THE WALTONS:
Specials 1982

A Wedding on Walton's Mountain

Mother's Day on Walton's Mountain

A Day for Thanks on Walton's Mountain

A Wedding on Walton's Mountain
It's getting very close to Valentine's Day at Walton's Mountain, when Erin and her boyfriend, Paul Matthews Northridge, decide that they will get married and that a Valentine's Day wedding would be perfect. Plans for the wedding are coming along nicely until Ashley Longworth Junior arrives back on the mountain and into Erin's life once more. He had been Erin's boyfriend at one stage but had left to go to war and the last Erin had heard of him, he had married someone else.

Ashley tries to win Erin back, and in doing so he tries to sabotage an important lumber contract which had been made by Paul and Ben Walton. Paul is Ben's partner in the lumber mill. Ashley had arranged for the lumber which was about to be delivered to fulfill the contract, to be stolen and generally causes all sorts of conflicts between Erin and Paul. Erin's father comes home to see everyone, and he helps Erin to see that Ashley belongs in the past and Paul is her future.

Meanwhile we discover that Cindy and Ben are expecting their second baby and Mary Ellen is now in medical school. Mary Ellen's beau, Jonesy, is about to open his veterinary clinic and during the course of the show, saves an expensive horse from being poisoned. Both Jim Bob and Elizabeth are feeling left out because everyone else seems to have someone while they don't. Drew, Elizabeth's boyfriend is away at college and she misses him greatly.

Finally Corabeth is still being a busybody and is trying to play matchmaker for Reverand Tom Marshall. She tries her best to find him somebody "suitable". She is quite mortified one morning when she calls on him and a strange woman answers the door. Tom was quite capable of finding his own wife and had married secretly.

The movie ends with the celebration of Erin and Paul's wedding. Her mother is unable to come home from the sanatorium where she is recovering from TB, however Grandma does make it to the wedding. Ben and Cindy's daughter, Virginia, makes a lovely flowergirl and Mary Ellen and Elizabeth are her bridesmaids. John-Boy as the narrator tells us that the marriage of Erin and Paul is still as strong today as it was then.

This telemovie first aired on NBC on 22nd February, 1982.

Mother's Day on Walton's Mountain
The Waltons are gearing up for another wedding in this episode, this time for the remarriage of Mary Ellen. She is marrying the vet, Arlington Wescott Jones III, better known as Jonesy. The two marry and set off on their honeymoon, a camping trip, and things are fine until Mary Ellen decides to head to a store to buy some supplies. She turns a corner in her jeep, just in time to see a deer standing in the middle of the track and she swerves to avoid hitting it. The jeep rolls over and Mary Ellen spends the rest of her honeymoon in hospital recuperating.

She has sustained internal injuries which make it advisable for her not to have anymore children. This is difficult for her to accept and come to terms with because whilst on their short honeymoon she and Jonesy had been making plans for their future children. Mary Ellen feels that it isn't fair for her to hold Jonesy to the marriage given that he was expecting a marriage with children. He reassures her that she and her son, John Curtis are family enough for him but it is only after Mary Ellen takes a trip to see her mother that she realises that she has a lot to live for and she happily returns to him.

While Mary Ellen is struggling with all this Cindy is reunited with her birth mother who gave her up for adoption. She is very wealthy and wants to provide things for Cindy and her children that Ben cannot afford and this leaves him feeling like a very inadequate father and husband. To add to their stress Cindy goes into labor early and their son, Charlie is born some months early.

Problems too, abound between Corabeth and Aimee, when Aimee arrives home appearing to her mother as a tramp and a hussy. Aimee feels that she is not good enough for Cora Beth and that Cora Beth is continually sending her away. She tries to come between Elizabeth and Drew, and it finally takes Jim Bob to tell Aimee that he liked her better when she wasn't trying to be so grown up.

By the end of the movie, everything is fine again on Walton's Mountain with Cindy and her children now back with Ben, Cindy's mother accepting their way of life, Mary Ellen, Jonesy and John Curtis being a family and Elizabeth reading an essay about her mother aloud in church on Mother's Day.

This telemovie first aired on NBC on 9th May, 1982.

A Day for Thanks on Walton's Mountain
Elizabeth is feeling really sad because most of the family have made plans to be away from the home for Thanksgiving Day, rather than be together as she had hoped. John Boy is in New York and Jason is looking into further music study there as well, her parents are staying where Olivia is recuperating, Grandma is in a home, Paul is suffering from the "too many Waltons" syndrome and he and Erin have decided that they need some time together, and even Drew decides that he can't come home.

John-Boy, in New York however, feels that he can't write any more and when he sees Jason in New York, he decides to leave his girlfriend Jane and return to Walton's Mountain to recover from his writer's block. It is back here that he does indeed discover what he had missed in New York, and found that it refreshed his soul.
John Walton decides to come home for the holiday after all, at Olivia's insistence and Drew also decides to come home to Elizabeth. Jim Bob finds himself in debt after he gets caught up in a scam. He bought a whole lot of automotive parts with money that he borrowed from the Baldwin sisters, and finding that the majority of the parts were worthless. As he says, they saw him coming!

Paul finally finds that the house is far too crowded for him after Erin says that now her father is home she wants to spend the holiday at home, and he leaves to stay in the cabin on the mountain. Her father tells him that if he really loves Erin and feels that he can't live in the house with all the Waltons then he should fix up the cabin for him and Erin to live in.

Meanwhile Mary Ellen is getting quite disturbed to find her young son is continually missing because he is playing with a friend at the pond. On Thanksgiving Day, however, when the family, including Grandma who is spending some time with them, are looking at old photos, John Curtis discovers a photo of his friend. They are all amazed to find that his "friend" is really old Zeb Walton and that John Curtis seems to somehow see his spirit when he is playing down by the pond. This, I think, is quite a touching moment, and gives me goosebumps, even when I know what happens!

The movie closes with all the family and their friends sitting down for their Thanksgiving dinner and remembering all those who are there, as well as those who aren't.

This telemovie first aired on NBC on 22nd November, 1982.