Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

California's mother lode country provides the backdrop for a series about a contemporary family of ranchers. Taking time out for music and dance like 1954 MGM musical, the opener tells how a spirited cafe waitress learns-after the fact-that she has married into a parentless but self-sufficient brood of six rowdy brothers. After her intial shock has passed, Hannah turns her attention to taming the rough and tumble McFadden brood. It's almost impossible, though,when the brothers discover that their prize bull has been killed. The furious young men suspect Wheeler, a nearby ranch owner who would stop at nothing to force the McFaddens into selling their land. Knowing that the brothers want revenge, Hannah comes up with a plan to win one of Wheeler's prize bulls for themselves.

Having pursuaded his brothers to borrow heavily to buy grain at a low price and store it in Freleng's Warehouse, Crane feels resposible for the family's financial distress after the grain is seized when Freleng files bankruptcy. Crane is arrested and jailed for instigating ranchers to raid the warehouse tp take their grain back when it is seized by the authorities. At his court hearing, ordered by the judge to identify his co-conspirators in the raid, Crane refuses, taking full responsibility and maintaining that, in this case, the law perversly harmed innocent citizens.

With Hannah pushing him, Ford struggles to overcome his shyness and ask pretty Cleo to a barn dance. Meanwhile, Evan's self-confidence is challenged when his hero, former rodeo champion Cooper Johnson, twice rejects him in rodeo-class tryouts. Later, Adam and Hannah fight over fight over the difference between encouraging and badgering: Hannah accuses Adam of pushing Evan to try one more time to get into Cooper's class and Adam says Hannah is forcing Ford into dating girls when he's not ready yet.

When Evan's horse, Diablo, suffers a broken leg, pretty Molly McGraw is the only veterinarian available to perform the surgery that's needed. She and Crane fall head over heels for each other, but Crane's stubborn McFadden pride resists Molly soon after she tells him that she has received the internship in equinw surgery that she has been seeking.- a commitment that means she will have to leave California and move back east.

Ford has been signed by a talent scout to be a back-up singer. Meanwhile, Guthrie, anxious to contribute something as the McFaddens try to scrape up the money for a new roof, hit upon panning for gold. When he chances on two armed men seeming to be prospecting downstream, he goes along with their idea that he team up with them, not knowing that they are in fact poachers, shooting bears out of season, and that they are wanted by the authorities.

Daniel considers himself luck when he is asked to fill in for High Sierra's injured guitar player. But soon after he and Tally Dean fall in love, he learns that Tally is determined to make her mark in big-time music, no matter what. Then he feels betrayed when he Brian tells him that he and Tally once had a short-lived but intense romance.