The Waltons - The Complete Seventh Season

Jim-Bob (David W. Harper) dreams (and dreams) of becoming a pilot but is too young to enlist. The laconic teen also falls in love with a girl leaning toward entering a convent--the experience is painful, to say the least. But something in Jim-Bob grows up after that and stays that way. As for the girls, Mary Ellen (Judy Norton Taylor) struggles with a full-time job as a nurse while leaving her baby at home, though none of those complications compares with the loss she endures the day Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, where her doctor husband is stationed. Erin (Mary Beth McDonough) and Elizabeth (Kami Cotler) carry on with work and school, and Grandma (Ellen Corby) gets around pretty well while suffering the long-term results of a stroke. The war affects everything on Walton's Mountain, including race relations, the clientele at the Dew Drop Inn, the employment scene. But if that's not enough change for The Complete Seventh Season, there's a whopper of a development midway through the year affecting the health and presence of Olivia in the show. There's always change on The Waltons, but none has ever been quite as extensive or sad as what happens on The Complete Seventh Season. Despite (or even because of) the withdrawal of Richard Thomas from The Waltons, there is a delicate balance between the other characters heretofore unseen. --Tom Keogh