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IMDb > "China Beach" (1988) > Episode list

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Episodes: All (62)

Season: 1  |  2  |  3  |  4
Year: 1988  |  1989  |  1990  |  1991

Season 1

Season 1, Episode 0: Pilot

Original Air Date—26 April 1988
Pilot for the TV series introduces the people of the 510th Evac Hospital at China Beach Vietnam, 1967 who include cool but callous Army nurse Colleen McMurphy, naive Red Cross newcomer Cherry White, singer Laurette Barber, and cynical civilian worker/prostitute K.C. Koloski trying to deal with the horrors of war which are never far away from the base and dealing with their own individual lives.

Season 1, Episode 1: Home

Original Air Date—27 April 1988
Laurette auditions local entertainers to fill in her act, but she can't find one that's even remotely good. Meanwhile, McMurphy struggles to overcome her anger when a very pregnant Viet Cong woman, who was responsible for the bombing of a local bar and killing a private one day away from going home, is brought into the hospital for treatment.

Season 1, Episode 2: Hot Spell

Original Air Date—4 May 1988
K.C. agrees to ask about Cherry's missing brother as she sets up a deal on the local black market to buy a priceless antique vase. At Lila's request, Laurette prepares to perform for visiting brass at a 1940's nostalgia party. Later that night, Lila, K.C., McMurphy, Laurette and Cherry share confidences in a bunker as they wait out a mortar attack together.

Season 1, Episode 3: Somewhere Over the Radio

Original Air Date—11 May 1988
In an attempt to understand Boonie, Laurette volunteers to accompany Lila and Cherry on a mission in the Central Highlands. When their helicopter is shot down, they are rescued by a squad of GIs supposedly being led by the legendary Captain Osborne whom Lila has come to meet. At China Beach, Dr. Richard is wounded before his R&R while operating on a wounded GI with a live mortar shell inside him, while K.C. and a frightened Boonie prepare to mount a rescue mission to locate Lila, Laurrette and Cherry.

Season 1, Episode 4: Waiting for Beckett

Original Air Date—18 May 1988
Cherry is taken in by a deserter who claims have information on her missing brother's whereabouts, and who is pursued by a determined officer from the CID. Meanwhile, Laurette and Boonie try to help a stressed out Beckett get some sleep.

Season 1, Episode 5: Brothers

Original Air Date—1 June 1988
Beckett joins the company of two fellow black servicemen who preach brotherhood, only to deal with the pressure of their racial prejudice and financial coercion when he discovers his new friends using the body bags in his morgue for drug smuggling. Meanwhile, Dodger helps Cherry find her long-lost brother, Rick, who is a spaced-out black marketer working in the sordid underworld of Da Nang. Also, Laurette faces in important audition with laryngitis. Dr. Richard returns from his R&R in Hawaii disillusioned by the perceived changes with his wife.

Season 1, Episode 6: Chao Ong

Original Air Date—8 June 1988
When a celebrity USO tour starring Nancy Sinatra and Johnny Grant arrives at China Beach, Laurette sees this as her chance to make it big and with McMurphy's help, she joins the tour and leaves China Beach for good. Meanwhile, McMurphy misplaces the body of a young soldier which gets her suspended from the hospital, while at the same time, she finally gives into Natch's moves towards her.

Season 2

Season 2, Episode 1: Lost & Found

Original Air Date—30 November 1988
An effort to both promote and clean up China Beach results in the arrival of Airman Wayloo Marie Holmes, a former TV weather girl from the Armed Forces Service in Saigon to handle her first journalism assignment, and K.C. being ordered by Lila to leave the base. Meanwhile, McMurphy sets herself up for a fall when she goes to Da Nang in order to work out of her relationship with Natch, who is revealed to be married, and Dodger returns to the bush to fight. Also, Cherry shows around the new Red Cross volunteers and accompanies them to a fire base outpost.

Season 2, Episode 2: Lost and Found: Part 2

Original Air Date—7 December 1988
Frankie Bunsen, a black female army private, arrives at China Beach looking for an assignment while K.C. gets ready to leave. Meanwhile, McMurphy gets a double dose of grief when she learns that Natch has become an MIA when his jet is shot down, and Dodger returns from a patrol critically wounded by a VC booby trap. Also, Wayloo becomes smitten with Dr. Richard after she's slightly wounded during a mortar attack as she continues filming her journalism assignment.

Season 2, Episode 3: Limbo

Original Air Date—14 December 1988
McMurphy maintains a bedside vigil for Dodger while smuggled crates of penicillin create a shortage of antibiotics which could be fatal to him. K.C. agrees to get Boonie some black market penicillin for Dodger in exchange for his help in building her a beauty salon on the base. Meanwhile, Lila goes on a hunt to find a certain 'Karen Koloski' among the service personnel to deliver bad news of her father's death, not realizing that it's K.C.

Season 2, Episode 4: X-Mas Chn. Bch. VN, '67

Original Air Date—21 December 1988
While most of the staff is on leave during Christmas Eve, McMurphy, Dr. Richard, Lila and others left behind become deluged with scores of casualties, both military and civilian, including a machine-gun toting St. Nick. Dr. Richard becomes understandably grumpy when he learns that his wife is dating another man back home. Meanwhile, Frankie helps Beckett in the morgue where he meets a grief-stricken Vietnamese woman, named Mai, who's cousin, an officer in the ARVN, has just been killed.

Season 2, Episode 5: Women in White

Original Air Date—4 January 1989
Dodger is turned out to be paralyzed by a shell fragment in his spine and visiting neurosurgeon, named Dr. Joan Friedman, is his only chance of recovery while McMurphy fights jealousy and fear over the doctor taking over Dr. Richard's case and time. Meanwhile, Wayloo gets to be a TV correspondent and films a documentary of the women of China Beach. Also, Frankie gets to be the disk jockey of China Beach radio.

Season 2, Episode 6: All About E.E.V.

Original Air Date—11 January 1989
A legendary war hero, named Colonel Edward E. Vincent, parachutes into China Beach for some R&R and captures the attentions of Lila for romance, K.C. for money, and Wayloo for his life story. McMurphy and Dr. Richard play a game of sexual brinkmanship during a luau. Meanwhile, Frankie gets a chance to appear in the limelight when a crazy white solder, under the delusion that he's Chuck Berry, asks her to sing with him at a show.

Season 2, Episode 7: Tet '68

Original Air Date—25 January 1989
January 30-31, 1968. During the first night of the Tet Offensive, Beckett becomes a prisoner of Mai's Viet Cong brother at a small hamlet. McMurphy is trapped at the deserted I Corps Headquarters dinning room with K.C. who goes through a drug withdrawal. At China Beach, Dr. Richard is trapped in the hospital with an unusually talkative Dodger. Wayloo follows Boonie and other troops into battle and helps fight the VC attempting to overrun China Beach. Meanwhile, Cherry comforts another Red Cross volunteer trapped with her at a besieged fire base.

Season 2, Episode 8: Cherry

Original Air Date—1 February 1989
In the aftermath of Cherry's death, Wayloo becomes intimidated by the war as its reality finally sinks in. McMurphy tries to fight the bureaucracy to keep Dodger from going to Japan for more medical help. Meanwhile, K.C. fights her increased heroin addition as she locates Cherry's brother, Rick, to break the bad news to him of his sister's death and reluctantly prepares to accompany Cherry's body to her home town in Iowa for burial. But Rick tries to temp K.C. to sell her passport to him in exchange for more heroin. Beckett visits Mai who saved his life during Tet and they get close fast, and Lila has all the women of China Beach practice self-defense target shooting.

Season 2, Episode 9: Crossing the Great Water

Original Air Date—8 February 1989
Dr. Richard confronts his limitations when he finds himself doctoring some local villagers after receiving divorce papers from his wife back home. Meanwhile, Beckett helps Mai pay her taxes by gambling on ping pong games and as a result, they get even more closer. McMurphy stays close to Dodger while he waits to be transported to Japan to recover from his injuries. Also, Wayloo falls for a Naval officer.

Season 2, Episode 10: Psywars

Original Air Date—1 March 1989
McMurphy is on a short fuse when an army psychiatrist comes to China Beach to gather material for a research project about stress on non-combatants, and irritates her with the matter in which he encourages some of the grunts to go back out into the jungle. But it proves to be wrapped up in her coming to terms with Natch's fate which is causing her insomnia and her increased alcoholism. Meanwhile, Frankie finds love with a black platoon leader who turns out to be just another womanizer. Beckett thinks of proposing to Mai, and K.C. returns to China Beach from Cherry's funeral.

Season 2, Episode 11: Where the Boys Are

Original Air Date—8 March 1989
McMurphy, overworking herself into exhaustion and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, is forced to take R&R until she has enough rest. She then finds herself caught up against an unrelenting, good-natured Jeff Hyers, a young combat medic. Disturbed by the fact that so many of the men killed in action weren't old enough to attend their senior prom in high school, she inspires Boonie and Hyers to put one on for the GIs of China Beach. Meanwhile, Wayloo's pursuit of Boonie's story of his combat history results in unforeseen and unfortunate consequences. Also, an Army helicopter pilot peruses Frankie and shows her the joys of flying.

Season 2, Episode 12: Vets

Original Air Date—15 March 1989
This episode features anecdotes of actual Vietnam Veterans telling their wartime experiences mixed with scenes from previous China Beach episodes.

Season 2, Episode 13: Twilight

Original Air Date—22 March 1989
Boonie's story comes out after Wayloo presses to get him awarded a medal for bravery when her congressman father comes for a visit. Unfortunately it also brings a board of inquiry to find out what really when on in the bush: a covert operation in Laos headed by a CIA man who's indiscriminate killing of enemy locals promoted Boonie to kill him, and Dodger and Sweetness covered for him. Meanwhile, McMurphy sees Dodger again when he returns to China Beach as he prepares to back into action. Also, Frankie befriends Sweetness who's now a captured deserter.

Season 2, Episode 14: Afterburner

Original Air Date—5 April 1989
After McMurphy manages to deal with the death of Natch, he suddenly shows up after escaping from the Viet Cong along with a fellow colleague and comes to a crossroads on what to do with his life. Meanwhile, Boonie gets replaced as manager of the Jet Set Club by a pot-skimming sergeant connected with a less-than-legal local entrepreneur, named Turner, whom K.C. used to work for. Also, Lila offers to arrange the shipping home of a GI's "stuff," not realizing that it's a baby leopard cub.

Season 2, Episode 15: Promised Land

Original Air Date—12 April 1989
April, 1968. Beckett's tour of duty ends, but he finds it difficult to leave Mai behind in Vietnam and decides to stay. But things take a turn when racial violence breaks out in the camp after news of Martin Luther King's assassination hits China Beach, in which Beckett and Frankie are caught in the middle of it all when all the black servicemen form their own living quarters off the base, and are faced off against a racist, redneck grunt named Whitlow. Meanwhile, Dr. Richard reaches out to Wayloo to comfort him over his recent divorce and she's happy to oblige.

Season 2, Episode 16: The World: Part 1

Original Air Date—26 April 1989
Wayloo's tour of duty ends and she goes home to a newscasting job in New York, while McMurphy goes home on emergency leave to her hometown in Kansas to visit her family when her father suffers a heart attack. After McMurphy accompanies Wayloo to Travis Air Force base in California where they bid each other goodbye, McMurphy arrives in her hometown of Lawrence, Kansas where the tries to come to terms with her mother, and one of her brothers, named Brandon.

Season 2, Episode 17: The World: Part 2

Original Air Date—3 May 1989
After her father's funeral, McMurphy finds the decision to go back to China Beach very hard and instead goes to San Francisco to visit a colleague from Army nursing school, named Jan Wyatt, who works with disabled vets in an army hospital, who takes McMurphy out for a night on the town with her two hippie roommates and a group of wheelchair bound vets.

Season 3

Season 3, Episode 1: The Unquiet Earth

Original Air Date—20 September 1989
While on their way to Da Nang for a state dinner, McMurphy and K.C. are captured by the Viet Cong when their jeep breaks down in the jungle and are placed in an underground tunnel complex. McMurphy is then forced by Mai's brother, Tuan, to operate on their severely wounded cadre leader while K.C. plans an escape.

Season 3, Episode 2: Skin Deep

Original Air Date—27 September 1989
After Miss America backs out of a scheduled appearance at China Beach, the new Red Cross volunteer, Holly Pelegrino, challenges the nurses on behalf of the Red Cross Volunteers to compete in a Miss China Beach beauty pageant. Meanwhile, McMurphy uses a little guilt and a little blackmail to get K.C. to visit a wounded soldier in the hospital whose face has been badly disfigured in order to boost his morale. Also, Frankie gets assigned to the motor pool and meets the manager Sarge Pepper, a redneck army sergeant not very eager to have her there.

Season 3, Episode 3: Dear China Beach

Original Air Date—4 October 1989
A young Vietnamese girl delivers an Amerasian infant boy to Dodger and tells him that he is the father, which triggers his inner turmoil. Meanwhile, McMurphy is laid up in the hospital suffering from dysentery caused by a drinking binge, and Holly tries to get the China Beachers to answer mail from a 7th grade class in Colorado.

Season 3, Episode 4: Who's Happy Now?

Original Air Date—11 October 1989
Black humor takes the form of a 'Weekend at Bernie's' theme when visiting colonel dies in the company of K.C., in which she then asks Boonie and Hyers to help her find a way to decently dispose of the corpse. Meanwhile, a French doctor named Dr. Bernard, shows an interest in McMurphy. Sarge Pepper asks Frankie for advice about courting Lila, whom he develops a crush on. Also, Dr. Richard worries over a wounded grunt with a head injury that has permanently altered a his mental capacity, while learning that his ex-wife is being courted by another man back home.

Season 3, Episode 5: Independence Day

Original Air Date—25 October 1989
China Beach celebrates a rainy 4th of July as McMurphy attracts the attentions of the new GI, Vinny Vantresca, while Dr. Bernard continues to peruse a romance with McMurphy, and shows her his life which include his two children from previous relationship and his psychotic Vietnamese ex-wife, Roxanne, living in a local asylum.

Season 3, Episode 6: Ghosts

Original Air Date—8 November 1989
After Dodger tells a campfire ghost story, the unseen specters of relationships past, present, and future haunt the folks of China Beach. K.C. refuses to look into the past of her dead father when a box of his belongings arrives for her to sort out. Meanwhile, Beckett tries to come to terms with Mai over their backgrounds. McMurphy begins to think about pursing a romance with Dr. Bernard. Also, Dodger tries to adjust to his present and future life with his Amerasian son. After Dr. Richard gets distraught when he learns that his ex-wife is remarrying back home, he decides to cleanse his past with his wife with a "black wedding."

Season 3, Episode 7: With a Little Help from My Friends

Original Air Date—15 November 1989
Holly prepares herself for a "Battle of the Bands" concert and asks Hang, a Vietnamese chore woman, to perform with her. But later, Holly becomes suspicious when circumstantial evidence points to Hang having connections to the Viet Cong after a number of bombings and mishaps occur at China Beach and in the area. Frankie is wounded in one of the bombings and becomes paranoid of all Vietnamese around her. Meanwhile, McMurphy is forced to work in a civilian ward while maintaining her interest with Dr. Bernard.

Season 3, Episode 8: China Men

Original Air Date—22 November 1989
Hyers freezes during a battle, causing a rife between him and Dodger. Meanwhile, McMurphy becomes vulnerable to Vinny's advances after having a miserable dinner with Dr. Bernard and his friends. Also, Boonie becomes taken up with a non-English speaking Filipino singer, who's not what she appears to be.

Season 3, Episode 9: How to Stay Alive in Vietnam: Part 1

Original Air Date—29 November 1989
Dodger is not pleased to the two new additions to his patrol: Beckett who wants to find out what's it like that "his men" experience out in the bush, and Cat Von Seeger, a photojournalist who wants a story and pursues Dodger's second-in-command Jesus "Answer Man" Zapita.

Season 3, Episode 10: How to Stay Alive in Vietnam: Part 2

Original Air Date—6 December 1989
McMurphy befriends a wounded Cambodian, named Seak Yin, that Dodger's patrol brought back who claims that he was pressed into service by the Viet Cong, and she and Dr. Bernard try to intervene when Seak Yin is accused of betraying an ARVN patrol force to the Viet Cong. Meanwhile, a tough, no-nonsense new officer, named Major Melvin P. Otis, arrives to take control of China Beach, much to Lila's dismay, and begins to set his sights on K.C.

Season 3, Episode 11: Magic

Original Air Date—3 January 1990
After a circus comes to China Beach, it will take more than magic for the people to save their love lives when McMurphy unhappily finds herself caught in a love triangle with Dr. Bernard and Vinny. Meanwhile, Boonie tries to get closer to Holly. K.C. and Major Otis get an unpleasant surprise when they meet at a state dinner when he runs into her while she's on the job soliciting. Also, the demoted Lila turns her frustrations on Sarge Pepper.

Season 3, Episode 12: Nightfall

Original Air Date—10 January 1990
A Vietnamese prostitute that was on K.C.'s payroll is found murdered, and K.C. tries to find out who killed her, while caring for the prostitute's orphaned teenage daughter whom is threatened to go to work in a local brothel. While on the case, K.C. wonders why Major Otis does not want to order an investigation and ignore the murder.

Season 3, Episode 13: Souvenirs

Original Air Date—17 January 1990
With his tour of duty up, Dodger decides it's time to go back home and wants to take his Amerasian son with him. But he finds the red tape almost impossible to wade through and tries to K.C.'s help in finding a shortcut.

Season 3, Episode 14: Holly's Choice

Original Air Date—30 January 1990
When Holly becomes pregnant by a GI, she makes a decision for an abortion and goes to K.C. for help despite opposition from the pro-life McMurphy and Dr. Richard.

Season 3, Episode 15: A Rumor of Peace

Original Air Date—7 February 1990
Looking for a little adventure, Frankie and Beckett form a pirated radio station in the GRU building and become the disk jockeys Miss Wizard and Dr. Dark, who play a practical joke on the air by declaring peace. But they're horrified to see it get totally out of control. Meanwhile, K.C. plots to move her business from China Beach while trying to get Boonie to drive her to Da Nang, while Lila faces a possible separation from Sarge Pepper in going home, and McMurphy and Dr. Richard talk about life back in the world.

Season 3, Episode 16: Warriors

Original Air Date—14 February 1990
McMurphy finds herself in an ethical dilemma when she saves the life of Vinny's buddy, though he will remain brain-dead for the rest of his life. Her Catholic beliefs of the non-practice of euthanasia won't allow her to let the man die despite Vinny pleads and Dr. Richard's orders. Meanwhile, Frankie gets orders meant for a different Francis Bunsen and finds herself promoted to sergeant commanding a squad of tough grunts led by Answer Man.

Season 3, Episode 17: The Thanks of a Grateful Nation

Original Air Date—28 February 1990
Back in his home town with his family, Dodger is drifting through a meaningless existence in dealing with his mother, father, younger sister, his old Vietnam vet buddy Sweetness, and a former girlfriend named Sissy. All this takes a turn when an old high school friend asks Dodger to help him dodge the draft and take him to Canada.

Season 3, Episode 18: Skylark

Original Air Date—14 March 1990
Ruby and Ernie, a pair of mysterious ballroom dancers, waltz into China Beach and bring harmony to the bickering McMurphy and Dr. Richard, and bring peace and compassion to the area while completing their own mystical mission from heaven of finding their grandson recently killed in action.

Season 3, Episode 19: Phoenix

Original Air Date—21 March 1990
K.C. is caught in the middle of a CIA assassination plot when a CIA hit man, named Ace, asks for her help to kill a suspected Viet Cong officer, but she gets arrested after being accused of the murder. However, it's K.C.'s friendship with McMurphy that goes on trial when McMurphy is asked to vouch for K.C.'s innocence. Meanwhile, Boonie befriends a resourceful Vietnamese teen who is reluctant to be drafted into the ARVN.

Season 3, Episode 20: F.N.G.

Original Air Date—16 April 1990
A flashback to 1966 shows McMurphy as a hospital ward nurse who joins the army and after months in basic training, arriving for the first time at China Beach where she meets Dr. Richard for the first time and she loses her innocence fast after facing the horrors of real war in dealing with the endless soldiers coming in for medical treatment and getting help from the head nurse, Jan Wyatt, and the head doctor, Dr. Singer, over handling the situations. Meanwhile, K.C. under the name of 'Charlene' and working as a secretary/call girl for the sleazy then-China Beach commander, Lt. Col. 'Mac' Miller, meets Boonie Lanier for the first time and they get close when the wounded Boonie is reluctant to go back into the bush when he recovers. K.C., using her influences, gets Mac to hire Boonie as the lifeguard at China Beach.

Season 3, Episode 21: The Gift

Original Air Date—23 April 1990
Lila is upset at her failure to advance in the U.S. Army and is worsened by the arrival of her friend Libby, now a colonel, who comes to China Beach to do a recruiting film for army nurses. Meanwhile, McMurphy is unknowingly made the beneficiary of a soldier's insurance policy and receives $20,000 in a death benefit, which prompts an Army investigator to investigate possible misconduct on her part.

Season 3, Episode 22: Strange Brew

Original Air Date—30 April 1990
While the rest of the China Beach staff attends a rock concert at Firebase Geronimo, McMurphy and K.C. stay behind, get drunk, and enter a shared surrealistic dreamland of a destroyed fire base where they must deal with unresolved issues from their pasts under the guidance of a Native American solider, named Dream Walker, and K.C.'s former boyfriend Jones, both recently killed in action.

Season 4

Season 4, Episode 1: The Big Bang

Original Air Date—29 September 1990
Boston, Massachusetts 1985. A one-legged Boonie with his wife Linda, and their three children, visit Dr. Richard and his wife, Colleen Flatherty, which sparks Dr. Richard's memories to the first manic days with McMurphy at China Beach in 1966 when they became more acquainted with one another, McMurphy meeting Boonie and Dodger for the first time, and ending at party celebrating Dr. Singer's going home and Nurse Wyatt's transfer to be with him, and Dr. Richard to be promoted to head surgeon at China Beach.

Season 4, Episode 2: She Sells More Than Sea Shells

Original Air Date—6 October 1990
Boston, Massachusetts 1985. Boonie's 18-year-old adopted daughter, Karen, meets with Dr. Richard, working in a birth clinic for pregnant women, to question him for facts about her real mother K.C. A flashback to 1966 shows a pregnant K.C. questioning her romantic involvement with Lt. Col. "Mac" Miller , which ends when he's wounded in action and sent home, and Lila arrives to replace him as commander of China Beach.

Season 4, Episode 3: You, Babe

Original Air Date—13 October 1990
Saigon, 1967. McMurphy, desperate for a three-day leave to meet her friend Nellie from nursing school, steals a pass intended for Dr. Richard and runs into a very pregnant K.C. trying to obtain medical records for her unborn child. In a comedy of errors, they find themselves handcuffed to each other after escaping from a police raid and wander aimlessly through the streets as K.C. goes into labor and gives birth to a baby girl.

Season 4, Episode 4: Escape

Original Air Date—27 October 1990
Orchard Grove, North Carolina, 1985. Beckett is attending his father's funeral when he flashes back to Vietnam in 1967 where he was a grunt in a platoon commanded by Sarge Pepper. During Beckett's R&R at China Beach, he got his job by accident at the at the Graves Registration Unit, where he first met McMurphy, Dr. Richard, and Lila. Beckett's co-worker was a scared-to-death and scared-of-dying friend, named "Deadman" Crawford who eventually committed suicide rather than return to the jungle to fight.

Season 4, Episode 5: Fever

Original Air Date—3 November 1990
Lawrence, Kansas 1970. McMurphy is now back in her home town and working as a stateside ward nurse at the local hospital while trying to make peace with her increasingly neurotic mother who does not approve of her fast, stressful lifestyle and bitterly tries to cling onto the past. But McMurphy soon finds that her experiences at China Beach hadn't prepared herself for her new job and her new life in general. A flashback to China Beach exactly three years earlier shows McMurphy reluctant to accept her birthday from Dr. Richard, Dodger, Boonie and others wanting to throw her a surprise party.

Season 4, Episode 6: Juice

Original Air Date—10 November 1990
Miami, Florida, August 1972. Dr. Richard and his fiancée, Dr. Colleen Flaherty, are attending a medical convention during the anti-war demonstrations at the Republican convention when he accidentally runs into McMurphy who is now living with a local animal wrangler, named Noon Gantry, and working a dead-end job at an orange juice plant in a dead-end life in an attempt to bury her memories of Vietnam.

Season 4, Episode 7: One Giant Leap

Original Air Date—17 November 1990
China Beach, July 1969. Times have changed at China Beach where Boonie forgoes his beach party lifestyle for drugs and anti-war slogans, while Beckett entertains Sweet Hula, the lead singer of a USO show, while Sarge Pepper sets up a party for Lila and the other soldiers who are eagerly waiting the landing on the moon. Meanwhile, McMurphy tries to reason with a wounded GI, named Everett, who's afraid to go back into the jungle after he recovers, while resenting a new nurse, named Glory Dawn, that attracts Dr. Richard's attention. But everyone's plans come to a halt when Boonie's leg is trapped under an overturned jeep and a rising flood during a sudden rainstorm threatens to drown him, in which Dr. Richard makes a fateful decision to amputate Boonie's right leg to free him.

Season 4, Episode 8: One Small Step

Original Air Date—1 December 1990
Boonie is shipped back to the USA after his jeep accident and has to deal physically and emotionally with the loss of part of his right leg while trying to help his fellow disabled vets with theirs. He then meets his future wife Linda Mattock, a nurse in the VA hospital where he is placed, who helps him regain his self-esteem.

Season 4, Episode 9: The Call

Original Air Date—8 December 1990
Chicago, Illinois, October 1969. Frankie tries to adjust to her new life back in her home town when she gets caught up in an incipient revolution by a group of black urban revolutionaries in the wake of the Chicago Seven Trial. At China Beach, McMurphy receives a request from Dodger who's back in the country helping to build a hospital for Montagnard tribesmen with help from a elderly relative and former nurse named Ilsa.

Season 4, Episode 10: I Could Have Danced All Night... But Didn't

Original Air Date—4 June 1991
Portland, Oregon, 1983. McMurphy meets Joe Arenburg, a band drummer and the best man at a wedding where she is the maid of honor, triggering a flashback to 1969 with Dr. Richard during his final days at China Beach where Lila supervised the production of "My Fair Lady" with Dr. Richard, Glory Dawn, Beckett and Sarge Pepper in the leads. McMurphy also helps K.C. with planning the wedding of Lila and Sarge Pepper while she deals with own uncertainty with Dr. Richard.

Season 4, Episode 11: 100 Klicks Out

Original Air Date—11 June 1991
April 25-30, 1975. K.C., now running a successful nightclub in Bangkok, Thailand, gets a call from Trieu Au, her daughter's nanny in Saigon, for help. K.C. flies out to Saigon to help get both of them out of the country before the city falls to the Communists. But she has to deal with an enormous amount of red tape to do so, as well as quash her maternal instincts for her eight-year-old daughter, Karen, whom she barely knows. Meanwhile, Dodger arrives at the deserted China Beach facility after making his way through enemy territory and befriends a scared peasant woman in hiding there. In New Mexico, McMurphy, now living with a group of Navahos, intervenes with a child abuse case involving a fellow vet.

Season 4, Episode 12: The Always Goodbye

Original Air Date—18 June 1991
Bangkok, Thailand, 1969. McMurphy shows up on K.C.'s doorstep of her newly opened nightclub for some R&R with a smitten G.I. and to make her goodbye as her second tour of duty comes to a close. K.C.'s life as a nightclub owner is going fine, but McMurphy's life as an alcoholic is getting worse. K.C. eventually decides that raising her two-year-old daughter in Bangkok is not the place for her and sends Trieu An back to Saigon to raise Karen on her own. In a flash forward to May 1975, K.C. has managed to get out of Saigon and returned to Bangkok, only to find the life and nightclub she had there in ruins.

Season 4, Episode 13: Quest

Original Air Date—25 June 1991
Santa Cruz, California, Christmas 1976. K.C. has made it back to the USA to start her life over and she asks McMurphy to help get her back on her feet financially. K.C. then glimpses a view of her daughter, Karen, now being raised by the crippled Boonie. Inspired by K.C. wanting to start a new life, McMurphy decides to do something with her own. A month later, McMurphy travels to Red Lodge, Montana to join Dodger, now living with his invalid father and Doger's Amerasian son, hoping that his growing ministry for Vietnam Veterans will help her find answers to the problems still haunting her.

Season 4, Episode 14: Rewind

Original Air Date—9 July 1991
1985. Karen Lanier is traveling across the USA making a short documentary film about Vietnam for a high school project and meets all of the principal characters including Dr. Richard, Dodger, Lila and Sarge Pepper, McMurphy, and even Mac Miller and K.C.'s younger sister, Monica, in which Karen finds that her search for the answers to what Vietnam was all about mirrors her search for her own identity and her long-lost mother K.C.

Season 4, Episode 15: Through and Through

Original Air Date—16 July 1991
Portland, Oregon 1985. McMurphy, now married to Joe Arenburg and settled down, seeks therapy for her sudden relapse into alcoholism when she starts to experience nightmarish flashbacks to a time at China Beach in 1969 when she was under enemy fire with Jeff Hyers.

Season 4, Episode 16: Hello Goodbye

Original Air Date—22 July 1991
Youngstown, Ohio 1988. Boonie throws a reunion of of all the China Beach veterans. Among the attending are McMurphy with Joe Arenburg and their baby daughter; Beckett with his wife and teenage son; Lila and a terminally-ill Sarge Pepper; Dr. Richard with his wife Colleen; Dodger with his Amerasian son; Frankie Bunsen; and even Wayloo Marie Holmes. McMurphy flashes back to her last frantic days at China Beach in late 1969 and dealing with a mortally wounded marine. Karen Lanier also films the events and interviews the vets while hoping to come to peace terms with her mother K.C. After the party, the vets decide to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. for one last trip down memory lane.

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