China Beach

- Season 4

(1990)

Boston, Massachusetts, 1985. A one-legged Boonie, his wife Linda and their three children, visit Dr. Richard and his wife, Colleen Flaherty, which sparks Dr. Richard's memories of the first manic days with McMurphy at China Beach in 1966 when they became more acquainted with one another, McMurphy meeting Boonie and Dodger for the first time, and ending at party celebrating Dr. Singer's going home and Nurse Wyatt's transfer to be with him, and Dr. Richard to be promoted to head surgeon at China Beach.

Boston, Massachusetts, 1985. Boonie's 18-year-old adopted daughter, Karen, meets with Dr. Richard, working in a birth clinic for pregnant women, to question him for facts about her real mother K.C. A flashback to 1966 shows a pregnant K.C. questioning her romantic involvement with Lt. Col. "Mac" Miller, which ends when he's wounded in action and sent home, and Lila arrives to replace him as commander of China Beach.

Saigon, 1967. McMurphy, desperate for a three-day leave to meet her friend Nellie from nursing school, steals a pass intended for Dr. Richard and runs into a very pregnant K.C. trying to obtain medical records for her unborn child. In a comedy of errors, they find themselves handcuffed to each other after escaping from a police raid and wander aimlessly through the streets as K.C. goes into labor and gives birth to a baby girl.

Orchard Grove, North Carolina, 1985. Beckett is attending his father's funeral when he flashes back to his childhood and then to Vietnam in 1967 where he was a grunt in a platoon commanded by Sarge Pepper. During Beckett's R&R at China Beach, he got his job by accident at the Graves Registration Unit, where he first met McMurphy, Dr. Richard, and Lila. Beckett's co-worker was a scared-to-death and scared-of-dying friend, named "Deadman" Crawford who eventually committed suicide rather than return to the jungle to fight.

Lawrence, Kansas, 1970. McMurphy is now back in her home town and working as a stateside ward nurse at the local hospital while trying to make peace with her increasingly neurotic mother who does not approve of her fast, stressful lifestyle and bitterly tries to cling onto the past. But McMurphy soon finds that her experiences at China Beach hadn't prepared herself for her new job and her new life in general. A flashback to China Beach exactly three years earlier shows McMurphy reluctant to accept her birthday from Dr. Richard, Dodger, Boonie and others wanting to ...

Miami, Florida, August 1972. Dr. Richard and his fiancée, Dr. Colleen Flaherty, are attending a medical convention during the anti-war demonstrations at the Republican convention when he accidentally runs into McMurphy who is now living with a local animal wrangler, named Noon Gantry, and working a dead-end job at an orange juice plant in a dead-end life in an attempt to bury her memories of Vietnam.

China Beach, July 1969. Times have changed at China Beach where Boonie forgoes his beach party lifestyle for drugs and anti-war slogans, while Beckett entertains Sweet Hula, the lead singer of a USO show, while Sarge Pepper sets up a party for Lila and the other soldiers who are eagerly waiting the landing on the moon. Meanwhile, McMurphy tries to reason with a wounded GI, named Everett, who's afraid to go back into the jungle after he recovers, while resenting a new nurse, named Glory Dawn, that attracts Dr. Richard's attention. But everyone's plans come to a halt ...

Boonie is shipped back to the USA after his jeep accident and has to deal physically and emotionally with the loss of part of his right leg while trying to help his fellow disabled vets with theirs. He then meets his future wife Linda Mattock, a nurse in the VA hospital where he is placed, who helps him regain his self-esteem.

Chicago, Illinois, October 1969. Frankie tries to adjust to her new life back in her home town when she gets caught up in an incipient revolution by a group of black urban revolutionaries in the wake of the Chicago Seven Trial. At China Beach, McMurphy receives a request from Dodger who's back in the country helping to build a hospital for Montagnard tribesmen with help from a elderly relative and former nurse named Ilsa.

Portland, Oregon, 1983. McMurphy meets Joe Arenburg, a band drummer and the best man at a wedding where she is the maid of honor, triggering a flashback to 1969 with Dr. Richard during his final days at China Beach where Lila supervised the production of "My Fair Lady" with Dr. Richard, Glory Dawn, Beckett and Sarge Pepper in the leads. McMurphy also helps K.C. with planning the wedding of Lila and Sarge Pepper while she deals with own uncertainty with Dr. Richard.

April 25-30, 1975. K.C., now running a successful nightclub in Bangkok, Thailand, gets a call from Trieu Au, her daughter's nanny in Saigon, for help. K.C. flies out to Saigon to help get both of them out of the country before the city falls to the Communists. But she has to deal with an enormous amount of red tape to do so, as well as quash her maternal instincts for her eight-year-old daughter, Karen, whom she barely knows. Meanwhile, Dodger arrives at the deserted China Beach facility after making his way through enemy territory and befriends a scared peasant woman...

Bangkok, Thailand, 1969. McMurphy shows up on K.C.'s doorstep of her newly opened nightclub for some R&R with a smitten G.I. and to make her goodbye as her second tour of duty comes to a close. K.C.'s life as a nightclub owner is going fine, but McMurphy's life as an alcoholic is getting worse. K.C. eventually decides that raising her two-year-old daughter in Bangkok is not the place for her and sends Trieu An back to Saigon to raise Karen on her own. In a flash forward to May 1975, K.C. has managed to get out of Saigon and returned to Bangkok, only to find the life ...

Santa Cruz, California, Christmas 1976. K.C. has made it back to the USA to start her life over and she asks McMurphy to help get her back on her feet financially. K.C. then glimpses a view of her daughter, Karen, now being raised by the crippled Boonie. Inspired by K.C. wanting to start a new life, McMurphy decides to do something with her own. A month later, McMurphy travels to Red Lodge, Montana to join Dodger, now living with his invalid father and Doger's Amerasian son, hoping that his growing ministry for Vietnam Veterans will help her find answers to the ...

1985. Karen Lanier is traveling across the USA making a short documentary film about Vietnam for a high school project and meets all of the principal characters including Dr. Richard, Dodger, Lila and Sarge Pepper, McMurphy, and even Mac Miller and K.C.'s younger sister, Monica, in which Karen finds that her search for the answers to what Vietnam was all about mirrors her search for her own identity and her long-lost mother K.C.

Portland, Oregon, 1985. McMurphy, now married to Joe Arenburg and settled down, seeks therapy for her sudden relapse into alcoholism when she starts to experience nightmarish flashbacks to a time at China Beach in 1969 when she was under enemy fire with Jeff Hyers.

Youngstown, Ohio, 1988. Boonie throws a reunion of all the China Beach veterans. Among the attendees are McMurphy and Joe Arenburg and their baby daughter, Beckett and his wife and teenage son, Lila and a terminally ill Sarge Pepper, Dr. Richard and his wife Colleen, Dodger with his Amerasian son; Frankie Bunsen and Wayloo Marie Holmes. McMurphy flashes back to her last frantic days at China Beach in late 1969 and dealing with a mortally wounded marine. Karen Lanier also films the events and interviews the vets while hoping to come to peace terms with her mother K.C. ...