The Waltons: The Complete Fifth Season

While John-Boy stands up to popular opinion, brother Jason (Jon Walmsley), a talented musician, has to take a job playing piano at a roadhouse to make up for the loss of his college scholarship. The decision doesn't go down too well with the Walton women, but Jason's presence at the Dew Drop Inn allows for some interesting scenes over the course of the season, none more so than the unexpected visit of a fire-and-brimstone evangelist in "The Baptism." In that same show, father John Walton, played by Ralph Waite, notorious in his Christian community for eschewing church services, faces renewed pressure from wife Olivia (Michael Learned) to accept her faith, making for one of the most interesting episodes of the season. Meanwhile, John-Boy?s sister, Mary Ellen (Judy Norton), is wooed by a couple of different men and hears wedding bells with one of them. She also pursues her nursing degree and misdiagnoses an ailment of Grandma Esther (Ellen Corby), resulting in long-term hospitalization and no end of grief for Grandpa Zeb (Will Geer). The other, increasingly restless Walton boys and girls grab their share of the spotlight, too, but The Complete Fifth Season is, once again, John-Boy's year, capped by dramatic developments in his career and vision of himself. --Tom Keogh