Westside High School is having a Spinsters Hop dance. Gidget (Sally Field) made a date with the most awkward nerd at school, Norman Durfner a.k.a. "Durf the Drag" (Richard Dreyfuss, "Jaws", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"). She made a bet with her brother- in-law, psychology student John, that she can boost Durf's self-confidence. She returns home with her best friend Larue (Lynette Winter) to find strapping classmate and football quarterback Chuck Batson (Ed Griffith) waiting for her. Gidget plans to take advantage that he is trying to get in good with her so he can have influence with her father Professor Lawrence to be quarterback when Chuck goes to college. When Gidget sits down with Durf to break the date she explains the things she saw in him to boost his ego, and now he turns her down for the dance. At school, Durf challenges Deke, a very popular guy for class president and becomes increasingly conceited. Deke's girlfriend Shari Sue (Susan Yardley), one of the "it" girls, asks Gidget for her and Durf to double date at the dance. She agrees as each rival girl wants to upstage one another. Now, she must find a way to get Durf to take her to the dance.