Ed and Carol's close encounter is interrupted by Bonnie Hane; Ed defends Warren on a charge of criminal negligence after Warren brings a keg of beer to a party and an underage drinker has an bicycle accident on his way home; Nancy quits her job to be a full-time mother.

When a client changes his name and his image, Ed decides to follow his lead; Molly tries to catch the eye of a bowling alley equipment salesman; Mike takes drastic measures to find ""the last straw"" which will end the impasse with Dr. Jerome.

Carol and the new principal face off on ""The Great Gatsby""; Mike and Nancy debate over whether to try for Baby #2; Phil goes all out to find a missing bowling ball, ""The Devastator"", which magically reappears; Warren reveals to Carol the secret of the class ""Bingo"" game; Molly objects to Ed defending a sleazebag salesman, but Ed maintains that said sleaze has done nothing illegal.

Carol is infuriated when Dennis cancels the annual budget meeting for all faculty. The entire faculty bands together to get rid of Dennis, including writing his end of the first semester review. Carol convinces the faculty to give Dennis a chance to prove himself. When he later takes Carol to task for her actions, she investigates further, discovering he was fired. Carol writes him a positive evaluation, which Dennis tears up and returns. Frustrated by his continued rebuffs, she kisses him.

A young lawyer, Joe Baxter, fresh out of the corporate world and full of energy, requests to join Ed's ""firm"". He observes Ed for a while, and launches his own ""bowling alley practice"" complete with Kenny, Shirley, and Phil-esque characters in his employ, and going so far as to steal Ed's clients. He advertises himself as the world's first bowling alley lawyer. When push comes to shove, Joe cannot deliver in the court room, and Ed happily regains his status.

Ed gets involved in the Carol-Dennis tiff

Ed represents Dennis in a minor fender-bender case, but when the other party's lawyer asks for an exorbiant amount of money, Dennis insists they settle in order to close the case; Ed tries to resurrect the annual Thanksgiving Day parade; Nancy declares war on her fellow ""cookie moms"" when she is sabotaged while launching her own cookie line.

Ed becomes the anti-Claus after a wealthy client gives Stuckeyville a Christmas gift he really can't afford, forcing the bowling-alley bunch to host a frenzied fund-raiser. Meanwhile, Mike fears that he and Nancy are a bad influence on their own daughter; and Carol gets a peek at the other woman in Dennis's life.

Carol breaks Ed's heart with a lie about her relationship with Dennis, who gives Miss Vessey cause to reconsider romance with him. Meanwhile, a Stuckeyville woman hires Ed to watch over her husband during his very unusual birthday celebration; Phil and Kenny set out to invent a new food; and Warren's first date with Jessica hits a snag.

A beautiful, off-beat woman blows into town and sweeps Ed off his feet, while encouraging him to face his fears and live life to the fullest; everyone gets more than they bargained for when Carol gives her students a journalism assignment to videotape and report a news-breaking story at Stuckeyville High; Ed discovers an unpleasant truth about Jim and forces him to tell Molly, who is devastated by the revelation.

Ed helps a wimpy lawyer negotiate with a trucking company that is disturbing Stuckeyville's peace by routing its rigs through town; Carol regrets asking Dennis to critique one of her short stories; Molly rebuffs Jim's attempts to explain his behavior.

Ed agrees to coach the Stuckeyville High ""Quiz Bowl"" team and clashes with Dennis over a team member who's scholastically challenged; Dennis falls off the wagon; Phil tries to promote a boxing match; Warren sets out on a religious search to find the courage to transform his life.

The news that Dennis and Carol have moved in together has Ed scrambling to find the perfect way to revisit the past and win her back; Dennis decides to run for president of the senior class after disapproving of the frontrunner; Warren embarks on his first real date with Diane, only to find that the feelings they have aren't exactly romantic.

Ed wrestles with his nervousness about taking what he believes to be his last chance to tell Carol exactly how he feels after he discovers that she and Dennis are going away for the summer together and that Dennis plans to propose during the trip; Warren and Mark compete for Diane's affection; Stuckeyvillians vie for the title of ""The Most Talented Person in Stuckeyville"".

Ed is forced to defend the scam artist who manipulated Mike into betting and losing $3,000 on a baseball game; Carol, still furious at Ed for kissing her before she left on her trip with Dennis, finally makes a decision about her romantic future; Kenny bowls a perfect game, then bids adieu to Stuckeyville to pursue new adventures; and Ed hires a new supervising manager for Stuckeybowl.

Carol's father returns from Florida in time for his birthday party, unaware that she's engaged. When she finally springs the news on him, he's hurt that she's marrying someone he's never even met. At his birthday party, he gives Carol and Dennis the cold shoulder and refuses to speak to her or accept her apology. When she goes to his house to explain, she is shocked to discover that her father remarried a year earlier without telling her. Carol goes ballistic until she finds out that her father may be sick. When she asks him, he denies it. Finally, he visits her and they talk about how they have tried to protect each other ever since her mother died. He finally admits that he's scared and asks Carol to come with him to his doctor's appointment, where they get good news.

Warren freaks out about the unfairness of the SAT system and mounts a one-man protest he calls ""Pencils Down!"". After several fruitless attempts to be taken seriously and enroll anyone else in his boycott, he finally fa

Jennifer Bradley breezes back into Ed's life claiming that she needs his legal advice; Ed accepts Dennis's sarcastic offer to be his best man; Carol's impending marriage is making Molly feel neglected.

The families converge for the wedding, and Carol begins to have second thoughts after talking to her father about her parents' courtship; Warren enlists the help of Carol's sister Stella in writing a song for the bride, and the two hit it off better than Warren could have dreamed, leading him to seek out Eli for advice about women; Ed decides not to attend the wedding, but Carol begs him to reconsider; Jennifer encourages Ed to break up the wedding and he decides to go for it and ride up to the church on a white steed, but the horse he ends up with has other ideas; Dennis makes a painful decision to tell the truth at a crucial moment.