Father Knows Best

October 3, 1954

Bud tries to learn how to dance from a book for his first school dance.

October 10, 1954

Jim tells his family to help others which leads to complications.

October 17, 1954

Jim buys Bud a motor scooter but Margaret won't let him have it.

October 24, 1954

Jim gets tickets to an important football game, and picks one of the kids to go with him—only to be blackmailed by an important client (who wants to go to the game, too) out of one of his tickets. He then tries frantically to find a second one.

October 31, 1954

Bud moves out, but discovers he can't clean, cook, or take care of himself.

November 7, 1954

Jim comes to believe that he is over the hill.

November 14, 1954

Bud becomes increasingly paranoid when Kathy (who has a fascination with the new washing machine, and puts everything in there) places a letter addressed to him by the police department in the washing machine, and ruins the letter, so he doesn’t know why he is asked to be there within seven days.

November 21, 1954

Kathy writes the best poem in the fourth grade on what Thanksgiving means to her, and Jim builds the poem up in his mind to unreasonable expectations for a fourth grader. When he actually finds out what the poem consists of, his hopes for Kathy’s future are deflated and he disparages the poem to Margaret, unwitting that Kathy has overheard.

November 28, 1954

Jim's weekend retreat, just he and his wife, seems like a perfect idea, at first. But he doesn't want to pass this on to the kids when he learns that the kids have plans with them; and then when the kids take the news too easy, Jim and Margaret are befuddled. They leave, but soon they start thinking about their kids and after reaching the lodge they want to phone in - but no one answers the call...

December 5, 1954

Jim becomes worried that things between Betty and a new male friend of hers are getting too serious.

December 12, 1954

Jim and Margaret rarely disagree on anything. But when he finds out Margaret signed them up to take dancing lessons, Jim refuses to do so, and ends up defiantly going to his old club, leaving her to take lessons alone.

December 19, 1954

Jim takes the family into the woods to cut down their own tree, and they become stranded there.

December 26, 1954

Kathy discovers a wounded Sparrow on the windowsill of the house—which she then considers hers—and the whole family becomes involved in trying to help it get better.

January 2, 1955

Jim receives a traffic ticket and Bud is appointed to be judge on that day.

January 9, 1955

An unwanted visitor that won't leave spoils Kathy's birthday party.

January 16, 1955

Bud is deemed a snob by the girls in school because he won’t speak to any of them. When Jim talks it over with him, he discovers that Bud‘s real problem is that he becomes tongue-tied around them.

January 23, 1955

After making a big deal about people keeping their word, Jim is forced to put his words into practice to set a good example for his family.

January 30, 1955

Jim wants to give up his office job in order to move into the country to lead a quiet, and less stressful, life as a farmer. Margaret doesn't think that he means it seriously, but he crosses more lines to fulfill his dream than he ever has before.

February 6, 1955

Jim is happy to learn his kids are planning to enter him in a Father of the Year contest. But things, of course, don’t go smoothly.

February 13, 1955

Even though finances have grown a little tight in the Anderson household, Jim buys Margaret a mink coat that ends up being more trouble than it’s worth.

February 20, 1955

Margaret tries to get her cousin and her boyfriend married.

February 27, 1955

Margaret's cousin (from the previous episode) is set to wed in the Anderson household, but things go wrong, due to the nervousness of the prospective bride and groom, and the wedding is called off. Poor Bud is reeled in to do a stand-in for the bride at the rehearsal.

March 6, 1955

Jim tries to help the children regain their confidence.

March 13, 1955

Bud injures himself, so Jim delivers the papers on his route to avoid Bud being fired.

March 20, 1955

Kathy and Betty fight for the attention of the same man.

March 27, 1955

Margaret worries the entire day over what will become of Bud’s future if he doesn’t develop good character. This is tied in with a baseball game Bud is trying to get to play in.