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While on a business trip, Steve and a co-worker recognize a singer performing in a small lounge and they remember when she was big. Steve invites her to Bryant Park to learn an updated sound. The band invites her onstage at their next gig.

Feeling that he's not contributing enough to the household expenses, Robbie (Don Grady) decides to quit school, get a job, and move his family into their own place. Rob's college counselor (Vince Howard) urges him to think it over before rushing into such a major decision, and asks the administration office to delay his paperwork over the weekend. The stalling tactic gives Rob enough time to discover that despite the added financial burden placed on his father, Steve (Fred MacMurray) enjoys taking care of his grandchildren, and that he has plans to redesign Rob's room to accommodate Rob, Katie (Tina Cole) and the triplets.

Katie (Tina Cole) feels like she is getting as big as a house, even bigger than her pregnant friend Lisa (Barbara Boles), who is over due. While Robbie (Don Grady) is away on military reserve training (again!), Steve (Fred MacMurray) takes Katie to her OB appointment, where her doctor (Leon Ames) reveals why she is getting so large - Katie is having more than one baby. Katie doesn't want anyone to know before she can tell Robbie, but she's already getting her first labor pains and Robbie cannot be contacted.

A new family moves in next door to the Douglases - a widowed mother and her three children, plus "Aunt Maude". Robbie (Don Grady) and the daughter Peggy Snell (Jackie DeShannon) get along swimmingly, but the rest of the family members are at odds with their next-door-neighbor counterparts. Robbie is caught in a Romeo & Juliet romance, until he and Peggy set Shakespearean dialog into modern songs and play them for the families.

Chip (Stanley Livingston) has a new girlfriend, Debbie (Angela Cartwright), and their relationship is progressing at a rapid pace. Shortly after convincing Debbie to drop her swimming class for home economics, Chip and Debbie announce that they are engaged. While both families are concerned about the situation, they don't interfere with the kids, until one day Katie (Tina Cole) suddenly faints and Robbie (Don Grady) has to take her to see the doctor, leaving Chip and Debbie alone to take care of the triplets. After several frenzied hours with the babies, the couple decide that they are moving too fast and to just be friends.

Robbie reports to camp for two weeks of military reserve maneuvers, and Katie decides to go along and stay at a nearby motel so that the newlyweds can be near each other. Meanwhile, Uncle Charley and the boys are camping at Yosemite, which also happens to be close to Robbie's camp. During a stroll, Katie wanders into the mock battlefield and gets arrested by Robbie's unit. Later, each of the other family members try to locate Robbie and similarly get detained. Steve heads toward camp to prevent the family from interfering with Rob's duties, but he manages to get captured first by the aggressor team, then by the defender team.

Ernie is smitten with a classmate, Margaret, who shows no interest while Iris does. He asks his dad what to do. Steve suggests changing his appearance. Ernie comes to school the next day with his hair slicked back but Margaret is unmoved.

Ernie meets Zsa Zsa Gabor after accidentally falling into her swimming pool. She befriends Ernie, who introduces her to the rest of the Douglas clan.

Ernie becomes convinced he's a jinx when things inexplicably start to go wrong whenever he's around, but Steve reassures him that his family loves him anyhow.

It seems that everybody has something planned for Friday night - except Ernie (Barry Livingston). But since this will be the first time Rob (Don Grady) and Katie (Tina Cole) are away from the triplets, they are reluctant to leave Ernie alone with the babies, so they hire a sitter recommended by the family doctor. However, the sitter (Rose Marie) seems to be more interested in watching television than watching the babies. After repeated calls from worried family members, she takes the phone off the hook, but now the constant busy signal causes more anxiety, so the family members all rush home, only to find that the sitter has matters well in hand.

Ernie becomes somewhat depressed when he learns his best friend Gordon is moving away. The two decide to spend as much time as possible hanging out together until moving day.

When Steve (Fred MacMurray) is promoted to head of the helicopter division, the secretaries snoop into his personnel file and are happy to discover that their new boss is an available widower. Uncle Charley (William Demarest) brings his helicopter-loving girlfriend Sally (Shirley Mitchell) for a plant tour, but when denied entrance, he tells his girlfriend Sally to pretend that she's "Mrs. Douglas", in order for her to get in. Meanwhile, Steve has invited Katie (Tina Cole) to visit the plant and tells her to let people know that she's "Mrs. Robbie Douglas". When the nosy secretaries see Steve with two different women claiming to be "Mrs. Douglas", they suspect that their new boss is a bigamist. Unaware that Charley's girlfriend is posing as "Mrs. Douglas", Steve doesn't understand the stares from his co-workers, as he escorts the two women around together.

Steve's former Bryant Park co-worker, Ray Wong has transferred to Los Angeles and tells Steve his pregnant daughter's husband is a long-haired hippie. Though intelligent, the son-in-law hasn't any direction in life. Ray seeks Steve's help.

The Wong family from Bryant Park drops in on the Douglases unexpectedly while on their way to Hong Kong. Since the hour is late, Steve invites the Wongs to stay overnight, forcing him to cancel the family camping trip planned for early the next morning. The Wongs are too polite to tell Steve that they have family in Chinatown who are expecting them, and Steve make his family promise not to tell the Wongs that they ruined the Douglases weekend plans.

After discovering that a neighbor (Dianne Ramey) has a cousin, visiting from Liverpool, who plays guitar, Chip (Stanley Livingston) invites the cousin to join his band, only to discover that he has a much more laid back, folk style than Chip assumed. But the new member (Jeremy Clyde of Chad and Jeremy fame) is just what the band needs, in order to win the top award at the local teen club.

Uncle Charley (William Demarest) gets reacquainted with an old merchant marine shipmate (James Gregory), who invites Charley along on a sea voyage. Charley wants to go, but realizes the Douglas family needs him. The family sees that Charley wants to go, so they pretend that they are fully capable of taking care of themselves.

Rob and Katie bring the triplets home from the hospital and reveal their names - Robbie Jr, Steve II and Charley - much to the delight of their namesakes. But Rob soon tires of all the attention that the triplets get and the repeated questions that everyone is asking - "How do you tell them apart?" But eventually Rob gets accustomed to the curiosity of his friends and neighbors.

Chip's (Stanley Livingston) class uses a computer to match kids for dates, with kids from another school, for the upcoming "computer picnic". Chip is excited about his date (Eva Ein) - until he meets her and discovers that she's about a foot taller than he is. Chip is willing to go through with the date, but the girl realizes that Chip is very uncomfortable with the situation, and suggests that they call it off. So Chip and his buddies get together and swap their dates, based on more personal preferences, - pleasing Uncle Charley, who dislikes the newfangled computer dating. Chip ends up trading dates with his much taller friend, Marv (Ed Begley Jr.).

Rob, Katie and the triplets move to their own place. Katie feels Steve needs a woman in his life so she arranges a blind date with Millicent. Meanwhile, Ernie has a problem in school so Steve has to meet with his teacher, Barbara Harper.

Steve's friends set him up to meet - in Ernie's words - "some clunky woman." The family tries to give the impression that Steve (Fred MacMurray) isn't really as old as he seems, when the woman (Wanda Hendrix) acts more and more surprised meeting each of Steve's sons, who is older than the previous.

Steve (Fred MacMurray) meets with a hard-boiled Air Force general (Arthur O'Connell) to sell a company product, but the general - himself a new grandfather - after learning that Steve is about to become a grandfather, becomes an easy sell as he eagerly shares his experiences as a grandfather.

To Steve's (Fred MacMurray) dismay, Robbie (Don Grady) quits school since he has been making money hand-over-fist by working for a friend's (Steve Franken) real estate company. Robbie gets a real education when a torrential rain storm reveals that the home he is showing has hidden flaws.

Steve is on a business trip to Amsterdam, Robbie is in the South Pacific for military reserve training and Chip is on a school trip to Mexico so Ernie and Uncle Charley are home alone together. Charley invites an old shipmate for dinner.

Ernie learns that the person with the least experience at his father's company has been laid off - his father explains that it is unfortunate, but that is just how it goes sometimes. When Ernie discovers that he's allergic to Tramp, he decides to leave home and look for a new family to adopt him, because Tramp has been with the family longer than Ernie, so Ernie is low man on the totem pole.

Steve is recruited to be a double agent willing to sell secrets to America's enemy. He's whisked off to New York to meet his contact, an attractive younger woman. She suspects Steve is not genuine and leads him through a series of tests.