed in searching for a missing, valuable stamp that they ignore Chip's announcement that he is getting rich everyday.

To capture the affections of a pretty blond, Robbie turns pop composer and produces a novelty song. The family agrees to do the vocal background, but when they are selected to sing the song on television, Steve gets a bad case of stagefright.

The Douglas family inherit a castle in Scotland from their Scottish Grandfather and the whole family descends upon Sheehan Bridge to see it. Not only does 'The Castle' turn out to be an entire village pub in the highlands, but other members of the clan give them a freetly welcome.

It's a bad day for Steve when everything seems to be going wrong for him. His run of bad luck starts when he cuts himself shaving, burns his hand on the toaster, and then can't get his car started. Worse yet, he has to clinch a deal with a very important client.

Robbie is chosen to write an 'advice to the lovelorn' column for the school newspaper, but Steve gets caught in the middle when a baffling love letter arrives. Robbie suggests that the writer should elope with her boyfriend and Steve tries to talk her out of it.

Mike offers to give Robbie his old car but his response baffles everyone. Robbie says he needs his own car to impress a new girl and does some fancy wheeling and dealing to get it.

Steve gives Mike advice on love after he announces his passion for his new girlfriend Darlene, who Mike wants to devote time to, so he hardly welcomes Steve's suggestion that he help find a date for the girl in his office.

Chip and his new sidekick Ernie find some old treasure maps but get lost in the woods when they go treasure hunting, causing the family's plans to be changed when they have to go looking for them.

Chip and Ernie, having heard two scientists calculate that the world will be destroyed in one week are faced with the classic problem of what to do in the time they have left.

The pungent smell around the Douglas home proves to emeante from Bub's head for his baldness is anointed with yet another hair restorer as he's in a panic to cover his bald spot when the sister of an old buddy comes to visit.

Robbie is faced with a real political dilemma when he and a rival for a girl's affections, are campaigning for Student Council Representative.

Mike gets cold feet when he decides to propose marriage to Sally. His bungling attempts further confuse the issue. He tries a combination of methods derived from the attempts made by his father and grandfather when they proposed to their respective spouses.

Steve is chosen to act as nursemaid for the attractive daughter of a visiting Danish dignitary who turns out to be only 17. The girl's energetic idea of fun brings Steve to his knees, as he searches desperately for a substitute escort.

Robbie is always forgetting to pass on Steve's telephone messages and to get back in his good graces, decides to take up his father's favourite sport. He figures it will get him out of the doghouse if he joins Steve in a father and son golf tournament.

Chip comes to the rescue of a trapped dog and receives a reward, which leads to new found popularity with his fellow members of the club that he and Ernie wish to join.

Steve has to fly to Washington and is given a top secret military project. Steve tells the Pentagon brass that he would attract the least attention by just doing the work at home. While Bub is just beside himself with curiosity, Chip suddenly becomes the target for security men.

Ex-thespian Bub laments that there hasn't been a member of the Douglas family in show business for over thirty years, so he is delighted when Chip is selected to portray an American Indian in a school play about Christopher Columbus.

While walking the dog through the park one night, Steve meets a lovely cabaret singer and before the evening ends he is out night-clubbing with her. Mike and Robbie feel they must intercede and protect Steve from a supposed matrimonial trap.

Steve eagerly anticipates his twenty fifth anniversary class reunion at Midwest University. Ignoring Bub's warnings that the old gang won't be as Steve remembers them, his enthusiasm increases when he meets the charming Heather Marlow, only girl in the class.

Mike and Sally try to discover the truth about marriage from two of their recently wed friends, and think twice about getting married and having babies when they help another friend's expectant wife whose time has come.

Bub is appointed chaperone to Robbie and his friends when they decide to have a costume party. Robbie feels it will dampen the party as Bub doesn't see eye to eye with them on the little matter of correct behaviour.

Robbie is chosen to help Americanize a traditional Chinese girl who is soon to meet her very hip Chinese-American fiancé. However, she is a girl so steeped in the traditions of her homeland that it seems unlikely she'll ever fit into American life.

The family is excited when Steve might travel to Hawaii on business, but there is dismay on their faces when the 'For Sale' sign goes up outside 837 Mill Street. Going on a trip to Hawaii is one thing, but could the entire family pack up and move there?

Chip believes in a magical stone frog, given to him by a lady from India and as coincidences stack up, the magic is hard to deny. The boy's belief causes some very interesting circumstances.

Bub wants to get back to the greasepaint, so he swaps jobs with an actress friend at the Playhouse theater who longs for a normal home life. Each is so envious of the other's life that they agree to switch roles for the remainder of the company's season.

Mike feels that Sally should learn how to fish, since she's joining a family of avid fishermen - Except that Sally really hates the pastime. How coincidental then that Mike hates bird watching as well.

Kimiko, a Japanese girl Mike met in Tokyo last year comes to town to test her old feelings for Mike before she can be sure she loves another. Although Mike is now engaged to Sally, could he still feel something for her?

Steve's high school sweetheart returns to town as a real-life Princess, complete with entourage and the Douglases are invited to a posh royal reception in her honor. However, Chip puts the wrong reply in his response and must try and retrieve it before the Princess reads it.

In order to get himself a date with an attractive magazine editor, Steve submits his house as an entry in her magazine's distinctive homes contest. He is very perplexed when she sends her business-like secretary instead.

The town of Bryant Park takes sides violently when it is proposed to cut down the tree which stands outside of Robbie's girlfriend's home. The Douglas family are soon involved as Bub joins a women's group in the neighborhood to save his favorite tree from being torn down.

Disciplinarian Mrs. Proctor, Robbie's awful history teacher, breaks a leg and the replacement they receive is even worse. She is a charming, but inexperienced girl who earns her first battle star when she first encounters Robbie's class.

Anxious to get married, but unable to afford an apartment, Mike suggests that he and his fiancee Sally move in with him and his family. Bub has to continuously change plans for a shower for Sally and Mike when she and Mike keep changing their future wedding plans.

Mike and Chip take part in good deeds -- Mike goes with his fellow U.S. Air Force Reservists to deliver ten thousand dolls to children in a South American disaster area. Mike meets a mute girl and tries to collect money for an operation she desperately needs. Meanwhile Chip becomes household slave of the demanding Mrs. Sowerby.

When Robbie's team gets slaughtered one too many times, their keenest fan Lissa Stratemeyer gets her girlfriends to ignore the boys for the victory rally until they do something about the score and break their losing streak.

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Aspiring song writers Mike and Robbie decide to take a song they wrote to New York City and present it to a publisher. A friendly cab driver helps them in their quest and the publisher gives them both some good advice before they head home.

Mark Twain's stories inspire Chip, Ernie and Melinda to re-enact the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky when the youngsters run away from home to the river where they find a few adventures of their own.

Steve is roped into boarding a delinquent for just one week so the boys put on their armor and ready themselves for battle. When Steve is notified to fly out of town on business, the boys are left to deal with the delinquent themselves, not knowing they've mistaken him for somebody else.

Steve sails aboard the S.S. Carolina in order to establish a business contract with a firm but his task is complicated by Robbie who has a vacationing job as a steward onboard the same liner. They both find that business and pleasure do sometimes mix.

Robbie and Ernie find that women are full of surprises and not all of them pleasing. Robbie tires of his noisy rock and roll girlfriend and switches to a more dignified girl who has no time for the childish pursuits of her peers, such as football and sock hops. And unfortunately for Robbie Douglas, Lorraine is also serious about getting married and before he knows it, he's engaged! Can even the sagacious Steve Douglas find a graceful way out of this mess?

Realising the need for economy, Mike and Sally decide that her shower will be productive of useful gifts for the kitchen, but Bub is all for romance but Mike's practical ideas meet resistance when Bub plans a bridal shower for Sally. Chip and Ernie manage to turn the shower into something very impractical indeed.

Bub decides to use his winning raffle ticket to take the Douglases to Ireland to visit his relatives. While in the village of Farnsea, they stay with his redoubtable 103 year old Aunt Kate and Cousin Mickey.

The Douglas family continues to revel in the fun in the Irish village of Farnsea, ruled by the formidable Aunt Kate. Steve realises that her wisdom is helpful when Mary Kathleen Connolly becomes infatuated with him.

Steve brings a business associate home for a quiet weekend of work, forgetting a prior commitment to the Cub Scouts where he has promised to lead the Moose patrol. He frees himself to do a rush design job while the hopeless Mr. Summers learns painfully what it means to be a moose.

Political overtones arise in the Douglas house when Steve becomes escort to a visiting congresswoman. Meanwhile Chip must entertain a small girl who aims to be class president -- even though Chip is campaigning to be.

Chip and Ernie get an interesting lesson in honesty, and dishonesty from the school bully, who volunteers an insight to the underbelly world of swiping school lunches. Chip becomes bewildered by the differing standards of honesty among those he knows and Steve must do his best to sort out the problem.

Mike's life is complicated by the return of his old girlfriend Jean Pearson. He can't bring himself to tell her that he is engaged to marry Sally. Chip and Ernie keep Mike under surveillance to report to fiancee Sally.

Robbie's new girlfriend offers to get him and his guitar an audition at a club, and introduces him to a strange new world of far out youngsters who comprise the audience. When Robbie becomes a smash his family struggles to bring him back from stardom.

At the Lotus Blossom Cafe, Steve is impressed by the timid and beautiful proprietress. The elegant Chinese widow contemplates returning to Hong Kong, but the Douglas family show her the American way of life, hoping she will stay.

Robbie consults Sally about his latest heartthrob—and he's sure he's too young for the girl. Robbie alarms Sally when he appears to be in love with her, and Steve must persuade him to grow up overnight.

After acting as the subject for a stage hypnotist, Robbie decides that hypnosis could help in his latest romance, which leads to a chain reaction when they try it out on his grandfather Bub who consequently does a weird dance whenever someone whistles.

It's a comedy of errors when Mike sets out to make an impression on his future father-in-law when Sally's father returns from an archeological expedition. Mike is unnerved about meeting him but practically kills him with a little too much kindness and enthusiasm.

Robbie breaks a leg on the football field and becomes the first patient of a dazzling French nurse. Robbie doesn't mind being hospitalized when the nurse in training lavishes attention on him. Her constant attention baffles Steve until he is warned that her interest in him is more than in her patient.

When their best friends' marriage heads for the rocks, Mike and Sally pause for a second thought about their forthcoming wedding. Mike and Sally try to reconcile them by arranging visits to a marriage counsellor.

Bub decides to leave for an Irish holiday to help his formidable Aunt Kate celebrate her 104th Birthday in Dublin. Son-in-law Steve eagerly offers to do the housekeeping, rashly declaring that if all women organised their work efficiently, it could be done in just a fraction of the usual time. A belief which is hardly borne out by his own demonstrations.

With Bub permanently away in Ireland, Steve finally resorts to domestic assistance and the Douglas home is afflicted with a fiery dragon of a housekeeper named Fedocia. When Steve is desperately trying to solve the problem of getting rid of her the situation is saved by the arrival of Bub's younger brother Charley, a recently retired Ship's cook on leave. With Steve away on business and Charley about to leave for San Francisco, Chip is unhappy that he won't have a parent to come to his school's Open Night. The family soon learns that Charley's crusty disposition masks a soft heart.

A young engineer finds his lost half-Korean daughter who is staying temporarily at the Douglas House. But Uncle Charley finds that she exhibits more the cunning of the orphanage where she was found than the wisdom of the orient.

Robbie follows the fad and buys an antique aircraft to impress his new girlfriend. Steve lets him go ahead with trying to restore it, convinced it will never fly but as it becomes more airworthy, Steve becomes concerned.

Robbie's glamorous girlfriend invites him to the exotic Brookdale Country Club, and he resolves to put pressure on Steve to join, despite the fact that his father isn't much of a joiner.

A top woman pilot is preparing for her flight around the world and calls on Steve Douglas to modify the design of her plane. Steve takes more than a professional interest in the plane he is preparing for a long solo journey—as well as the lady aviator planning to fly it.

Steve's plan for an Hawaiian holiday is cancelled when Chip develops a case of bronchitis, so Charley and the boys plan to bring Hawaii to him in the form of a luau in the garden complete with ladies that he would undoubtedly have met on board ship.

Chip dates an older woman and Robbie finds his ideas misinterpreted when the Douglas boys face the troubles of growing up. Meanwhile, Robbie tries to come up with a novel idea for the school float, and proceeds to demonstrate that teenage is just a time in life, but his speech, activities and clothes prove that it something much more, a lesson Chip also begins to learn.

To avoid being absent from the family longer than neccessary, Steve declines an invitation to stay at a luxurious mansion in Mexico. So his host flies down the entire family, giving Robbie the opportunity for a few sharp lessons in the conservatism of old Spanish chaperoning customs.

Charley accompanies Robbie and his date to a reading by an old pal of his, Maggie McSterling. She is a veteran actress and she and Charley recall their friendship during their vaudeville days. Maggie looks much younger than her age, and decides that Charley needs a vigorous course of rejuvenation.

Steve is to show important engineering plans to a British scientist on a rush visit to the United States. But soon disappearing blueprints and home-baked cookies can't both be blamed on Steve's absent-mindedness - they become a plaything for Tramp and his friends.

Robbie's friend has a grandfather that trains horses, but on the day of the big race when the thoroughbred racehorse loses her mascot, a rabbit, she loses her speed. But once she hears Robbie serenade on the guitar, the mascot problem is solved.

Chip feels left out of things when he is the only member of the family not working either full or part time. But watching 'Davy Crockett' and dreaming gives him a remarkable solution to his problem - he takes in a partner in his trapping business.

Steve is having nightmares and his vision of the future has a computer named Betsy join the family. It interferes with wedding plans when it selects different mates for Mike and Sally. Hoping to prove the computer wrong, Mike decides he will have Steve fill out a questionaire for his dad and his mother. His reasoning is that they will submit the two forms and the computer will pick someone else for their perfect match, thereby proving to Sally how wrong the computer can be. But lo and behold the computer mates Steve and Mike's mom.

Tramp causes confusion in two households when he runs away from home for fear of a cat. Meanwhile pampered 'Prince', pet in the mansion of a rich socialite, undergoes a complete and mysterious personality change.

Charley has a visit from an old Australian acquaintance who quickly fires the boys' imagination with tales of a paradise in the South pacific. The adults wonder if he is in fact an expert confidence trickster as he cheats Charley with an unexpected legacy that is responsible for a trip to the tropical island of Cocoa Fuji for Uncle Charley, Robbie and Chip.

Chip meets a group of Vaudevillians at a black tie affair with Uncle Charley and loses his sneaker in a Cinderella-like adventure when he falls for little Alice Vail.

Preparations for Mike and Sally's coming nuptials get confusing when Sally's mother arrives two months early and takes over organising for their wedding. The daunting list of chores she hands Mike sends him off into a dream world as he and Sally imagine how other cultures decide who can wed.

Sally has her hands full when her glamorous cousin comes to visit after being expelled from three colleges. She attracts so much attention from the boys that Uncle Charley uses his vaudeville make-up box to transform her into an ugly duckling.

Charley refuses to believe that a polite and quietly dressed man is in fact the last Chief of Owahnanee Tribe and his disbelief is deepened when the Indian asks for permission to visit their Tribal Burial grounds which just happens to be the backyard of the Douglas House.

Mike and Sally finally get married and leave for the East where Mike has a job as an assistant college psychology instructor. Robbie happily moves into Mike's old room. When Uncle Charley notes that they may soon be calling Steve 'Grandpa' he becomes somwehat concerned about growing old and calls up his former girlfriends. Robbie, now a college man, offers to help his father make friends with younger women, and while pretending to be disinterested, tries a few of his suggestions. When it is learned that Ernie must return to an orphanage, because he will not be allowed to accompany his foster parents in their move to the orient, Chip invites Ernie to move in permanently, giving Steve three sons once more.

Steve explores the possibility of adopting 10-year-old Ernie but runs into antagonism from Uncle Charley, who can forsee nothing but more work with a new boy to take care of. The family desperately wants to adopt the boy and Robbie decides that Steve must make a play for the lovely Miss Coulter. Her boss comes to inspect the house just as the boys have made a shambles of the place. At eight the next morning, Miss Miller returns. She inspects the house, spic and span now, and ushers in a happy Ernie, who is to stay on a temporary basis.

Ernie's adoption into the all-male Douglas household is threatened by a regulation that there must be a lady of the house. Steve again makes a request to adopt the child, but Misses Coulter and Miller of the adoption agency, say they are powerless to change the regulations. Miss Miller has a brilliant idea, however, and soon the family is appearing before a judge who decides that housekeeper Uncle Charley can legally be designated the 'lady of the house'. Charley approves if this fact is kept secret and Ernie is enthusiastically welcomed into the family.

Uncle Charley is upset when he learns that Robbie is dating a flashy chorus girl, but Steve refuses to worry because he trusts his son's common sense. Charley predicts Steve will be invited to pay the girl cash on the line if he wants her to stop dating his son.

An escaped circus lion makes a midnight call at the Douglas house, and Ernie sees it and awakens the understandably skeptical Steve who accompanies his new stepson to investigate. Steve eventually sees the lion and nervously plays a game of tag with it, warning the family to keep their bedroom doors closed.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

Chip's secret love is an older girl named Mary Lou. When Steve suggests his love sick son should find out where he stands by asking for a date, Chip calls and identifies himself as 'Douglas'. Mary Lou is delighted -- thinking she is going out with Robbie Douglas, a genuine college freshman.

Ernie writes a play and volunteers Steve's services for his father-and-son night, so he dons a heavy robot costume. The family leaves early, and Steve finds himself alone on the street, helpless in his non-removable suit.

A seductive dance instructor named Helen signs Uncle Charley up for a lifetime membership in a dance club. Dreaming of a professional dancer's career, he purchases a top hat and tails for his appearance at the school's annual ball.

Robbie is so eager to make the track team that, to improve his timing, he agrees to join a ballet class. He proves an unwilling pupil, self-conscious in dancer's tights and ballet shoes, but after days of practising, his hurdling style suddenly improves. Reluctantly, he agrees to become the sole male dancer in the upcoming Ballet Class recital.

Ernie feels neglected when the other members of the Douglas family are busy with various girlfriends and he is left alone. Close to tears, Ernie is puzzled and saddened by the mysterious powers of the opposite sex. He's even more puzzled when he meets eleven year old Linda-Lou.

Steve Douglas turns a business trip to Hong Kong into a vacation for the whole family. Uncle Charley, who once lived in China, is reluctant to visit modern Hong Kong, for apparently he still carries a torch for a beautiful girl he knew in the 1930s.

Steve's unusual behaviour convinces his family that he is about to be secretly married. The boys plan to leave home to provide privacy for the newlyweds, and Charley arranges to ship out on a freighter. Steve brings the pretty blonde girl home to meet the family, only to find the house deserted.

The Douglas family bravely accepts the challenge when 13 year old Chip decides to give a party -- with girls. On the party evening the record player breaks down and Chip contemplates the disintegration of his first teenage party. But Steve comes up with a solution.

When Steve travels to Washington on business, he leaves $50 with Robbie, to pay for golf club repairs but Uncle Charley limbers up his billiard cue to get revenge after two girl pool sharks take Robbie's $50 when they coyly ask him to show them how to play the game.

A huge shaggy stray dog adopts Steve Douglas and disrupts the neighborhood with his howls when Steve tries to leave home. A neighbor and lover of stray animals, is delighted to learn that Steve plans to keep the dog until its owner can be found, rather than sending it to a shelter. However, the dog continues to regard Steve as his mother as well as his master.

Steve Douglas meets recently divorced Maggie Bellini, reputed to be one of the world's ten richest women. She sets her sights on Steve by showering his family with costly gifts. Robbie has the use of an experimental sports car, Chip is invited to fly to Austria for a weekend of skiing, and Ernie is provided with the use of a computer for his arithmetic homework.

When Robbie Douglas yanks pretty co-ed Terri Wong out of the path of a speeding truck, he becomes the unwilling beneficiary of an old Chinese custom when the girl whose life he saves insists on being his slave. The game is amusing at first but before long Robbie must ask his father for help.

Steve Douglas is attracted to a beautiful female explorer who shows Steve and the family her exciting adventure films. She has to prepare for a safari, and as there is room in the party for one more, she begs Steve to come along.

Robbie takes on a heavy work load of waiting on tables in his girlfriend's sorority house and working as a chemistry laboratory worker, so that he can rent a room away from home. Worst of all, his romance with his current girlfriend languishes because he is too tired to take her on a date.

When Chip adopts a Beatle-style, shoulder length haircut, the other members of the family feel that Steve should lay down the law to the long-haired one, but he and his associate consult a company psychologist for a solution. Steve decides not to be a strict father but to give the boy more attention, without affect.

Robbie Douglas is practically engaged to his girlfriend Joanne, and when they discover how their friends are both successfully attending university while raising a baby they begin to think that perhaps teen-aged marriages are workable.

Two tomboys - a pretty lady engineer named Max and a member of the girls Hockey team named Georgie prove tough to handle for both Steve and Chip. Hoping to become a hero to his peers, Chip goes out for the girls hockey team when Georgie insists the coach must let her join the boy's track team.

Robbie Douglas learns how much of a pest a younger sibling can be when Chip and a buddy break up his date with a pretty girl by eating appetizers and otherwise making a nuisance of themselves. The next afternoon, for revenge, Robbie primes his other brother Ernie to haunt Chip and his date.

Robbie has a wonderful time going steady with two girls simultaneously -- a highschooler and a college co-ed -- until the two ladies compare notes one day and plot immediate revenge. They maneuver Robbie into dating the both of them on the same night.

Ernie Douglas sends a letter to the French Embassy to thank France for the Statue of Liberty and receives, in return, an invitation for him and the rest of the family to visit Washington, the nation's capital. However the other members of the family are not too happy with the idea.

Chip is worried when his younger brother Ernie becomes a close friend of a pretty sixth grader, because the girl is now interested in collecting postage stamps, and Chip is sure she has her eye on Ernie's precious Liberian triangle.

Chip demands a jury trial after he borrows four cents from a pile of brother Ernie's pennies and Ernie accuses him of taking a valuable penny from his coin collection. Finally Chip accepts Ernie's challenge to stand trial in a court composed of their friends.

Ernie packs a suitcase, ready to leave home, after he fails to win a cup for the family trophy shelf. He eagerly goes into training, planning to win a school track award, convinced that he won't really be a member of the family until he too can provide a trophy.

A boy who looks just like Robbie almost ruins his reputation by driving around on-campus and inviting strange girls to kiss him, before the deception is uncovered. Finally, both boys and their parents are brought to the dean's office.

Uncle Charley takes away Robbie's driving privileges after the campus beauty queen gets a $16 traffic ticket while driving his car. Robbie then faces the horror and humiliation of exisiting without a car, but soon to his amazement his girlfriend is enjoying walking home from school with him.

The Douglas family returns from a trip to Britain and as the family watches home movies of their vacation, the amateurish footage reveals the reason for Steve's current moodiness: He is still carrying a torch for a lovely widow.