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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Because Robbie's friend wants him to understand Italians better, he invites Robbie to his home. Robbie runs afoul of an old custom when he takes a girl walking in the park and learns that he is expected to marry her.

Robbie films a 'way out' movie for his Cinema class with the aid of a non-talented, 'way out' co-ed who earnestly tries to make an 'honest' motion picture. They begin a long week of filming uncinematic gems spotlighting the Douglases dull, drab meaningless family routine.

When Robbie's girlfriend's father calls from out of town and asks him to deliver a birthday cake to her, he thinks there might be a fortune in performing this birthday service and immediately goes into the cake business.

Robbie is delighted when college classmate Peggy moves in next door, and the pair immediately go to work on a joint assignment for their Shakespeare class. He plays Romeo to her Juliet when a feud between the two families seems imminent.

Television viewing at the Douglas household has dropped to zero because Uncle Charley, annoyed with the boys' quarreling about choice of channels, has withdrawn all TV privileges for a week. Robbie, a member of a new program committee, eagerly joins his co-ed girlfriend in her plan to bring true drama to the people. However, after viewing the show, the family isn't sure their attempt at 'realism' is really real.

The older members of the Douglas family find their social lives complicated when little Ernie decides to accompany them on all of their dates. Uncle Charley decides he must be the one to put his foot down and set the boy straight.