It's the beginning of the summer and rookie school has just started. Cody meets his old diving instructor from Hawaii there. Her name is Lani McKenzie, and she has problems with her ex-boyfriend Darren. He can't accept that she has left him. When Darren approaches Lani and Sheryl while they are jogging on the beach, he and Cody end up in a fight. Later Lani is kidnapped by Darren and held hostage on a boat. However, Cody manages to locate the right boat and is able to bring Lani out of there, with a little help from her as well.

Mitch who wants Manny back in rookie school, tries to convince the Chief that the regulations against contact lenses are out of date and unfair. The Chief decides to let Manny join rookie school again if Mitch decides to take the job as the new Captain.

J.D. from Daytona Beach was a rookie at Baywatch years ago. Now he camps on the beach, and Donna tell him to leave the beach. Later she finds out who he is. J.D. has come back to Baywatch to apply for the vacant lieutenant position. It's between him and Taylor Walsh, a smart, confident and ambitious young woman. The Chief has recommended Taylor.

The episode starts with two men throwing a body into the ocean. The next morning, Mitch goes out on a dive search with the two rookies, April and Skylar. A fishing boat had reported that they had seen two men dumping something into the water last night. It doesn't take long for Mitch, April and Skylar to locate the inactive person. April drops her can of air while trying to scream, and Mitch helps her up to the surface.

April's brother Charlie and her mother Paige are living with her in her small apartment. It's very hard for April to see Charlie so sick and that everyone is being nice to him out of pity. Everyone has been told that Charlie has a rare form of cancer and that he is getting treatment for it at UCLA.

The episode starts with a man named "Riptide" Roger Peltyn flying over the beach with his helicopter. He keeps bothering the lifeguards. He tells everyone about the fantasies he has about Donna, he calls J.D. the "Daytona pier hugger" and he bothers Newmie during his workout. Lt. Taylor Walsh watches everything on TV and gets upset. She storms out of headquarters and tries to force him to leave by waving her arms. Mitch sees this from the TV in the weight room and runs out to stop her. He knows that this is exactly what "Riptide" wants. Taylor tells Mitch that "Riptide" must have a spy at Baywatch. Otherwise he can't possibly know so much about the lifeguards.

Manny and April are being trained to be better lifeguards by doing a victim hoisting training exercise. Lt. Taylor Walsh keeps on eye on them and make sure that everything goes according to plans. The helicopter lowers the hoisting bed and the victim, this time a dummy, is secured. Now they need to reattach the hoisting device and give a thumb up sign to the helicopter.

When Cody is driving on the beach in a lifeguard truck, he suddenly sees a huge hole in the sand. He alerts Mitch over the radio. When Mitch arrives, he tells everyone of the Santa Ana syndrome. It's a warm wind that comes in from the desert and it bring all weirdoes down to the beach. Mitch calls the county and lets someone fill up the hole with new sand. Max from the county arrives in his tractor. He tells Cody that the lifeguards get all the credit for everything that happens on the beach. Nobody cares about the guy watching the sand.

Neely returns to Baywatch after a long absence, recuperating from a terrible skiing accident. When she is getting her pills at a pharmacy, a robber comes in. An old man named Mr. O'Hara is standing next to Neely and he has a heart attack and Neely is forced to perform CPR. The robber freaks out and grabs the money and runs away. Mitch and Donna watch Neely on TV. It turns out that Neely has become hooked on painhuggers. Donna figures it out but Neely denies everything.

Mitch receives a call that Caroline needs all available assistance during a rescue. Apparently a young girl named Rosanna is missing. Her mother Lucinda is real worried, but she doesn't speak any English, just Spanish. When Many finally arrives to the beach, he translates everything Lucinda says. When Manny asks Rosanna's younger sister Nikki what happened, she tells Manny that Rosanna was very sad and that she waited for the lifeguard on duty, Cody, to leave his tower. When Cody left to meet Lani at the movies, Rosanna went into the water, and Nikki never saw Rosanna coming out of the water.

Caroline comes back to Baywatch to keep up her certification as an L.A. County Lifeguard. She fills in on a couple of shifts during an acting hiatus on Shannon's Hope. Caroline gets to work in a tower while J.D. ends up in the switch board. Taylor does this just to separate them from each other. She also decides to give Caroline some more challenging beaches than on Mother's Beach (8.6 Lifeguard Confidential).

Manny's old homeboys come to the beach and confronts him about lifeguarding and his white girlfriend April, and Manny starts feeling ashamed of April. When Manny's mother Teresa unexpectedly turns up on the beach to tell Manny how proud she is of his accomplishments, she meets April. But she doesn't know that she is Manny's boyfriend. When April realizes this, she gets sad.

When Mitch is in his tower, he sees a little girl named Bridget activating a hand grenade. He runs to her and throws the grenade into the water just before it explodes. Then he finds another hand grenade next to two little boys. Cody comes over and he helps Mitch locate the broken box on shore and account for all the grenades that were stored there.

Craig tells Mitch that his ex-wife Gina is currently dating a college student. When he has told Mitch about this, Mitch tells him that April and Manny have called it quits. Later, Craig drives to April's tower in a lifeguard truck. She also tells him that she and Manny broke up. She tells him that Manny never takes her feelings into consideration, and she thinks it's obvious that he is not ready for a serious relationship yet. Manny was supposed to take April to a benefit dinner for the Children's Cancer Foundation. They are honoring her brother Charlie who died a while back (8.5 Charlie). Suddenly Manny backed out and April was left without an escort to the benefit dinner.

April, Lani and J.D. are on patrol in the scarab, when they notice a boat and suddenly see that two men are knocked into the water by a boom. They go there to rescue them, and the third one is knocked into the water as well. The owner of the boat is named Captain Bob. He is very grateful and tells them that he owes them one. They discover that Captain Bob and his sons are diving for sea urchins, and they earn a lot of money by selling the sea urchins.

The episode starts with a lot of people gathered around a dead dolphin. Mitch and April arrive in a lifeguard truck and Mitch lets April transport the dead dolphin to the Marine Lab. Later some drug dealers make a deal on the beach. Behind some bushes, Garner Ellerbee is sitting on a horse named Earl, watching them. When the deal has been made, Garner starts riding towards the drug dealers. Two of them drive off on ATVs, and the third one disappears on a wave-runner. During the chase, Garner passes the tower where Mitch and April are talking. They join him for the chase in a lifeguard truck. Garner and Mitch capture the drug dealers and Mitch and Garner catch up on their lives together.

Neely asks Mitch if he knows a cheap hotel she and Ashley can stay in while her apartment is being renovated. He tells her that they can move in with him and Hobie. Because Neely works as a waitress in a bar during the evenings, Mitch gets to baby-sit Ashley a lot and he get more and more attached to her as time goes by. When Neely is fired from her job by her boss Tommy, and learns that her land-lord ripped her off, Mitch tells Neely that she and Ashley can move in with him permanently and Neely accepts the offer. Ashley plays poker with Mitch, Newmie and Cody and she wins.

A couple of lifeguards play a game called Over-The-Line. It's similar to baseball. J.D. claims that he used to be very good at it. But when he starts playing, it's hard to imagine that he has ever played before because he is really bad. Later Ed Symes from Symes Medical Supplies Inc arrives to Baywatch to meet with Mitch. He bothers everyone with his attitude and instant flirting with the female lifeguards.

Newmie has created a kite-flying contest for the benefit of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. His nephew Todd is diabetic. While Newmie, April, Todd and some teenagers are on the pier, a man falls into the water and Newmie and April have to rescue him. Todd is a very depressed young boy, and he wants to live a normal life like all of his friends. April befriends him and Todd tells her that her uncle Mike has told him a lot about the Baywatch gang. Manny and April participates in the kite-flying contest and finish dead last with their dolphin kite.

Neely, Donna and Lani are going on a cruise to Alaska. Lani is going to pose for Inside Sports on the cruise ship named the Dawn Princess. Cody doesn't want her to go there without him because he is afraid he is going to lose her like he lost C.J. Meanwhile, Neely tells Mitch that she is bringing Ashley to Alaska. It turns out that she has located her ex-husband Peter there. She will take Ashley to him because Ashley needs a family. Mitch doesn't want her to do that, because he doesn't want to lose them. But Neely decides to go anyway.

After boarding without Neely, Lani, or Donna seeing them, Mitch and Cody surprise their colleagues by appearing at dinner. Hobie and Leslie make it obvious that they know when they're not wanted. Hobie also knows that his father still disapproves of his impulse to invite a total stranger with them on the cruise. When the ship docks in Ketchikan, Mitch and Cody prepare for a day of salmon fishing while Hobie and Leslie plan an outing in town.

Narrowly escaping Gavin for the moment, a clueless Hobie and Leslie take off on paragliders over the Alaskan mountaintops. Gavin is soon right behind them, brandishing a balloon. With a confused Hobie following, Leslie lands her glider and takes off running. Gavin is in hot pursuit, eventually forcing them into an ice cavern from which they cannot escape.