Eli takes pity on Phil's latest get-rich-quick scheme; Warren, Mark and Jimmy create a hilarious Ed and Carol tribute video for the rehearsal dinner, but Shirley is the one who really brings down the house with a special song; Mike feels a little lost as the best man in the face of the extensive groomsman experience and contacts displayed by Ed's cousin Mitch; Molly opens the door when a possible opportunity comes knocking; Ed gets a behind-the-scenes inspiration for a wedding day $10 bet from a surprising source; Ed and Carol hatch some truly hairbrained ideas in their quest for the appropriate theme for their wedding until Ed's inspiration leads them to the perfect place to start the next phase of their lives.

Ed Stevens has just been fired for misplacing a comma in a 500 page contract, which cost his law firm employer millions of dollars. When he arrives home to give his wife the bad news, he finds her in bed with the mailman. He decides to pack it all in and head back to his hometown of Stuckeyville, Ohio. When he runs into Carol Vessey, the girl of his high school dreams who is now an English teacher at Stuckeyville High School, he decides to stick around and purchase the local bowling alley, where he sets up a law practice.

At the same time Ed receives a visit and a job offer from his old collegue, Carol invites him to the Stuckeyville HS junior prom; To avoid the embarrassement of not having a date, Warren seeks out an escort service; Phil attempts a string of comical practical jokes to get on a TV show.

Eli, Phil and Shirley take over preparations for Stuckeybowl's 75th birthday party; Carol completely freaks out when Ed tells her that Molly stole her journal and read parts of it to him, but she can't resist asking Molly about his reaction; bored with their friends' dinner parties, Mike and Nancy accept an invitation to a kegger from Stacie and Jenny, coeds they find stranded by the side of the road with a flat tire; over his better judgment, Eli takes Phil's advice to invite Vivian to the party, and gets turned down; while one college party and its hangover are enough for Nancy, Mike decides to take the plunge again by attending ""Luau Night"" after helping Stacie and Jenny study for their chemistry exam, but gets more than he bargained for when he's forced to turn down Stacie's proposition; Shirley comes up with the right person and the right motivation, and Eli finally gets up the courage to approach a pretty woman at the party; Warren's band gets booked to play at the festivities an

Ed wrestles with his nervousness about taking what he believes to be his last chance to tell Carol exactly how he feels after he discovers that she and Dennis are going away for the summer together and that Dennis plans to propose during the trip; Warren and Mark compete for Diane's affection; Stuckeyvillians vie for the title of ""The Most Talented Person in Stuckeyville"".

Ed tries lucid dreaming to figure out if he should pursue a relationship with Frankie.

Ed defends a secretary being sued over a payroll error; Carol decides that she and Nick have to end their relationship; Mike is reviewed by his superior; Molly selects talent over beauty in casting the school play.

A brush with death inspires a local man to change his life and do things he's never done before such as scale a wall, bowl naked, and go out with Molly. Meanwhile, Ed tries to recapture his youth by doing things he did when he was 18, and Warren becomes inspired by Thoreau's call to ""simplify"".

Ed represents Dennis in a minor fender-bender case, but when the other party's lawyer asks for an exorbiant amount of money, Dennis insists they settle in order to close the case; Ed tries to resurrect the annual Thanksgiving Day parade; Nancy declares war on her fellow ""cookie moms"" when she is sabotaged while launching her own cookie line.

Carol's childhood diaries prove useful when the town's premier magician, Stuckeyville Stan, sues a competitor for revealing his secrets; Nancy becomes threatened by the baby's nanny.

The return of former high football star, Troy McCallum, brings out feelings of resentment in both Ed and Carol. Meanwhile Ed tries to help high school student Warren, whose nerd vs. jock conflict mirrors his own.

The news that Dennis and Carol have moved in together has Ed scrambling to find the perfect way to revisit the past and win her back; Dennis decides to run for president of the senior class after disapproving of the frontrunner; Warren embarks on his first real date with Diane, only to find that the feelings they have aren't exactly romantic.

The families converge for the wedding, and Carol begins to have second thoughts after talking to her father about her parents' courtship; Warren enlists the help of Carol's sister Stella in writing a song for the bride, and the two hit it off better than Warren could have dreamed, leading him to seek out Eli for advice about women; Ed decides not to attend the wedding, but Carol begs him to reconsider; Jennifer encourages Ed to break up the wedding and he decides to go for it and ride up to the church on a white steed, but the horse he ends up with has other ideas; Dennis makes a painful decision to tell the truth at a crucial moment.

Tired of the continuing Carol/Ed saga, the pair's friends trap them in Stuckeybowl until they finally work things out, one way or another.

As Carol and Ed are finally seeing Liz off, they get mugged, leading Ed to question whether he could have prevented it; Russ pays Mike and Nancy a visit after his wife kicks him out for cheating; Phil sets up a ridiculous and elaborate security system in the aftermath of the robbery; Kate offers Eli another gig at the radio station, but Jennifer isn't happy about Eli's spending time away from her; Liz's continued presence in Stuckeyville as a result of the mugging begins to wear mightily on Carol, so Ed asks Liz to leave; after Kate is fired for backing up his decision not to grant a listener's request, Eli devises a scheme to get her rehired, which dovetails nicely with Russ's plan to win back his wife's affections.

Ed goes up against his old law firm in a case involving four friends who wrote up a contract on a bar napkin. At the same time, he must pick a manager for Stuckeybowl and deal with being ""just friends"" with Carol. Nancy and Mike fuss over who takes care of the baby at night.

Ed and Carol stumble through the first days of their changed relationship; Mike and Nancy have their hands full with a new puppy and its dishonest breeder; Eli is bewitched by an attractive and talented pie maker.

With only a few days left until Christmas, Ed's getting ready to move back to New York with Carol, however an unexpected "friend" returns from Ed's past. In the meantime, Mike and Nancy are anxious to get back into their home in time for Christmas, and Mr. Hagadorn's annual Christmas yard display is under attack from a neighbor.

Carol shocks Ed by announcing that she is leaving Stuckeyville to become a writer; Ed concocts Stuckeyville's first-ever Festival of Ducks to boost the town's reputation; Phil becomes mentor to a young bowler.

Ed and Carol finds themselves on opposite sides when he represents a gym coach who is flunking one of her best students; Dr. Jerome continues to humiliate Mike; Shirley starts working as Ed's legal clerk.

Carol asks Ed to help her friend Sonja, whose husband Andy wants a divorce after discovering that Sonja had advertised herself in a mail-order-bride catalog before they met. Sonja is about to be deported to her native Brazil, since they live in a no-contest divorce state and Andy can get a divorce immediately. As Ed gets more involved in the case, he re-evaluates his own failed marriage and invites Liz to visit him so that they can mend fences. Mike continues to be beleaguered by Dr. Jerome, who refuses to relinquish his practice until Mike reads all the volumes of medical knowledge Dr. Jerome has amassed in his career. He also has a friend pose as a patient who needs an emergency appendectomy but refuses to listen to Mike and walks out of his office. When Dr. Jerome takes Mike along to see a terminally ill patient, Mike realizes that Dr. Jerome isn't such a bad guy after all. Molly and Jim continue to wend their way through the trials and tribulations of dating. After Jim cancels a da

Ed becomes the anti-Claus after a wealthy client gives Stuckeyville a Christmas gift he really can't afford, forcing the bowling-alley bunch to host a frenzied fund-raiser. Meanwhile, Mike fears that he and Nancy are a bad influence on their own daughter; and Carol gets a peek at the other woman in Dennis's life.

Ed and Carol disagree about the propriety of reuniting Ed's high school garage band to play at the funeral of the band's songwriter; Warren spends a blissfull week dating Jessica and immortalizes the event with an infinity tattoo; Molly tutors Phil in chemistry so that he can pass his G.E.D. exam.

As Ed takes the case of a injured high school football player who's suing another player for unnecessary roughness, he meets an enthusiastic law school graduate eager for a job; Eli helps Warren and Diane give Mark his last great meal before surgery; Molly does her best to be the coolest principal ever.

When Carol is discouraged after Ed spurns her feelings as ""not real"", Molly becomes the catalyst in helping Ed to rethink his position; Ed helps an old friend achieve his dream of making a movie; Nancy and Mike dip their toes into show business as Mike and Phil pester the star of the movie; claiming that it's never over between Ed and Carol, Frankie flees to Houston to visit Leon; Warren is heartbroken when Stella decides to return to Boston to finish school.