Awesome / The Waltons

• John Walton Sr. is a true Papa Wolf, you don't mess with his family or friends. Heck, you don't even want to mess with anybody around him! He is awesome. It's In the Blood. Grandpa Walton is much the same way.
• John-Boy runs away from home to find a job in a city in the first season episode "The Deed," to help his family. The Waltons are fighting in court to keep their land from being bought and clear cut by an outside company, but the court costs are prohibitive. That intention is initially shattered when John-Boy is robbed of his pay; but with the help of a new friend, he manages to stay in the city and catch the robbers in the act - and gets a cash reward big enough for him to return home and pay the legal bills.
• The second season episode "The Thanksgiving Story" has this trope in abundance. John-Boy is stricken with a blood clot in his brain, and though the surgery to save his life and his sight is successful, he despairs because the timing interferes with his scholarship examination for Boatwright College. Rev. Fordwick and Miss Hunter jointly appeal to the university to let him take the exams in his hospital bed, and despite the doctor warning that it's dangerous, he rededicates himself to his studies. With everyone's support, he passes the exam and wins a scholarship, becoming the first Walton to go to college.
• The episode "The Search" is this for Jim-Bob. He, Olivia, and Elizabeth become lost in the woods after a truck tire blows out, and it's mainly thanks to Jim-Bob remembering what he learned from John and Grandpa that they stay relatively safe until they're found. He constructs trail markers according to Grandpa's instructions, and even drives off a bear threatening his mother and sister using John's method of banging rocks together. He gets a So Proud of You moment from John when they're safe at home.
  • It's also this for Grandma, in a quieter fashion. Left at home with only Erin and Mary Ellen while everyone else is in the search party, she keeps the girls busy so they don't spend their time worrying, and urges them to rely on their faith to sustain them.
• John-Boy Shaming the Mob after a church cookout nearly turns into a book-burning, with German books the focus... including a German Bible.
• The moment Erin stands up to J.D. Pickett for undervaluing her as a woman and demands a raise, then quits... eventually culminating in him at her doorstep on his hands and knees begging her to come back.
  • It gets even better when she helps get Verdie Foster's daughter Esther a job with him. A college graduate unable to find work because of racism, she's initially rejected by Pickett as well. Then Erin reminds him that he's mismanaging the plant and could lose his big Army contract if he doesn't hire her to organize everything.
• Jason dealing with one of the final battles in Germany as a competent soldier.
• Ben being taken prisoner of war in the closing days of World War II and doing everything in his power to mock the Japanese general in charge of the POW camp, from helping to create a makeshift American flag to hoist on the camp flagpole to openly singing patriotic American songs just to honk off the man.
• Ike and Jim-Bob's discovery of actual uranium and a dumping scandal on what once amounted to one of Ike's shenanigans as an overly enthusiastic wartime Geiger counter-wielding radiation inspector.
• Jason, in one fairly early episode, wins a talent show competition by playing and singing a song he wrote himself - which was inspired by watching Grandma iron clothes.