Ranny Beckett attempts to locate his birth mother upsetting Jesse's feelings. Darby is invited to join a band and threatens her relationship with Ricky and Noah and Luis build a soap-box racer.
Noah and Jesse Bennett attempt to get home as a hurricane strikes leaving Ricky and Roxanna to look after the younger children. The storm pounds the house and the alligators escape from their damaged pen.
Jesse saves a woman's life and us rewarded with a malpractice suit and Roxanna's prom date turns the evening into a humiliating experience as he can not get over his ex-girlfriend.
At school Hannah risks ridicule when she makes friends with a lonely, overweight classmate and a fatherless Luis under peer pressure boasts that Julio Iglesias is his dad.
Bethany befriends a vagrant who lives in the woods tinkering with his "time machine" and things are disappearing from the Beckett house causing suspicion amongst the kids that there is a ghost.
Ricky contemplates extracurricular activities behind Darby's back with a teasing cheerleader and the twins, Danny and Ranny, pull a devilish practical joke on Shirley.
Lloyd Bridges guests as Noah's intimidating father-in-law, a retired judge, who creates tensions when he blurts out that he has never respected Noah and then introduces Ricky to hunting, against his parents' wishes.
Bethany and Hannah learn a lesson in how race can divide good people after arranging a blind date for Shelley with their black teacher. Also Ricky is accused of being the father of a pregnant girl.
