The Best Years

- Season 1

(2007)

Scholarship student Samantha Best meets her new roommate Kathryn Klarner and the girls make plans to check out the town's hottest club. The girls bring along frosh basketball phenom Devon Sylver and his lumbering but lovable Brahmin roommate John Brittenham. While the foursome wait outside in the queue, teen actress Dawn Vargaz dances and drinks to excess inside. It soon becomes a night they'll all regret.

Samantha's RA overreacts to a chance comment that she makes by instituting a strict new set of floor rules. Soon her entire floor has her pegged as "the noise narc." Add an argument in the hallway with Devon, a prank involving purple dye in her shower, and a professor who takes a dislike to her, and Sam's frosh year seems headed for disaster. Meanwhile, freshman Dawn's "TV teen" fame gains her an audition for an upperclassmen only Shakespeare play, and the ire of the third and fourth year drama students.

Samantha and her roommate/worst enemy are both interested in pledging the same posh sorority. How far will Samantha go to stop the roommate war and/or get pinned by the most exclusive sorority on campus? Meanwhile, Devon has trouble getting Samantha's attention while she's so busy with classes, pledging and her work at the hot new club Colony. Also spending time at Colony, Dawn considers her attraction to Trent, Colony's bartender/Casanova.

Samantha and Noah are teamed up on a business class project but Sam has trouble with the subject of their marketing campaign. They've been assigned to market a calendar featuring Devon and the basketball team but Samantha is having a hard time dealing with Devon's new relationship with cheerleader Shannon.

On Halloween, Samantha is torn between mending fences with an obviously troubled Cynthia and getting some one-on-one time during her first real date with Devon. Dawn learns a secret when she tries to find a suitable date for her bisexual friend Lee, Colony's owner. Meanwhile Kathryn is still lobbying for a more open relationship with rich frat-rat Beau.

Between the hubbub on her floor and Cynthia Song's hospital drama, Samantha has difficulty studying for her mid-terms. She accepts her benefactor Dorothy O'Sullivan's offer of her home for the weekend as a quiet place to study only to be interrupted when a girl claiming to be Dorothy's daughter comes home unexpectedly. As she learns more about the O'Sullivan family and the Song family, Sam learns that "normal family" life is not the ideal she'd imagined.

Samantha's birthday approaches and as much as she protests celebrating it, Devon wants to make it special. Adding to the drama, Samantha's estranged ne'er-do-well Uncle Patrick shows up. Not only does his reappearance enrage Samantha, but he sets off alarm bells with Trent. Meanwhile Dawn finally makes some progress in her courtship of Trent and Noah becomes embroiled in a romantic rivalry with Brandon over the affections of their film professor.

It's the morning before Dawn opens as Lady Macbeth, Trent and Dawn still haven't spoken since her big revelation. Meanwhile Samantha is thrown when Devon uses the L-word. Across campus Kathryn has a surprise meeting with Beau's mother and Sloan, Beau's ex, has the naughty DVD that Kathryn made for Beau. Noah is nervous about entertaining a romantic overnight guest and Trent reveals why he's not smoothed things over with Dawn.

An already jealous Devon reacts badly and jumps to the wrong conclusion when Samantha fails to stop by after work as promised. Dawn wallows in her misery after her injuries get her replaced as Lady Macbeth. Noah gets on Kathryn's bad side when he shows up to show her video to Samantha.

Following her break-up with Devon, Samantha is further annoyed when her business professor lauds a Charles University alum who founded Crazed College Girls dot Com. Meanwhile Noah and his film professor plan a romantic weekend away together until Noah learns that she's married. Sam's uncle tells her that she's not an organ donor match and why.

Noah discovers that the married older woman that he's been seeing is the wife of his history professor. Trent gets his father to aid Samantha in the search for her birth parents but agreeing to attend a family dinner with Trent and his parents is more of an ordeal than Samantha expected. Meanwhile Dawn and Devon decide to go out on a date but end up being more interested in what their exes are up to.

Things start out badly as Samantha's adoption search hits a dead end and she loses her job at Colony, but then some new information surfaces from an unexpected source. Meanwhile Dawn has difficulty defining her relationship with Devon because she's certain that he's still in love with Sam. Beau tries to rekindle his relationship with Kathryn but thing turn ugly and Noah intervenes.

It's the end of the term. Samantha considers contacting her birth mother even as she , Trent and Dawn make plans for a cross-country holiday road trip. Devon considers taking an offer to play basketball in Italy even though that would mean ending his college career. Kathryn's abysmal grades cause her to re-examine her college career, but while Noah approves, Kathryn's family has other ideas. Meanwhile Trent is stressing about having a "real relationship" and is tempted to revert to old bad habits.