The Patty Duke Show

Love provides an unusual aid to education in the form of a handsome French teacher at Brooklyn Heights High School. Patty's parents are astonished when her French grades suddenly zoom up and up. They are even more astonished to learn that Patty is dreaming of elopement and marriage with this handsome import from La Belle France.

Patty Lane tampers with an I.Q. testing computer and is accidentally rated a genius. Mr. Snell persuades her parents to allow Patty to do anything she pleases. Chaos reigns until another test brings Patty's dream world to a crashing end.

As a surprise birthday present for her father, Patty arranges a weekend for her parents at the same fishing lodge where they spent their honeymoon. Part of the plan involves getting a fishing license in her father's name. But Mr. Lane overhears talk about obtaining the license. Unfortunately, he believes that Patty and Richard are picking up a wedding license and planning to elope.

The Lane household is invaded by spinster Aunt Pauline when she arrives for her annual visit. Much to everyone's dismay Aunt Pauline, expected to stay only for dinner, moves in and immediately takes over running the house. Though difficult, the household remains calm, until Cathy blows up and tells her what the family really thinks of her.

Patty's twelve-year-old brother Ross finds himself invited to his first dance by a new girl in the neighborhood, a young belle from Virginia. Panicky with fear, he does everything he can to wriggle out of his obligation. It remains for Patty and Cathy to teach him, in the space of two days, all he has to know about women and dances.

The slumber party is a peculiar institution, Cathy writes to her father in Europe. Girls get together for a night; they eat, they gossip, they play records, they do everything except sleep. At Patty's slumber party, Ross hides a tape recorder in the room, which picks up the girls talk about teachers, parents and boyfriends. The next day he quotes the events to Patty and Cathy as blackmail.

When Patty decides she needs a new evening gown, and Mr. Lane refuses to pay for it, she decides to go into business to raise the needed cash. The business is baby sitting.

In the midst of this most successful season, the Brooklyn Heights High School basketball team is threatened with catastrophe. Its star player, "Stretch," is moving with his family to Michigan.

At stake is the presidency of the senior class. The candidates are Patty...and her cousin Cathy.

On the night that the two cousins are holding a dance party in the Lane home, Cathy is confined to bed as a result of an unexpected reaction to a flu shot.

The Brooklyn Heights High School Drama Department is producing a lavish version of Shakespeare's Anthony & Cleopatra. Cathy tries out for the lead role, but Patty unexpectedly gets the part.

Cathy, a shy and retiring girl, finds herself green with envy at Patty's ability to mix and make friends. One day she finds a column in the daily newspaper in which a certain "Aunt Jane" advises teenagers on their problems. Cathy writes to Aunt Jane and receives in return a booklet entitled "How to Be Popular."

Richard and Patty have had an argument, and to win him back Patty writes him a love poem which in reality has been stolen out of a collection in the Lane family library. Cathy sees the poem and puts it to music. Patty and Cathy are encouraged to enter their song in a competition, in which the winning number will be sung on a nationwide television show.

Cathy finds herself falling in love with a foreign exchange student at the high school. Imagine her surprise when the student proposes marriage, and then turns out to be the Prince of the distant land of Bukanistan. The young prince seals the pact by presenting Cathy with a hundred thousand dollar emerald. Unaware of its great value, she decides it would make a nice paperweight.

Christmas is a day away and Cathy is all aglow. Her father, who is a foreign correspondent in Europe, has always made it a point to visit his daughter on Christmas, no matter where he was stationed at the time. This Christmas promises to be no different.

Martin's brother Kenneth has come to New York to celebrate Christmas with his daughter Cathy, only to discover that T.R. Castle, the publisher of the Chronicle, has fired him from his job as foreign correspondent. Patty and Kathy persuade Kenneth to write his autobiography in order to show his ex-boss what a good man he has lost.

Patty needs money to buy her mother a birthday present. It seems that Patty always needs money, and she usually comes up with fantastic schemes to raise it. This time she decides to become an astrologist, so she converts her bedroom into a reading room and sells her services to the student body of Brooklyn Heights High School.

Cathy, who is an expert seamstress, makes a dress for herself that turns out to be the success of the season at Brooklyn Heights High School. Immediately Patty senses an opportunity to apply business initiative to the situation. Now knowing exactly what they are getting themselves into, they enthusiastically talk a department store buyer into ordering an entire shipment of the dresses.

After browsing through a French teen-ager's best seller, Patty Lane decides to write a novel presenting the American teenager's viewpoint. Propelled by 'creative inspiration', Patty writes her novel in one week. Despite her father's rueful reaction, she submits it to a publisher. Everyone in the family is shocked when a telegram notifies them that the book is going to be published.

Patty's father, Martin Lane, comes home and tells them that his publisher has assigned him to head the Paris office for a year, the family is ecstatic. However, as the day of departure draws near, the thrill of leaving for Europe begins to pale. The family begins to realize how much they are giving up and how deep their roots really are.

Patty's mother, Natalie Lane, bakes a cake to enter in the church bazaar contest. She leaves it on the table. Patty and her look-alike cousin Cathy find it and have it half-eaten before they discover it was meant for the contest. Their solution to the dilemma: bake another cake.

Patty is elected editor-in-chief of her school newspaper, but discovers that the position is more of a drudge than an honor. The newspaper has a circulation of less than 30. Patty's solution is one that is all too common these days. She highlights the school scandals and puts misleading headlines on dull stories.

Patty and Richard have decided to go steady. Their parents are not too happy about this decision. They feel that 16-year old boys and girls should have as many contacts as possible and should not restrict their social life to one member of the opposite sex. The parents decide to scare son and daughter out of going steady.

Natalie Lane begins to feel that her family no longer appreciate her. She cooks, she sews, she cleans the house, she runs errands and delivers messages with no more than a dutiful note of thanks from her husband, her children or her niece. With the help of a friend, she initiates a strategy to regain what she feels is her family's lost affection.