Eight Is Enough

- Season 5

(1980)

Susan faces unexpected complications as she nears the end of her pregnancy; Jack asks Elizabeth to move in with him; Nicholas volunteers Tom as assistant scout master of his cub scout troop.

Abby feels responsible for the complications surrounding Susan's pregnancy; Susan gives birth prematurely, and the fate of the baby hangs in the balance; Elizabeth hides her live-in arrangement with Jack from the family.

Abby's troubled nephew stays with the Bradfords until his estranged father can be located; Joannie is promoted to sportscaster at the television station; Nicholas turns a profit from Mary's female anatomy textbook.

Abby accepts a job as guidance counselor at a dangerous inner-city high school; Nicholas falls in with a classmate with a penchant for stealing; Tom becomes a constant passenger after his driver's license expires.

Susan brings her baby home from the hospital; Abby senses disapproval from Joan's parents when they arrive to meet their new granddaughter; Tommy starts work as a guitarist at a male strip club, but finds it pays more to take to the stage.

Tommy's songwriting collaboration with a single mother turns personal; Jeremy reluctantly enrolls in high school and then does all he can to be expelled; David remodels the garage as living quarters for Susan and the baby until Merle's return.

Primed from reading too many spy novels, Nicholas believes he's embroiled in a real-life espionage plot; When his staff becomes hush-hush around him, Tom becomes suspicious that he's about to be fired.

The newspaper closes its doors during a labor dispute, landing Tom on the unemployment line; All four of the family's cars are out of commission after a postal truck crashes into the Bradford driveway; Nicholas promotes a bartering system to navigate the family's financial crisis.

An exploitative reporter threatens Tom's chances when the governor appoints him to the state's Board of Education; Joannie goes undercover to do an expose on video dating services; Nicholas turns hoodlum in an effort to change his wholesome image.

A manipulative student of Abby's enmeshes herself into the Bradford family; Nicholas promises to cook dinner for a girl; Nancy becomes the model-spokesperson for a local business that turns out to be disreputable.

Nancy's modeling career takes off, bringing unwanted attention; Joannie's lack of advancement at the station leads her to abandon her career and enter into a hasty engagement to Jeff; Tommy becomes Nicholas' slave in exchange for the last remaining ticket to a sold-out concert.

David's dream of restoring the city's opera house pits him against Janet, whose firm has been hired to demolish it for an urban renewal project; Susan and Merle take turns looking after the baby, which leaves them alternately exhausted; Nicholas inherits a retired racehorse.

Abby and Tom decide to renew their vows on their anniversary, just as David and Janet announce their legal separation; Peer pressure dampens Jeremy's romance with a girl whose individuality clashes with his need to fit in.

Tommy realizes he's become stagnant by not having gone away to college; David's traditional values are out of sync with the swinging singles scene; Nicholas starts a paper route delivering for Tom's rival newspaper.

Elizabeth sets her cap for a vain classmate who doesn't see her as girlfriend material; David hires Nicholas to help him find an affordable apartment; Nancy's shot with a big modeling agency hinges on her going topless in a print ad.

Joannie is put in charge of securing talent for a local telethon; Jeremy can't convince Tommy to let him be his band manager; David tries to unload an unwanted roommate (and her mother).

The chairman of a local radio station will plug Tommy's music on the condition that he put the man's accident-prone daughter in his band; David is relentlessly pursued by the girl's amorous mother; and Jeremy dates the girl's cousin, a sports enthusiast whose endurance he can't begin to match.

Just as Tommy's music career is about to take off, an ex-girlfriend returns to tell him she's pregnant; Nicholas stands up to the class bully to impress a girl who then expects a hero every day; The Bradford sisters attempt to rehabilitate a homeless man.

An unexpected development upends Tommy plans to marry Ellen; Joannie envies an attractive reporter who starts work at the station; Jeremy drops hints as his first birthday with the family approaches.

David and Janet make a final attempt at reconciliation; Jeremy turns sleuth after digging up a human skull in the vegetable garden; Nicholas' chances of making the basketball team hinge on Elizabeth, who is dating the coach.

Mary's bedside manner creates a monster when an oddball patient falls for her; Merle struggles to reinvent himself after an injury ends his pitching career; Jeremy angles for a raise in his allowance by pedaling a line of unpalatable health food products to the family.

Jeremy's father returns to assert his parental rights, forcing the boy to decide where to live; Past and present merge for David and his former classmates in the days leading up to their ten-year high school reunion.