“My Ellen”

The Hereditary of Little House on the Prairie Episodes; or

Here There Be Busbys

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: “My Ellen” [sic]

Airdate: September 26, 1977

Written and directed by Michael Landon

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Madness and mayhem ensue when Laura accidentally kills yet another Grovester.

RECAP: The world is in a frightening state, and I’m sure many of you are as fearful about it as I am. If you pray, pray for peace.

In the meantime, the rain is coming down hard here, but I have a fire lit, and I hope Walnut Groovy can at least provide some poor distraction from the terrors of reality. It does for me.

And today we have “’My Ellen’”! I kind of can’t believe we’re finally doing this one. It’s a favorite of mine. I always recommend it as a good starter story for the Little House newbie, since it captures both the heart and the twistedness that is this show in a single cocktail. 

It’s okay if you don’t like it as much as I do, though. Amelia’s boyfriend Isaac failed the “’My Ellen’” test, and he’s still on the scene.

But I think it’s fair to say the episode is one of the unbreakable threads that anchors my past love of the show to this present project. So let’s do it, and forgive me if I do too much talking as we go through. (I tend to talk while watching TV, if the show is as exciting as this.)

We open on Carrie, running through a dry field.

The camera pulls back to reveal she’s chasing Laura, Mary, and another blonde girl – a Nondescript-Helen-type we’ve never seen before.

In the background are some very un-Minnesotan-looking humpy hills.

OLIVE: Oh, are they in the Badlands?

(Yes! Olive’s back from university this weekend – fall break. Roman’s out of state doing college visits with his other dad, though.)

We see the Ing-Gals and their friend approaching a house which, while very familiar-looking, I can’t actually place. (Yes, reader, we’ve reached the point in the series where all the similar-looking houses are beginning to blur for me a bit.)

[Less blurry-eyed reader and Friend of Walnut Groovy Maryann writes that the house is the same as the one in “Little Women.” And she’s right, it is!]

A woman, addressed as “Mama” by the blonde stranger and as “Mrs. Taylor” by Laura, is hanging laundry on the line.

We’ve had a few Taylors in the series so far. There were the Jule, Martha and Thad or Tad Taylor who bought the Pyatakovs’ place in “Centennial.” 

We also met a skinny, Almanzo-looking gomer called “Mr. Taylor” who applied for a bank loan from that rat-bastard Ebenezer Sprague in his namesake story.

This same gomer later played for Walnut Grove in the annual baseball tournament against Sleepy Eye. 

Whether this woman and her daughter are some relation to him, or to any of these people, remains to be seen. (Just kidding, they aren’t.)

Mrs. Taylor reminds her daughter she has chores, but the kid says “the Ingall girls [sic]” have invited her to go swimming. (The girls are presumably coming from school, and with the dry fields, this suggests a setting of early September, 1877-E.)

The girl reminds her mother this is the beginning of the weekend, so she can catch up on chores the next day.

Laura springs into the shot to make the case for giving her permission to go.

WILL: Ack!

OLIVE: Teeth!

Mrs. Taylor happily gives her blessing.

As the four run off, Carrie gives the audience a bit of meta-humor, slurping, “Don’t we ever walk anywhere?”

Along the way, Laura says, “Come on! Let’s cut across Busby’s place.” (Never mentioned before.)

“No!” says idea-killer Mary. “Pa said not to.”

“Oh, come on, I’m not scared of Busby,” says Laura; but Mary is firm for once, so Laura abandons this plan.

But oh my God, as they’re leaving, we see a huge man crouching in the weeds behind a fence, spying on them!

Meanwhile, David Rose gives us cuckoo “insanity” music on the clarinet.

Once we had finished screaming, we discussed the huge man.

OLIVE: He actually is pretty scary.

WILL: Yeah. It’s that you can’t see his eyes. It’s a frightening effect.

WILL: Olive, this is how rural Wisconsin always seemed to your mom when we were married.

Then an unusually elaborate shot reveals the girls swimming in a lake.

OLIVE: Did they film this with a drone?

WILL: No. They weren’t invented yet.

DAGNY: Yeah. In those days they did them with hovercraft.

It’s unclear what lake this is. It really doesn’t resemble anything we’ve seen before on this show – more like a quarry lake than Willow or Cattail Lake.

Two boys suddenly appear from over the ridge, spying on the girls.

The big one is the Kid With Very Red Hair (Mean One), and the little one is another, smaller red-haired kid. 

The latter is actually reminiscent of Sandy Kennedy (aka Kid Hideous).

But since the Kennedy family is long gone from this show, we’ll assume he’s actually meant to be the Kid with Very Red Hair’s younger brother.

That works fine, since his hair is in fact actually even more red than the KWVRH’s.

The two express excitement that one of the girls is emerging from the water, but then the little one says, “Never mind – it’s only Carrie.”

OLIVE: Aren’t those kids a little young to be getting boners peeping on girls?

WILL: Maybe. The younger one, probably.

The older one’s credentials as a villain are well established. Regular readers will recall the Kid with Very Red Hair actually received the Walnut Groovy Award for Worst Featured Townsperson last season, on account of his consistent bullying of other kids.

This is a new low even for him, however.

OLIVE: I don’t know that either of them seem old enough.

DAGNY: Yeah, but they couldn’t have it be an older kid or man, because then it would seem like pedophilia.

WILL: Yeah. And that’s only allowed on this show in certain contexts.

Quite true.

The actor playing the Kid With Very Red Hair, you’ll recall, is Bryce Berg, and he’s been credited variously over the years as “Teddy” and “Carl.” 

But in this episode, his character is named “Jason.” (Was Jason a common name in the Nineteenth Century? It certainly was when I was born in the 1970s, but I don’t know about those days.)

And while we’re on the credits, the younger brother is played by Matthew Roberts and credited as “Tommy.” (Peeping Tommy, get it?)

The boys sneak down closer to the lake, and we can intuit the girls are swimming nude – pretty shocking for this show.

Despite the little kid’s observation that Carrie got out, all four girls appear to be in the water at this point.

Yet, by magic, suddenly Carrie does appear behind the peepsters!

WILL: Now watch, this is unarguably Carrie’s greatest acting scene since the series started.

Carrie slurps, “Whatcha doin’?” 

David gives us some hilarious “caught” music in the lower strings.

The littler red-haired kid – new to this show but clearly the brains of the operation in his house – says they’re “just fishing.”

Carrie observes they haven’t got any fishing poles.

The little one immediately says they’ve been looking for a willow branch to make a fishing pole with.

WILL: They’re just like Ernie and Bernie.

DAGNY: Totally.

Ernie is Amelia and Olive’s eight-year-old little brother at their mom’s house, and BERNIE is their seven-year-old first cousin. Despite being of similar ages, they have a very Felix-and-Oscar dynamic, with Ernie being stiff and inflexible (albeit lovable), and Bernie being a smooth-talking, slick-lying (albeit lovable) kid who lands on his feet in any given situation.

But Carrie is also fast on her feet in this one; for now she slurps, “Laura has an extra pole hidden around here – she’ll loan it to you. LAURA! There’s some boys here that want to see you!”

DAGNY: Yeah, pretty good.

WILL: Emmy-worthy!

DAGNY: I don’t know about that.

The red-haired boys scramble away.

In the water, the naked girls duck down under the waves.

Mary and Laura surface in the reeds, but the other blonde girl is nowhere to be seen.

Mary calls, “Hey, Ellen, it’s all right, they’re gone!”

But Ellen does not reappear. She’s the one gone for good, in fact.

OLIVE: How did she drown? I just don’t get it.

WILL: It’s a total mystery.

DAGNY: Maybe she got stuck in some seaweed.

WILL: Seaweed?

OLIVE: Why is there the sound of water FLOWING? Isn’t this just a pond?

WILL: Well, this probably is just Plum Creek, and it backed up because of a beaver dam. 

DAGNY: In fact, that explains what happened to Ellen. She was pulled down by beavers.

Mary realizes Ellen has disappeared, and we cut suddenly to men with torches dragging the pond at night.

DAGNY: Wow. That is a harsh transition.

WILL: Well, this is one of the worst things that’s happened in Walnut Grove so far. Baby Freddie died, but this is different. It’s more like if Carrie had been killed when she fell down the Pit of Doom.

Up on the hill, we see Laura, Mary and Caroline.

WILL: Grassle’s always good for that kind of expression.

We also see Mrs. Taylor and (presumably) her husband.

OLIVE: Who is THAT?

WILL: Ellen’s dad.

OLIVE: Approved. He’s handsome.

Then one of the searchers (we don’t see who) calls out, “Over here! We found something over here. . . . It’s the girl.”

We see one of the torchbearing Grovesters aiding in the search is Johnny Cash Fusspot.

Cut to Ellen’s FUNERAL itself. I know young people complain about the pace of Twentieth-Century TV shows, but Little House likes to keep things brisk. Here we are less than seven minutes into this episode, and so much has already happened.

OLIVE: Why do Laura’s braids start behind her ears?

DAGNY: Just wait, her hair looks really good later in this one.

Considering the whole community rallied to search for Ellen, the funeral is pretty sparsely attended. The Ingallses and Doc are there, and so is J.C. Fusspot; otherwise, there’s just two women (one of whom might be Mrs. Foster?) and a bald man (Tom Carter?). (We don’t get to see their faces.)

Reverend Alden quotes the Book of Revelation (21:3-4), ending up on a note that God will one day evaporate the power of death. 

WILL: Does Aldi have false teeth? He kind of talks like my grandma did.

At the conclusion of his remarks, Alden nods to Charles, who steps forward with a shovel. Apparently he’s the town gravedigger as well as unofficial mayor and social worker?

Then Mrs. Taylor has one of those old-fashioned stagy scenes that at this point it’s hard to believe ever existed in entertainment, but that people who like older ways of doing things (like myself) can still appreciate.

Because when Charles steps up to bury Ellen, Mrs. T leaps forward, throws herself on the fucking coffin, and starts screaming about how she can’t see her daughter put “down there.”

OLIVE: What’s her issue with burying the body?

WILL: If you have kids someday, you’ll understand. I can’t imagine anything worse.

DAGNY: Me either.

The actor is Corrine Camacho, a hardworking TV performer of the seventies who had recurring roles on Medical Center and Days of Our Lives, and who also appeared on Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun, Mannix, Cannon, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, The Rockford Files, Charlie’s Angels, The Waltons, Trapper John, M.D., T.J. Hooker and Hunter.

(We’ll see her again on this show too, but we better leave that aside for now.)

It’s a full-bodied performance, served up with a generous side of Easter ham. It would work fine without sound, too – it has the feel of a silent movie, in fact.

Mr. Taylor tries to pull his wife back, but Mrs. Taylor addresses the heavens, saying, “Please, please, God, make her come alive again!”

WILL: See? It’s Pet Sematary. That must have been Stephen King’s tribute to Little House on the Prairie.

Mr. Taylor, whose trousers, it must be said, don’t leave much to the imagination, drags his wife away.

But before they go, Mrs. Taylor stops and stares at Laura with what I would describe as improbably cold detachment, considering she was wildly screaming just two seconds ago.

Poor Laura looks up, and Mrs. Taylor says, “You did this – it was you.”

Calling her “Eloise,” her husband pulls at her again. 

But Mrs. Taylor goes on to explicitly blame Laura for Ellen’s death. Over and over she screams, if it hadn’t been for Laura, “she would have been home with me!”

OLIVE: This is so embarrassing.

DAGNY: Yeah. Why don’t the town leaders do something? Aldi’s there, Doc’s there.

WILL: Well, Doc only has jurisdiction when the patient is alive. But Aldi could spray her with holy seltzer water or something to snap her out of it.

Laura looks down in shame and horror.

DAGNY: This is where Aldi should take control, to protect her. It’s really sad that he doesn’t.

WILL: I don’t know if he’s very handsome. He kind of looks like Joe Camel.

Mr. Taylor is played by James Wainwright, who was on Daniel Boone as well as a bunch of Little House-related properties like Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Kung Fu. 

He was also in Killdozer!, a Duel ripoff about a possessed bulldozer that I think I have actually seen.

Now here’s the part we found completely insane. Well, the first part, anyways.

Rev. Alden approaches Laura, takes a good long look at her suffering face, then walks away from her without saying anything.

DAGNY: What the fuck?

WILL: Come on, Aldi!

OLIVE: This is why I hate Reverend Alden.

Back at the Taylor place, Mr. T drags Mrs. T into the bedroom, but more in a “let’s confine you to a padded cell” way than anything resembling, um, romance.

But just when Mrs. T thought she could relax, her husband suddenly withdraws and Reverend Alden appears in his place!

Aldi gives her a personal signed Bible he’s marked up with his own little whims and whimsies.

Mrs. Taylor then launches into a bitter speech about God being unwilling to reward his followers with miracles in situations like this. 

And when Aldi tries to sneak out, she screams, “Take your damn book with you!” and throws his Reverend Alden Collector’s Edition Bible right back in his face!

OLIVE: Oh! She really got him!

WILL: Yep, she really did get him.

DAGNY: Dabbs Greer is a good actor. He didn’t break character at all. 

DAGNY: And it works for the character, too. Aldi probably gets hit with Bibles all the time. He wouldn’t flinch. Hazard of the profession.

Alden departs, whilst David Rose gives us an insane Lucia di Lammermoor–esque harp solo in the orchestra.

Meanwhile, Pa is bringing everybody home from Ellen’s funeral via Chonkywagon.

He follows Laura into the barn. 

(This might be my favorite Melissa Gilbert performance of the entire series.)

OLIVE: Seriously, why doesn’t Laura ever do her hair differently?

DAGNY: Well, her hair doesn’t change till she grows up and becomes a teacher.

WILL: Yeah. I’m afraid to get to those stories. I’m sure Melissa Gilbert will get mad at us, because I don’t like Laura as much when she grows up. I’m dreading it, actually.

Pa tells Laura grieving people say crazy things, and she shouldn’t take it personally. He says in no uncertain terms that this wasn’t her fault. It’s good somebody finally said something to her!

And evaluated as a speech in itself, Pa’s is really quite nice here.

Cut to the Taylor home at night. There’s been a solo oboe sort of stalking the stoplight in the score this whole episode, and it finally makes its move now.

In the dim lighting, you can see Mr. Taylor has a hell of a scar on his chin. Perhaps today wasn’t Eloise’s first book-throwing adventure?

Anyways, Mr. Taylor finds his wife in the dark, surrounded by Ellen’s drawings.

Mrs. Taylor makes a scathing speech about how Caroline sent soup to the house as a bribe so Laura would get away with her crime scot-free.

Then she switches gears to go into an appraisal of Ellen’s artistic abilities. (Short version: She thought they were pretty good.)

And then, equally or maybe even more sharply, she changes her tone again and says to her husband, “Why weren’t you home when she came from school?”

Mrs. Taylor reasons that Mr. Taylor’s expectations for Ellen, being stricter than her own, would have saved their child’s life if only he’d been there to insist she did her chores.

Devastatingly, she tells her husband Ellen would still be alive if it weren’t for him.

Stunned, Mr. Taylor says, “First you blame little Laura, and now me?”

OLIVE: Oh yeah, NOW he stands up for Laura.

Mrs. Taylor starts screaming and throws him out of the room.

OLIVE: This is like Hereditary.

DAGNY: It is. This one is the Hereditary of Little House on the Prairie episodes.

After a break, we come to what our reviewers found the most controversial element of this story.

Charles and Jonathan Garvey are performing some kind of repair on the wheel at Hanson’s mill.

OLIVE: Oh my God, I forgot about this part.

They’ve dammed the creek so they can work on the wheel, but Charles says he’s ready to turn the water back on and see if it works. Then he walks away.

He’s gone by the time Garvey says, “Hold it up just a second,” as he makes some other small adjustment.

WILL: It really bothers me they have a comedy subplot in the middle of this tragic story.

Charles opens the floodgate, and the wheel, with Garvey still on it, begins spinning.

Charles comes back down the hill, realizes his mistake, and bolts back up.

WILL: That’s good physical comedy from Landon, though. I’d go so far as to say it’s John Ritter-worthy.

Charles scrambles back to the dam and closes the gate.

OLIVE: Tight pants. Even for him.

Garvey eventually extricates himself from the wheel, saying, “Lord, I haven’t been this dizzy since the Sleepy Eye chug-a-lug contest!”

The FreeVee transcriptionist, clearly a person of pure and innocent mind, heard this as “I haven’t been this dizzy since the Sleepy Eye juggling contest.” (Which I suppose could also leave a person dizzy.)

Garvey staggers away, leaving Charles a-gigglin’ at him.

OLIVE: There’s the giggle.

Crossing to the Mercantile, Garvey literally bumps into Rev. Alden, then collapses in a heap.

OLIVE: He should throw up on him.

WILL: That WOULD be funny.

Alden, a recovering addict himself (we’ll learn in about four years), immediately accuses Garvey of alcoholism.

Now, reader Ben recently noted that the first several scripts of Season Four were written before it was generally known Victor French was off the show. Mr. Edwards’s lines were eventually adapted for Garvey, which may explain why some of his early storylines are alcoholism-related. (Addiction is not part of Garvey’s story arc as the show goes along.)

Garvey explains he just wanted to get a sarsaparilla at the store, but Alden stops him, saying Alice Garvey is inside and would be mortified by his drunken state.

WILL: I don’t know if he would harass Mr. Edwards like this. I think Aldi was a little scared of Mr. Edwards, actually.

OLIVE: Who wouldn’t be?

Garvey stumbles into the Mercantile, and we hear him say, “Hey, Alice, you won’t believe what just happened.”

Only the FreeVee transcriptionist captured the line as “Hey, Ellen, you won’t believe what just happened.”

OLIVE: Did he just call her ELLEN?

DAGNY: That’s gotta be a mistake.

WILL: Either that, or a really fuckin’ macabre joke on the part of the subtitle writer.

Back at the Mill, Charles is loading up a wagon for Mustache Man.

Then Rev. Alden appears. I wonder what day it is? Ellen died on a Friday, and since it’s unusual to do a funeral on a Sunday, I expect the service and all the Bible-face-smashing stuff we’ve already seen all happened on Monday. So this is Tuesday? But Aldi is still in town? His schedule is difficult to parse, but I suppose it would depend on when funerals would be happening, etc. Still, if he’s split between two parishes, much of it would be up in the air.

Well, Alden reports to Charles that Mrs. Taylor won’t talk to him, or to her husband, whom he calls “Cal.”

The Rev says, “After the funeral yesterday, she blamed him for what happened.” How does he know this? Did Cal come running to him in the night? (Where did he find him? Amy Hearn’s house?)

Then Rev. Alden says Caroline would be an ideal choice to talk to Mrs. T and settle her down.

DAGNY: The mother of her daughter’s murderer? This is a really stupid suggestion.

OLIVE: Yeah, why her? It makes no sense.

WILL: Because they needed to give Karen Grassle something to do.

Having no idea what Caroline would think, Charles nevertheless commits her to this ill-advised assignment.

Alden thanks him, saying “See you Sunday!” So apparently the two weekends a month Aldi spends in Walnut Grove are consecutive ones. 

As Aldi leaves, Garvey reappears, saying Charles needs to go explain his dizziness to Alice.

WILL: I do like Garvey, though.

DAGNY: I do too, I like him better than Mr. Edwards.

OLIVE: I like his butt.

Then we see Caroline Ingalls’s fine fetching bod a-struttin’ its way out to the Taylor hovel.

When she arrives, she addresses Mr. Taylor as “Cal,” so the Ingallses must have been on friendly terms with these people.

Cal calls her “Mrs. Ingalls,” though.

Caroline explains to him she’s merely out executing Rev. Alden’s cuckoo scheme.

Mr. Taylor says his wife has turned on him, and he’s planning to leave Walnut Grove. He says “I gotta get over this thing, too.” I do feel for him.

Taking his gun (which seems very wise, under the circumstances), he climbs aboard his wagon.

OLIVE: I like his belt.

WILL: Yeah. I have boots like that.

Mr. Taylor says he’s planning to say with his “cousin Clay,” who must not live too far away, and departs.

OLIVE: Oh, is that horse pooping?

WILL: Good eye, kid!

As I may have mentioned, Olive once had a joke published in Blaze: The Magazine for Horse-Crazy Kids, so her attention to detail here isn’t surprising.

Caroline goes to the door, but Mrs. Taylor sends her away, too.

One thing to note here: I’m a little color-blind, so I could be wrong, but it appears Ma’s bonnet here is not her usual Boo Berry number, but rather the dusky-pinkish floppy (Franken Berry?) she hasn’t worn since the first season (except in the opening credits). Did she just find it under a barrel of apples in the soddy, or something?

Then we see Laura, Mary, and Carrie walking to school. (The next day?)

They’re all bringing Miss Beadle gifts, so the implication is it’s the Bead’s b-day.

(For those of you keeping track, this is how we’ve charted the birthdays in the Little House Universe so far: )

SPRING: Nellie, Reverend Alden, John Junior

FALL: Miss Beadle (September), Charles (September), Caroline (October) 

WINTER: Laura (February), Jesus Christ (December)

(As a reminder, I’m aware this does not correspond to Charles’s and Caroline’s birthdays in the universe we actually inhabit.)

Laura says they have a surfeit of Bead-day presents, so she’s going to give the flowers she picked to Mrs. Taylor.

She also says she’ll “cut across Busby’s” to get there.

This kind of fucks up our established map, but I’ll see what I can do with it.

Arriving at the Taylors’ place, Laura knocks, and the door swings open on its own.

Bad sign.

“Miz Taylor?” says Laura, and we see Mrs. Taylor is lurking back in an inner doorway, staring at Laura like a hungry hyena.

Breathing heavily, Mrs. Taylor approaches, takes Laura’s flowers, and – in a wonderfully weird touch from Corrine Camacho – sort of kisses them.

“My Ellen always brought me flowers,” she says.

Then she looks up, and sees her daughter instead of Laura.

OLIVE: Does this really happen?

DAGNY: Well, these delusions are pretty extreme, but it’s possible.

WILL: Plus, we don’t know how insane she was before.

DAGNY: That’s not how I would put it, but yes.

OLIVE: I suppose.

Ellen “My Ellen” Taylor is played by Mia Bendixsen, who was in Martin Scorcese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (which inspired the series Alice). 

She also was in Prophecy – a horror favorite of mine – in which she and fellow Little House guest star Johnny Timko (Henry McGinnis from “Blizzard”) meet horrible/hilarious fates at the claws of a giant mutant bear. In one fell swoop, in fact, as you’ll see in the following clip (not gory, just fun):

Then she sees Laura again.

WILL: Oh my God, imagine you had this beautiful, perfect blonde child, and she suddenly morphed into Melissa Gilbert!

I’m ONLY JOKING, of course.

In fact, we get this weird morphing back and forth a few times.

David, who’s been giving us unimaginative-but-damned-effective “wind chimes” horror music, suddenly switches gears also. The tune he uses when “Ellen” appears suggests Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, to my ear at least, but what do I know.

Laura tries to excuse herself at this point, but Miz Taylor asks her to fetch some apples from the root-or-fruit cellar.

Stupidly, though probably even she can see where this is going, Laura goes down into the cellar.

Then Mrs. Taylor pulls the ladder up and slams the door.

WILL: Laura should fall asleep, like Mike Sheldon when I turn the light off on him.

(Mike Sheldon, as regular readers know, is Olive’s pet tortoise.)

Miz T drags the dinner table over the door, then snatches up all the evidence to dispose of. Dark, dark, dark.

[UPDATE: Now, when I originally posted this recap, I forgot to mention a note I received from knowledgeable reader Zaldamona, who wrote some time ago to inform me that “‘My Ellen'” was likely inspired by a book by Lucy Maud Montgomery, who I don’t have to tell you is the author of the Anne of Green Gables books.]

[The book in question is called Magic for Marigold, and it’s the story of another kooky Canadian girl and her crazy flights of fancy.]

[And indeed, in one chapter of the book, poor Marigold is captured and held prisoner by a grieving mother named Mrs. Delagarde, whose daughter “Delight” recently died in a tragedy. It’s a brief episode in the book, but certainly has significant similarities to “‘My Ellen,'” including Mrs. Delagarde blaming her husband for Delight’s death.]

[Thanks, Zaldamona, and hope this update doesn’t come too late! It’s only been about a week since I put this one up.]

After a perfectly timed halfway-through-the-episode commercial break, Mary comes running to Pa at the mill.

She reports Laura never arrived at school after taking the forbidden Busby Pass to see Mrs. Taylor.

“Well, maybe she’s out there visitin’ with Miz Taylor,” says Jonathan Garvey.

DAGNY [as GARVEY]: “She’s such a delight, after all!”

Hanson being nowhere to be seen, Charles and Garvey abandon their posts and go looking for Laura instead.

At the Taylor house, Mrs. T comes out and says she hasn’t seen Laura.

Worried that Laura’s fate is instead Busby-related, they rush to the home of this mysterious person.

Now we get our first good look at Busby. He appears to be a gigantic but not really unpleasant-looking man with a gigantic but not really unpleasant-looking nose. 

He’s sitting on the ground looking at one of Laura’s books, whilst her other belongings are strewn out around him.

WILL: He’s really enjoying that book. This is what I picture people’s faces being like when they read Walnut Groovy.

We’ve seen this book before. It’s “The House That Jack Built,” which Laura read to Carrie as a bedtime story in “The Pride of Walnut Grove.”

We didn’t get a great look at the book in that story, but now we see it’s the famous Randolph Caldecott version of the story. In reality, it wasn’t published until 1878 (in Britain), but that’s pretty close.

The publisher was either George Routledge & Sons or Frederick Warne & Company – two children’s book companies that spun off from the same parent in the mid-Nineteenth Century.

Randolph Caldecott was, of course, THE Caldecott – that is, the namesake for the famous Caldecott Medal, thoughts of which I’m sure bring smiles to faces of many people reading this blog.

I’m not gonna dig too deeply into Caldecott’s life, because if he was some hideous racist or rapist or something, I just don’t want to know that today. 

Anyways, Busby hears Jonathan Garvey’s wagon approaching and runs to hide.

It’s clear at this point David Rose is on Team Busby, because if he really wanted us to think Busby was a threat to anyone, the music here would be quite different.

But when Charles and Garvey run up to the house, the first thing they find are Laura’s slate and flowers.

Garvey, who so far has been trying to manage Charles’s expectations and emotions, suddenly goes “Oh my God!”, which seems like it might undo some of that work.

Charles remains calm, but he also sends Garvey to “round up some men.”

Meanwhile, back in the cellar, Mrs. Taylor comes down and orders Laura to put on one of Ellen’s dresses.

OLIVE: Laura should have found a shotgun down there. Pow!

Laura briefly tries reasoning with Miz T, then obeys.

Miz Taylor then goes into a mad soliloquy about how fun it was to sleep in the root cellar when she was a kid. Explains things a bit, I suppose.

WILL: See, when I was in high school, I used to do drama. I did Edgar Allan Poe monologues and I did them like this, because this is what I thought good acting was. Curse you, Little House! Tear up the planks, it is the beating of his hideous heart!

DAGNY: Uh huh. Is that a phone?

(No, it’s a lantern.)

Once Laura has changed, Mrs. Taylor sees her as Ellen again, then comes over and strokes her hair.

WILL: The slide whistle again. It’s becoming an Achilles heel for David. It’s not as scary as he thinks it is.

OLIVE: No.

WILL: Still, this is the most explicit horror episode we’ve had so far. I mean, not counting the one where Nels chops Mrs. Oleson’s head off. 

WILL: It’s the first one that doesn’t just have horror elements, it’s pure horror all the way through.

OLIVE: Yeah. Except for Drunk Garvey.

For the most part, Laura just waits and watches and lets Mrs. Taylor do what she wants. Right now, that’s undoing Laura’s braids.

Laura tries again to talk to her, but as David dumps the whistle in favor of slithery spacy madness music from the strings.

Miz Taylor shuts her down and insists she call her “Mama.”

After thinking a moment, Laura says, “I love you, Mama.”

WILL: I love Laura in this one. She’s so smart in how she handles this. I think this is the first story where she seems really mature, like she’s not a child anymore.

DAGNY: Yeah. That’s why they change her hair.

With a vein in her forehead looking like it’s about to burst a la Scanners, Mrs. T suddenly embraces Laura. 

The hug doesn’t stop Melissa Gilbert from doing some excellent eye acting.

Mrs. Taylor then sings a little song called “Ellen, My Baby,” though whether it’s yet another David Rose masterpiece or Corrine Camacho’s own contribution is a matter of conjecture.

Out in front of the Mercantile, a posse is being assembled. 

Ben Slick is there.

So is Cal Taylor, who’s brought his rifle along.

Jonathan Garvey, who in the short time we’ve known him has shown himself to be a level-headed person, tells him not to bring the gun, but Taylor says if Busby’s a maniac it would explain a lot of things, including Laura’s disappearance and why Ellen drowned despite being a “good swimmer.”

DAGNY: See, he doesn’t know about the beavers.

Nels, who comes out to join the search party, says he can’t believe the two incidents would be related.

WILL: Nels always gives people the benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t think it’s possible Busby had anything to do with it.

OLIVE: He’d feel that way about anybody, though. He doesn’t have a clue if Busby did it or not.

Out as Busby’s, we see the other members of this rescue/recovery party include Doc, Carl the Flunky, Herbert Diamond, Not-Richard Libertini, and a man we’ve never seen before who has the look of a French maitre d’ in an old movie. 

Charles starts talking about gathering lanterns, but Garvey surprises us by taking over the operation, saying it’s too close to dark to search further, and designating Cal Taylor to bring Charles back to the Little House. (Leaving the Chonkies in town?)

Even more surprisingly (?), Charles listens to him.

Taylor approaches Charles and says “At least you got hope,” and adds that Ellen’s twelfth birthday would have been the following day. Which is rather horrible given the circumstances; seriously, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, keep such fun facts to yourself.

The next day, Mrs. Taylor appears in the Mercantile, where Mrs. Oleson clumsily greets her.

OLIVE: Harriet is so awkward.

Mrs. T then shocks Mrs. O by ordering twelve birthday candles.

She also buys a $4 doll they have displayed on the counter.

OLIVE: How much is that?

WILL: About $120.

OLIVE: Seems about right.

Without mentioning Ellen’s name, Mrs. Taylor makes a psychotic speech about how the doll will make a wonderful surprise for the sweet birthday girl who brought her flowers yesterday.

Though as transparently suspicious as ever, Mrs. O completes the transaction. It’s interesting the candles cost 24 cents – about $7 in today’s money. For twelve birthday candles?

(Dags didn’t think this was that unreasonable. But come on.)

Out in the field, the Grovesters have resumed Busby-huntin’. With some success – they flush him out of a tree.

Despite his enormous size, Busby is a fast runner and gets out ahead of the posse, only to be picked off by Cal Taylor’s rifle.

OLIVE: Oh my God.

DAGNY: It’s like that Sting song.

Cut to Doc Baker opening his privacy curtain to admit the vigilantes to interrogate their suspect.

OLIVE: What? He’s alive?

WILL: Yeah. It just grazed him while simultaneously knocking him unconscious.

OLIVE: Come on. . . . He was shot in the HEAD!

WILL: No, that happens quite frequently. It happened to Harry Sullivan in “Terror of the Zygons,” which is how I know.

Busby lays on Doc’s examination table, barely responsive. 

Charles tries asking him what he did with Laura, then starts to attack him when he won’t answer.

But Garvey pulls him back.

DAGNY: We’re seeing the whole attractiveness spectrum of the human species. Charles, Garvey, Doc, Busby.

They never explain what Busby was like before this – clearly he’s meant to have some mental disability – but it’s unclear how changed he is from his head injury.

WILL: Wow, do you know who was Busby’s brother in real life?

DAGNY: Who?

WILL: The Professor from Gilligan’s Island.

DAGNY: Oh, yeah? I can see that, actually. He’s kind of like the Professor if you gave him something that made him grow to an enormous size. 

WILL: In fact, the Professor probably did experiments on him when they were kids, and that’s just what did happen. You know, like when those radioactive seeds washed up and everybody got super powers from the vegetables.

Yes, the actor playing Busby is Russell Johnson‘s brother Ken Johnson, who was in a few things, including Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses.

[UPDATE: Reader Vinícius writes that Johnson resembles the Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida, and he does!]

Anyways, Garvey once again takes command, clearly thinking giant-to-giant outreach is what the ol’ Buz needs.

DAGNY: Busby’s eyebrows look surprisingly good.

Speaking in a slow, deep, sad voice, Busby says he simply found the flowers and books on the ground.

DAGNY: Poor Bugsby.

He says he doesn’t know where or even who Laura is, then passes out.

With sudden savagery, Charles then attacks Cal Taylor, but Garvey again intervenes.

Then, in the most unexpected of developments, Mrs. Oleson suddenly rushes in and reports Mrs. Taylor is now even more crackers than they all thought, buying birthday presents for dead Ellen, and the like.

OLIVE: She’s the hero of this story, actually.

WILL: Yeah, I like that they gave her this. They never give her anything nice.

The men rush off to follow this new lead.

Back in the cellar, Mrs. Taylor is giving “Ellen” her birthday cake. (Others have noted it only has ten candles on it, not the twelve Mrs. T bought.)

[UPDATE: Reader jtoddward writes to point out there actually are twelve candles in this image – and he’s right. If you look closely, you can see that two candles are hiding behind others. Thank you, Toddward! I am strangely relieved to learn Ellen’s ten-candle cake is just a Little House Urban Legend.]

OLIVE: I would have taken her out Misery-style by now.

But Laura has a better idea, manipulating “Mama” into closing her eyes to help with the birthday wishing.

DAGNY: See, this is where her hair looks so nice.

As we’ve noted before, the origins of candles on birthday cakes are obscure. The first reference to blowing out the candles is from 1881, but some have argued the tradition goes back to classical antiquity.

WILL: Does she have braces? Her teeth are pretty shiny.

OLIVE: Just slimy.

The second Mrs. Taylor closes her eyes, Laura bolts up the ladder and out the door – but Mrs. T is in hot pursuit.

DAGNY: She should have slammed the trap door on her head.

OLIVE: Yeah, or poured boiling soup on her, or something.

There is a part of you that wants to see Miz Taylor get the full “Hansel and Gretel” treatment for what she’s done to Laura.

WILL: But don’t worry. She can’t outrun Laura Ingalls!

But she can, and she does – right on top of Ellen’s grave!

Laura screams at Mrs. T that Ellen is in fact dead.

Suddenly realizing her mental health hasn’t been quite the good-est, Mrs. Taylor breaks down sobbing.

WILL: I don’t understand this trope in stories. Half the time when you confront a psychopath with their delusion, it snaps them back to normal, and the other half it sends them on a murderous rampage.

DAGNY: That’s the risk-management continuum.

Laura then willingly hugs her, telling her to seek peace with God. (A trick she already used in “Haunted House.”)

OLIVE: Now, the mom’s hair looks TERRIBLE.

WILL: She’s pretty, though.

DAGNY: Yeah. She’s a ham, but she is pretty.

The rescuers arrive, and Laura, looking quite pretty herself, runs to Pa.

Pa verges on hysteria, but Laura calms him down, saying, “I’m fine, Pa.”

DAGNY: You’re right. She is pretty mature in this one.

Laura tells Mr. Taylor his wife seems to be coming to her senses.

WILL: This husband is completely worthless.

DAGNY: Yeah. Can’t control his wife, lets his daughter die.

WILL: That’s not what I meant.

OLIVE: If only he’d been there that day . . .

Then, in a nice epilogue, we see Busby survived and joined Laura’s Old-Man Besties Club. 

WILL: The camera should pull back and show his cabin is full of human bones.

OLIVE: It would be so fun to live in those times.

WILL: You always say that. It’s so foolish.

DAGNY: Yeah – you say that after “’My Ellen’”? Are you crazy?

Truth is just truth, everybody. Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

STYLE WATCH: Mary’s arrival at the mill to tell Pa about Laura’s disappearance results in an embarrassment of pinks.

Charles wears his plaid pants again, and appears to go commando in them, too.

THE VERDICT: 

WILL: So, do you think they should just let Ellen’s mom go at the end of this one? Or do you think they should put her in the asylum, or in prison?

DAGNY: I think they should let her go. 

WILL: Temporary insanity because of her grief?

DAGNY: That’s not the term I would use, but yes.

WILL: See, I would agree with you if it weren’t for one thing. She does one very cold, calculating thing that suggests she’s more in control than she appears. 

DAGNY: What’s that?

WILL: She PLANTS LAURA’S STUFF at Busby’s. She very logically and deliberately covers up the crime, and throws suspicion on somebody she knows the community is already wary of.

A Gothic potboiler rather than a story of real depth, “’My Ellen’” nevertheless stands up as a wildly entertaining pulp melodrama. Melissa Gilbert is at her most kick-ass, and Merlin Olsen continues developing Jonathan Garvey into a voice of reason and humanity.

UP NEXT: The Handyman