It's November 1967 and nurse Colleen McMurphy faces the last week of her tour of duty in Vietnam, dealing as usual with the dying boys, primitive conditions, and the sexual pressure from pilot Natch Austin. USO singers Georgia Lee and Laurette Barber arrive to entertain the troops in the base's new R&R center. Brand new Red Cross volunteer Cherry White also arrives, determined to find her brother, a marine no one can locate.
McMurphy decides that she can't leave China Beach even though she is eligible to go home. Cherry and Laurette arrive- Cherry to look for her brother whom her family lost contact with and Laurette as a USO back up singer who gets promoted to lead when the lead singer can't cope with the war.
Laurette auditions local entertainers to fill in the act and McMurphy struggles to overcome her feelings when a Viet Cong woman who was responsible for blowing up a friend is brought into the hospital for treatment.
KC agrees to ask about Cherry's brother as she sets up a deal to buy an antique vase. Laurette prepares to perform for visiting brass. Lila, KC, Laurette, McMurphy and Cherry share confidences as they wait out a mortar attack together.
Lila, Cherry and Laurette find themselves pinned down with a combat squad whose leader is not dealing with reality. Back at China Beach, KC and a frightened Boonie prepare to mount a rescue mission. Dr. Richard is injured just before he's scheduled to leave for R&R in Hawaii with Beth Ann.
Cherry is taken in by a deserter who claims to know her brother, and who is pursued by a determined office from the CID. Laurette and Boonie try to help a stressed out Beckett get some sleep.
Laurette faces an important audition with laryngitis. Beckett battles the pressure of racial prejudice and financial coercion when he discovers someone has been using the body bags in his GRU. Dr. Richard returns from R&R in Hawaii disillusioned by the perceived changes in his wife. Dodger finally finds Rick, Cherry's long-lost brother.
Despite distractions, McMurphy and Natch finally get together. Laurette gets a chance to join another, bigger USO tour. McMurphy gets blamed for a body that disappears on her shift.
Lila takes over command of China Beach and orders KC off the base. McMurphy finally lets herself admit how much she cares for Natch when she receives some disturbing news about him. Wayloo Marie Holmes, former Saigon weather girl, arrives at China Beach to handle her first journalism assignment, extolling the recreational facilities at the base.
Wayloo Marie becomes a casualty as she shoots her assignment. Frankie Bunsen arrives for temporary duty. McMurphy finds a badly injured Dodger.
McMurphy continues her vigil by Dodger's bedside as he stays in a coma. KC agrees to get Boonie some black market penicillin for a native hospital in exchange for his help in building her a beauty salon on base.
Christmas '67 brings a steady supply of casualties and a crazed Santa to China Beach.
McMurphy fights jealousy, envy and fear when a confident woman doctor comes in from the States and takes over Dr. Richard and Dodger's case. Wayloo Marie tries to win a position as a armed forces tv reporter with a report on the war from a woman's point of view. Frankie debuts as a disk jockey
A dashing lieutenant colonel parachutes into China Beach for some R&R and disrupts the lives of Lila, KC and Wayloo Marie. Dr. Richard and McMurphy play a game of sexual brinksmanship. Frankie falls for a GI who thinks he's Chuck Berry.
Wayloo Marie tries to keep reporting, McMurphy and KC are trapped in an officer's restroom, Beckett is held prisoner by Mai's brother and Dr. Richard and the wounded Dodger prepare to defend the hospital during the fierce fighting of the 1968 Tet offensive. Cherry comforts another Red Cross volunteer at a firebase.
Wayloo Marie becomes intimidated by the war as its reality sinks in following Cherry's death. McMurphy tries to fight the bureaucracy to keep Dodger from going to Japan for more medical help. KC fights her heroin habit as she tries to locate Cherry's brother and prepares to accompany her body home to Iowa for burial.
Dr. Richard throws himself into helping a Vietnamese orphanage when his wife Beth Ann serves him with divorce papers. McMurphy tries to reconcile Dodger and herself to his uncertain future after his stay in Japan.
An Army psychiatrist visits the Five and Dime and touches off McMurphy's inability to deal with Natch's death. Wayloo Marie learns something about Boonie's past service in Vietnam.
As McMurphy's enforced R&R continues with the help of an 18-year-old medic, Boonie tries to recreate a combination spring beach frolic and senior prom. KC warns Boonie that Wayloo Marie has learned part of his story. A chopper pilot shows Frankie that joys of flying.
The accounts of life in Vietnam by real vets are intercut with scenes from old episodes showing how closely the show has mirrored reality.
Wayloo Marie's digging results in a medal ceremony for Boonie and an unwelcome investigation into his lost jungle patrol. McMurphy sees Dodger again as he prepares to go back into action. Frankie befriends a captured deserter.
McMurphy goes through the emotional wringer when Natch Austen returns to China Beach after six months as an MIA. Lila cares for the "pet" of a wounded G.I. Boonie and KC have trouble with the on-the-make hustler who's now in command of the Jet Set.
Beckett faces going home when his tour ends in April 1968, as the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr polarizes black-white relations in the nation and at China Beach.
Wayloo Marie prepares to return the world and a new job at BBC news. She's unexpectedly joined by McMurphy, who's returning to her unsettled family in Kansas following her father's heart attack.
McMurphy reassesses her life as she tries to decide whether or not to return to Vietnam following her father's death.
McMurphy and K.C. are kidnapped by the Viet Cong and taken underground into a warren of tunnels, where their captors expect McMurphy to operate on their wounded leader.
McMurphy uses a little guilt and a little blackmail to get a reluctant K.C. to visit a wounded soldier whose face has been badly disfigured. Holly, the new doughnut dolly, challenges the nurses on behalf of the Red Cross Volunteers to compete in a Miss China Beach beauty pageant. Frankie is assigned to the motor pool and runs into Sarge Pepper, who's not very eager to have her there.
Dodger is left with an Amerasian baby that is supposedly his son; McMurphy makes a poor patient when she comes down with dysentery; and Holly badgers everyone into answering the letters sent by seventh-graders from Colorado.
Dr. Richard worries over a craniotomy that has permanently altered a patient's mental capacity; Lila faces an inspection that will determine if she gets a key promotion; Sarge Pepper asks for some advice about courting Lila and K.C. finds herself in a very awkward position when a senior officer goes AWOL on her permanently.
China Beach celebrates a soggy Independence Day with Boonie and Holly trying to keep everyone's spirits up, McMurphy dealing with a love struck private as she tries to sort out her feelings for Dr. Bernard, Lila and the Sarge discussing the future and Beckett and K.C. quarreling over registering the dead to vote.
K.C. avoids dealing with unpleasant memories of her father stirred up by a trunk of his belongings; Dr. Richard faces his ex-wife's remarriage with a ""black wedding""; Beckett ends his relationship with Mai; and McMurphy learns more about Dr. Bernard's life.
Holly is shaken when it appears that Hang is connected to the VC and has been using their friendship to gain information; Frankie is seriously injured by a booby trap; and McMurphy aids Dr. Bernard at a civilian clinic.
Dodger and Hyers square off after a battlefield incident; McMurphy spends an uncomfortable evening with Dr. Bernard's sophisticated civilian friends; and Boonie gets a surprise from the sexy Asian singer all the men in camp are longing for.
Beckett and a civilian photographer temporarily join Dodger's patrol; McMurphy gets to know a wounded POW.
The wounded Cambodian POW befriended by McMurphy is taken away by the South Vietnamese for interrogation as the photographer Cat pursues the story of his defection and a new commander arrives to take over the base, leaving Lila and K.C. unsure of their positions.
McMurphy finds herself caught up in a triangle affair with Dr. Bernard and Vinnie; Holly tells Boonie how she feels about him; and Lila copes with the disappointment of losing command of China Beach to Otis.
K.C. feels responsible for the death of a Vietnamese prostitute she sent out and takes things into her own hands when Otis refuses to investigate the matter.
Dodger reaches the limit of his endurance and decides to leave Vietnam and faces a mountain of paperwork as he tries to get permission to take his Amerasian son home with him.
Holly has had an abortion and as her friends at China Beach try to deal with it, the circumstances that led up to it are gradually revealed.
China Beach reacts to the rumors of peace floated by Beckett and Frankie during their pirate radio broadcast.
McMurphy is in an emotional and ethical turmoil when she delivers Vinnie's buddy from death but he falls into a terminal coma; and Frankie finds herself in charge of a squad of grizzled grunts.
Dodger tries to reintegrate his life as a civilian but finds himself drifting as he tries to make sense of his experiences in Vietnam.
A pair of ballroom dancers bring a note of grace and harmony to the uneasy relationship between McMurphy and Dr. Richard while completing a mysterious mission of their own.
K.C. finds herself in the middle of a C.I.A. assassination plot, and dependent on McMurphy to vouch for her innocence.
In November 1966, fairly new guys Colleen McMurphy and Dr. Richard find themselves learning the ropes when they arrive at China Beach.
McMurphy finds herself under suspicion when a wounded G.I. she doesn't remember names her as his beneficiary. Lila has mixed feelings about an old friend who now outranks her and has arrived at China Beach to do a recruiting film about Army nurses.
With everyone else away for a distant USO show, K.C. and McMurphy indulge in an alcoholic binge that takes them to a dreamy landscape where a Native American guide tries to help them heal past and present wounds.
In 1985, a reunion between Boonie and Dr. Richard stirs up memories of their first meeting in Vietnam in 1966. It also brings up questions for Boonie's 18-year-old adopted daughter, Karen.
Still in 1985, Karen learns how her natural mother, KC, coped with her pregnancy by turning to Boonie for help.
In Saigon in 1967, KC gives birth with McMurphy's help and gives the baby over to a foster mother.
While attending his father's funeral in 1985, Beckett reflects on his childhood and his tour of duty in Vietnam with the Graves Registration Unit.
In 1970, McMurphy returns home to Lawrence, Kansas to make peace with her mother and try to settle down into civilian life, but finds both goals beyond her grasp.
In 1972, Dr. Richard and his nurse take a romantic trip to Florida, where they run across a hard-livng McMurphy working at an orange-juice factory.
In 1969, China Beach watches from afar as the first men land on the moon. McMurphy simmers jealously as Dr. Richard falls for a new nurse. Beckett entertains a group of USO singers in his G.R.U. hut. A disturbed Boonie meets with a tragic accident.
Suddenly back home and missing one leg, Boonie begins a slow and painful re-entry into civilian life with the comfort of a loving nurse.
Frankie returns to Chicago in 1969 to try her hand at being a standup comic but runs into the tragically funny trial of the infamous Chicago Seven. Back in Vietnam, McMurphy tries to help Dodger convince some Montagnard tribes people to evacuate their homes.
McMurphy meets a sympathetic drummer at a 1983 wedding and recalls the 1969 wedding of Lila and Sarge Pepper, as well as the end of her relationship with Dr. Richard.
The imminent fall of Saigon reunites KC with her daughter as she struggles to get the little girl out of Vietnam and safely to America and a waiting Boonie. In the 1980s, a cynical McMurphy tries to prevent further child abuse in New Mexico.
The arrival in Bangkok in 1969 of a hard-drinking McMurphy and a young private disrupts KC's carefully developed new life and brings back unwanted memories.
In 1976, McMurphy helps KC re-enter the country and find her daughter before heading out to Montana to visit Dodger, who's coping with a disabled father and raising his son Archie alone.
In 1985, Karen begins a videotape project interviewing China Beach veterans about their experiences in Vietnam and their memories of her natural mother.
In 1985, an increasingly angry Colleen torments herself and her husband until she discovers she's suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and seeks help to deal with the memories of her final weeks in Vietnam.
McMurphy agrees to attend a China Beach reunion planned by Boonie and recalls her last day in Vietnam, and travels to Washington DC with the others to visit the Vietnam Memorial. Karen comes to terms with the ghost of her absent mother, KC.
Pilot for the TV series introduces the people of the 510th Evac Hospital at China Beach Vietnam, 1967 who include cool but compassionate 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.
