The Wolves

Abandoned Dog-ters; or

There is a Lot of Dog Genitalia in This One

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This recap is rated 13+ for tasteless observations. Be warned.

Title: The Wolves

Airdate: October 17, 1977

Written by Lawrence M. Konner

Directed by Michael Landon

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: It’s a bloodbath when mad dogs overrun Walnut Grove.

RECAP: A programming note before we start: This episode aired two weeks after “The Handyman,” as NBC made room for an ill-fated Laugh-In reboot featuring a young Robin Williams as well as Wayland Flowers and Madame.

Anyways, “The Wolves” brings in a new writer, Lawrence M. Konner. 

Only in his twenties when he wrote it, he would go on to become TV screenwriting royalty in the early 2000s . . . with three episodes of The Sopranos!

Good ones too; including the one where Junior sings. 

He also cowrote the prequel film The Many Saints of Newark, which I understand was not so good; but I never saw it.

The rest of his resume is spotty, but interesting. Konner wrote The Legend of Billie Jean, a film that inspired a sexual awakening in many people my age. (Well, in me, anyways.)

Konner also wrote the scripts for the Romancing the Stone sequel Jewel of the Nile, a Superman sequel and a Star Trek one, Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, and Stephen King’s Sometimes They Come Back. (My friends and I had a party to watch that last one on TV in high school. It was underwhelming.)

On television, he wrote several episodes of Boardwalk Empire, a show I never got into, despite my fondness for early jazz.

Konner lost the “M” somewhere along the way too.

Anyways, now let’s jump into our story, which this week is a corker.

We open on a shot of the odd humping hills that characterize southwest Minnesota in the Little House TV universe.

There seems to be a loud insect buzz on the soundtrack, unless it’s a technical difficulty. 

Or rattlesnakes, which we have seen before on Little House (despite their rarity in this part of the Upper Midwest typically). 

The most likely explanation, though, is that it’s cicadas, which are common and very noisy indeed in Minnesota in August and September. (I love the sound myself; I know many people don’t.)

We dated both “’My Ellen‘” and “The Handyman” to September of 1877-E (and the latter story covered at least two weeks of time, probably more). That would put this one in October at the earliest – late for cicadas.

Whatever the month, the bug buzz continues a long time, as the camera pans slowly across the field.

There is no music whatsoever – very unusual for this show.

ROMAN: Did David Rose die after the last episode?

Then we see an animal at the foot of a hill, some distance from the camera.

DAGNY: Is that a kangaroo? Is this one set in Australia?

And then holy shit, the camera starts to MOVE, advancing toward the creature first at a loping pace, then faster and faster. 

DAGNY: Oh my God, I LOVE this! Landon, right?

WILL: Yes.

ROMAN: It’s really avant-garde for Little House.

WILL: Well, it’s basically Jaws, isn’t it?

DAGNY: Yeah, it’s totally out of a horror movie.

If this cinematic technique also reminds you of horror films, it’s probably because the seventies, the heyday of horror, was also the heyday of the Steadicam, a then-new apparatus for filming smoothly with a hand-held camera.

In 1978 – a year after this episode – John Carpenter famously used the technique to suggest Michael Myers’s POV as he slithers around Haddonfield in Halloween. (Carpenter actually used a Panaglide, a rival brand to Steadicam, but it’s the same thing, I expect.)

The effect is pretty terrifying in the context of a Little House on the Prairie episode, though as yet it’s unclear whose point of view we’re experiencing here.

Whoever we’re supposed to be, “we” cross the field and come face to face with not a kangaroo, but a rather nice-looking hound dog.

It looks a bit like Nyssa, our own lazy dog at home, in fact.

This dog growls suddenly at us . . . 

. . . but then we cut to another camera angle showing a sheep a short distance away. 

WILL: Were we supposed to BE the sheep? Was that the sheep’s point of view?

DAGNY: No, there’s no way a sheep would run towards a dog. It was just a cool effect.

The hound dog snarls once, David Rose gooses us with a shock chord . . . and then a huge pack of snarling dogs suddenly appears on the hill!

DAGNY: OH, NO!

The effect really is frightening. Still images can’t really do it justice, sorry.

Well, the sheep takes off, and the dogs race after it, barking and snarling. I count at least eight of them. 

The scene kind of makes me shudder. I cannot imagine many things more nightmarish than being pursued by dogs.

Dags doesn’t like the idea either.

DAGNY: Oh, NO! Poor sheep!

The sheep heads for the shelter of the brush . . . and then my God, we realize we’re now seeing it FROM THE KILLER DOGS’ PERSPECTIVE!

WILL: Now this is definitely the dog’s POV.

DAGNY: Yes, it’s very disturbing.

“We” catch up with the hapless sheep; and snarl, and leap!

But before we can sink our teeth into the poor thing’s flesh, the camera cuts away – 

. . . to a shot of Bandit hopping happily through a meadow.

WILL: Whew.

DAGNY: Ha ha, that transition was great.

The title appears, and we see Bandit is on the grounds of the Old Sanderson Place, until recently the home of the Edwards-Sandersons.

(Although . . . where’s the goose-lake?)

Calming down significantly, David Rose now gives us a maximally annoying arrangement of that cutesy-poo “recess” tune he trots out from time to time.

DAGNY: Oh my God, Rose.

WILL: Yeah. He’s kind of uneven in this one. The horror music is great, but then he brings in this weird goofy stuff.

DAGNY: Well, I suppose he’s going for extreme contrast. I think it works, but it is a little much.

We see in the “yard” (such as it is), Laura is playing some sort of filthy roll-around-in-the-dirt game with a pleasant-looking boy of roughly her own age. 

Meanwhile, a woman hangs laundry on the line.

The kids call for her to join in the game, and we see it’s actually Alice Garvey, looking quite the prairie fox if you’ll pardon my saying so.

This suggests the Garveys have bought the O Sanderson P. Or maybe they simply took it, given Walnut Grove’s “finders keepers” policy where abandoned property is concerned (source: the Reverend Alden).

This is a side path, but it’s strange that they introduced the Garveys without telling us anything about them. And in fact, we don’t know how long they’ve even been here. Well, no, I suppose we can figure it out. . . .

By our timeline, the earliest they might have arrived was when the Ingallses and Edwards-Sandersons were in Dakota Territory the previous fall. 

With months of heavy rain through the earlier parts of 1876-E, there’s no way they would have settled before then. 

And surely they didn’t come to Walnut Grove any earlier than 1876? We’d have met them if they had.

Well, whenever they arrived, the upshot is, this “new” dirt-rolling kid is Andrew Garvey! 

Now, you’ll recall that when the Garveys were (weakly) introduced in “Castoffs,” Andy was played by Rusty Gilligan. (Supposedly he’s in “’My Ellen,’” too, but I couldn’t spot him.)

Anyways, the kid rolling around in the dirt with Laura is not Gilligan. I’m not sure why he was recast. 

But Gilligan didn’t actually have any speaking lines in “Castoffs,” and as we’ve discussed, Victor French’s departure for Carter Country shook the series a little, as the production team scrambled to rethink the Mr. Edwards scenes that were already scripted. So maybe things were just up in the air a bit.

Whatever the reason, there’s a new Andrew Garvey in town. Fortunately, he’s Patrick Labyorteaux, who makes a very likable and valuable contribution to the series from this point forward.

Patrick Labyorteaux is of course the brother of Matthew Labyorteaux, TV’s Little House on the Prairie’s Albert. 

As you probably also know, both Labyorteaux (the plural form if I remember my high-school French, though don’t tell the North American Scrabble Players Association that) dropped the Y from their names early in their acting careers. 

I’m not sure of the reason. If it was to make the name sound less French or “foreign,” I’m not sure it helped.

Patrick Labyorteaux, who seems from social media to have grown up a jolly, affable sort, went on to have a long acting career, most notably as Bud Roberts on the Navy law drama JAG.

I never watched JAG, but I have seen Heathers, in which Patrick L plays an evil high-school jock who receives a twisted comeuppance.

He also appeared in Blazing Saddles, Starsky and Hutch, Ghoulies Go to College (oh dear), Spider-Man: The Animated Series, CSI, Dexter, American Crime Story: Impeachment, and NCIS. 

He was on Love Boat twice. The second time, his affections were torn between Irlene Mandrell and the Pacific Princess’s own Vicki Stubing (aka the Carrie Ingalls of Love Boat).

(We watched this Love Boat story, “Vicki Swings,” in its entirety, and it’s pretty good by the Boat’s standards.)

Labyorteaux was also memorably featured on the poster for Ski School.

And last and fairly certainly least, he was in The Last Sharknado (which costarred Bernie Kopell, as a sea-captain!).

Anyways, Andy and Laura try to goad Alice Garvey into rolling in the dirt with them. She resists at first, then hoists up her skirts and spreads her legs.

DAGNY: Look out, John Pima!

But before she can jump into the dirt with them, Bandit comes up to the house. They deduce he’s been sent by Ma and Pa to bring Laura home. (The Old Sanderson Place is pretty close to the Little House, according to our map.)

Laura leaves, and Alice tells Andrew the dirt-jumping window has closed and he should go do his homework.

WILL: What on earth is that log for?

But when Andy’s gone, Alice actually does leap into the dirt. I guess she was curious how she’d do after all; I don’t quite understand the object of the game they’ve been playing.

Andrew, who’s been watching from the porch, laughs at her.

DAGNY: She’s a little coarser than Caroline, but she’s also more fun. 

WILL: Yeah. And ol’ Sourpuss Grace never would have done that in a million years.

“Cutesy-Poo Recess” swells up again to carry Laura home, where we find Pa bringing carpetbags out to the Chonkywagon, and Carrie looking like a stuffed dummy on the loft ladder. 

Ma and Mary come in from the master bedroom. 

Ma’s got her bloomers in a bunch because they’re traveling someplace and she’s nervous about leaving Mary in charge. (Probably she’s worried a hot handyman will come along and gobble her up while they’re gone.)

She tells Mary to “keep a close watch on that sore on Carrie’s leg.” Ick. You couldn’t think of something nicer to have her worry about, Lawrence (M.) Konner?

Ma and Pa are apparently going on a two-day trip to a place called “Twin Falls.” (To my awareness, there’s noplace called Twin Falls in Minnesota or any of our neighboring states.)

It’s also odd they’re leaving midday – most of the long trips we’ve seen people make on this show have launched early in the morning (which makes sense). I suppose it’s possible it’s Sunday and they’re leaving after church. But then why would they have let Laura go play at the Old Sanderson Place, only to call her back? It can’t be Saturday, because as we’ll see, the kids will be at school the next day; but never mind that for now.

Well, whatever day it is, away go Ma and Pa, without the least explanation of why they’re traveling to an obscure destination and leaving the children alone.

WILL: Not to be too topical, but do you think he’s taking her to have an illegal abortion?

DAGNY: Nah. Doc could handle that. Plus, he probably makes his own IUDs to nip the problem in the bud.

WILL: Oh yeah, like he made that engagement ring for Miss Thorvald.

DAGNY: Anyway, that settles whether it’s right after Unky Chris. It can’t be. There’s no way Charles would make an out-of-town trip for fun so soon after making that trip to wherever the hell it was last time.

WILL: No, you’re right. Plus, I’m remembering at the end of that one, Pa said he was going to take the next two weeks off to finish the addition. So this would have to be late October already if we’re still in 1877.

But the cicadas rule that possibility out, so this story can be set no earlier than August of 1878-E – nearly a full year after “The Handyman.” 

Meanwhile, at the Mercantile, Jonathan Garvey is shopping. (Is the store open on Sundays? Seems unlikely, though I can’t say for sure we haven’t seen it before.)

Anyways, Mrs. Oleson is pressuring Garvey to just pick a fucking frying pan already.

When he does, he adds some chewing tobacco to the order. Mrs. O doesn’t even bother concealing her disgust.

DAGNY: What’s her problem?

WILL: She’s repulsed that he chews.

DAGNY: I’m not sure I believe that.

WILL: Well, she’s quite refined.

DAGNY: Yeah, but she’s also the tobacco shop. She’d be thrilled he’s spending money. She wouldn’t give a shit what he spends it on.

DAGNY: After all, she’s a CEO. Money’s her top priority. She’s an expert in it. She sets all the prices, and she’s always correcting Nels’s math and stuff.

WILL: That’s true. That’s why it bothered me so much when they had that tax appointment and they had her be such an idiot. It made no sense – she’s greedy, she would understand the tax law backwards and forwards and work to cheat the system.

DAGNY: Totally. Do you think she cheats her own customers, though?

WILL: Well, the eggs.

DAGNY: Yeah. I don’t know if she makes a system out of it, like Trump.

WILL: Ha! You mean she just cheats customers in a regular way, like any normal business?

DAGNY: Maybe.

DAGNY: I mean, she is like Trump in that she acts out of emotion and because she hates people rather than for any practical or sensible reason.

WILL: Yeah. Trump totally would have demanded Bunny’s death.

DAGNY: Well, the writers are totally inconsistent with her. It’s annoying and kind of sexist. Sometimes she’s smart, sometimes she’s stupid. . . .

WILL: Yeah. Sometimes she’s a good cook, sometimes she’s a bad cook. 

WILL: She always takes the side of the worst people in town against her own friends.

DAGNY: Yeah, and against common sense, just to set up the plot. None of the other characters are written that way. 

Anyways, the door opens, and a very grumpy-looking older man stomps in.

If you recognize him, it may be because the actor, Don “Red” Barry, played the loopy but friendly farmer Rufe Parsons in “Fred.”

But here he’s a different character. 

Barry had a reputation for trouble and drama that often made it hard for him to find work. 

Landon used him six times on this show, though, so he couldn’t have been all bad.

He may or may not have slept with Susan Hayward, too.

Anyways, this grumpy oldster walks up the counter next to Garvey. Garvey nods warily and says, “Jud.” 

The guy doesn’t even look at him.

DAGNY: Why does this guy hate Garvey?

WILL: They have a history.

DAGNY: Oh, were they lovers?

ROMAN: This town IS crazy for that.

Mrs. Oleson charges Garvey 64 cents for the frying pan, or about $20 in today’s money. That seemed a little low to me. 

I was able to find an advertisement for skillets from 1902.

The numbers are hard to make out; however, if you believe the discussion at The Cast Iron Collector, the cost of pans in the old days probably started around $15 in today’s money and went much higher, depending on size and quality. And Garvey did ask Mrs. O for a cheap one, so 64 cents is probably okay.

“Jud” says to Mrs. Oleson that he needs some traps. Garvey asks what he’s hoping to catch and gets the bitchy response, “I don’t recollect addressin’ you.”

Harsh. You know, Jud reminds me a bit of my former father-in-law, except my former father-in-law has a heart of gold. (Spoiler alert: Jud doesn’t.)

He asks Mrs. Oleson if she has any wolf traps. Perhaps having overheard Garvey whimpering over cookware prices, he says he wants the most expensive ones she has.

“Ain’t no wolves hereabouts,” says Garvey. 

(If the sound effects in “The Monster of Walnut Grove” were any indication, Walnut Grove is in fact surrounded by wolves, who on the night of the full moon encircle the town and crazily bay till dawn.)

“I got two dead sheep that say different,” Jud says.

There were in fact wolves all over the state of Minnesota in the 1870s.

And I don’t think we need go too deeply into it, but to this day in Minnesota there is a DEEP divide (more or less partisan) about whether the remaining ones, however few, should be protected or exterminated.

Anyways, obviously, this finally explains where the sheep we saw in “Ebenezer Sprague” and “For My Lady” came from.

Jud keeps taking shots at Garvey until the latter leaves.

Once he’s gone, Mrs. Oleson says, “Well, it’s about time someone said something to him – stood up to him! The way he struts around this town!”

WILL: What the hell is she talking about?

DAGNY: I don’t know.

No more friendly to Mrs. O than he was to Garvey, Jud says just show me the damn traps, woman. (Paraphrase.)

While he’s looking over the merchandise, Mrs. O asks about the “trouble” that Jud and Garvey had with each other “back in Kansas.”

“Twarn’t no trouble,” says Jud. 

Now, I’m sure you recall, in “Fred,” Jud’s twin Rufe Parsons ALSO said “twarn’t.”  (In addition to whatever other . . . volatilities he had, clearly Don “Red” Barry wasn’t above doing his own personal script-editing!)

“Come on now, Mr. Lar[r]abee,” says Mrs. Oleson. (Editor’s note: In the show’s credits, the character’s name is spelled Larabee AND Larrabee, variously.)

Mrs. O begs Lar[r]abee to repeat his classic tale about how Jonathan Garvey once stole some furs from him. 

But Lar[r]abee, who doesn’t give a shit about her, just leaves.

Nels comes in then, and he and Mrs. O give us an expository conversation explaining the Garvey/Lar[r]abee conflict. 

Short version: Lar[r]abee accused Garvey of stealing some furs, but when the real thief was caught Lar[r]abee never acknowledged he was wrong.

DAGNY: Nels drank the Garvey Kool-Aid.

Nels is talking really loud during this scene. Like, shouting. Come on, Nels, Jud seems like the type who might kill you if he overheard a speech like this.

Mrs. Oleson says she doesn’t care if there’s proof Garvey didn’t do it, she still believes he did, because that’s what she wants to believe. 

WILL: I guess she really is Trump.

Harriet also mentions the chewing.

Back outside, Laura and Andrew are picking blackberries in the woods.

Bandit’s barking brings them to find what looks like a black German Shepherd mix caught in a trap.

DAGNY: Oh my God, is this one of the crazy dogs?

The kids run over, and the dog doesn’t seem crazy. In fact, it immediately quiets down and appears to start licking Andy’s hand.

Laura and Andy open the trap, and the dog limps over to a nearby bush, under which are hidden two small puppies.

“She’s hurt too bad to tend to her pups!” cries Andy. I don’t know why he would assume that’s the case. 

They don’t really worry about figuring out whose dogs they are, either.

Instead, they simply load Mama and puppies onto the cart Andy’s conveniently brought along and taking them home.

Laura suggests the Garveys, not the Ingallses, foster the dogs, because Mary is from Hell.

(I originally wrote “because Mary is a bitch,” but I didn’t like that because it’s sexist, and also I felt bitch didn’t work well so close to dogs because of its traditional definition.)

(I sent a note out to the college kids asking them to suggest a strong insult that’s appropriate for Mary without being sexist.)

(Amelia replied right away.)

AMELIA: C-word.

WILL: Oh my God, what’s wrong with you? I’m not putting the c-word on Walnut Groovy. And I said NOT sexist!

(Olive was more analytical in her recommendation.) 

OLIVE: Well, what does Mary DO to deserve this insult?

WILL: She bosses Laura around when Ma and Pa are out of town.

OLIVE: C-word.

WILL: This is not helpful.

OLIVE: Truth is just truth, Dad!

AMELIA: I’ve got it!

WILL: Okay. . . .

AMELIA: Twat.

WILL: . . .

Alexander and Roman, bless ’em, stayed out of it.

WILL: It’s strange how sexism is so baked into our language. Like, I can’t think of a non-sexist insult for a woman that seems strong enough.

DAGNY: I think you’re experiencing a White Male Lightbulb Moment.

Indeed. Well, speaking of Mary, back at the Little House, she looks frightening and severe with a white bandage or habit wrapped around her head, though I would not describe her as a c-word.

She’s peeling potatoes, and doing just as shitty a job at it as her mom always does.

Meanwhile, Carrie plays with the peelings as if they’re imaginary worms, or I don’t know quite what.

Laura bounds in, and Mary hilariously screams, “Where have you been, young lady, you’re late!”

“Huh?” Laura says. (Equally hilariously.)

Mary keeps screaming until Laura runs out, annoyed.

We cut then to the barn at the Old Sanderson Place, where Jonathan Garvey enters to find Andrew tending to the dog and her pups.

Garvey takes one look at the “dogs” and tells Andy what he’s actually brought home is three wolves.

Now, I’m not sure what the exact physiological differences between dogs and wolves are, but since the “wolves” that appear in fictional TV programs, including this one, rarely look all that wolf-like to me, there must be some obvious differences.

However, according to the IMDb, this episode did feature at least one real wolf, which was trained by a longtime Hollywood animal trainer Steve Martin. (Mind you, not the one you may know from L.A. Story.)

Specializing in wild animals and falcons, this Steve Martin worked on I Dream of Jeannie, The Addams Family, Bonanza, Napoleon and Samantha, Lassie, The Waltons, the eighties Cat People, the eighties The Fly, Benji The Hunted, Dances With Wolves, Wishbone, Babe: Pig in the City, True Blood, The Bourne Legacy, Jason Momoa’s See, and many more.

He also was a stuntman, contributing a warm body to 12 Monkeys, among other things.

AND he trained the Jaspers in Season One’s “The Racoon [sic],” which is fondly remembered by many of us I know.

Anyways, there is no explanation whatsoever why an injured mother wolf protecting cubs would be friendly to humans, to the point of allowing itself (and the cubs!) to be picked up and carried away in a cart without protest. This seems a little much to swallow, to me.

I asked my friend Dr. Omega, a veterinarian, to weigh in on this question. He watched the whole episode, and writes:

First, I really enjoyed this one. Second, I’ve known tame dogs that would bite from such pain, but for some reason the wolf doesn’t; this strains credibility in my opinion, but it could just be a nice animal. Unprovoked wolf attacks on humans are few to none; but the association of captivity with fear and anxiety would certainly increase the bite risk to humans approaching any trapped animal. In terms of domesticated animals, the veterinary community has recently been moving to adopt techniques that decrease the animal’s stress, both for the safety of the handlers and for the animal’s own well-being. In effect, this means using gentle restraint techniques and often some degree of sedation (from light tranquilization to full anesthesia).

Anyways, Jonathan Garvey, though concerned, does not display any of the ALARM you might expect. He apparently sees no danger in this situation, and furthermore seems not to make any connection, verbally at least, between the mother wolf and Jud Lar[r]abee’s dead sheep.

As I said earlier, there’s still a lot of hatred and suspicion towards wolves among rural people in the Midwest even today, especially among those who raise livestock. I highly doubt in this rural community in the 1870s, when wolves were far more common and seen as a nuisance at best, there’d be ANYONE speaking up on their behalf, or seeing them as anything other than a threat to their farms and homesteads.

But excuse me, I’m getting ahead of the story.

Well, instead of reaching for the pitchfork, Garvey gently tells Andy to take the critters back to the bush.

Despite his father being 100-percent loving and kissy-face with the wolves, Andy reminds him, the Garvey family motto is Animals are People in God’s Eyes.

WILL: Engulfed in his own bullshit! All parents wind up there eventually.

Jonathan G says that’s so. Then he says he’ll get Doc Baker (no doubt a fellow animal sympathizer!) to tend to the creatures.

Then David gives us sort of REALLY over-the-top romantic music above a shot of Andrew G cuddling with a puppy. It’s strange.

Then that same nice music carries us into a new shot, where somebody’s cow and adorable baby calf are hanging out in the pen.

And then, with no warning whatsoever, David blasts his horns, and the pack of hounds appears out of nowhere to attack the mother and child!

Not-Nyssa the hound dog leader oversees the carnage from the top of the hill.

ROMAN: Is that the Tony Soprano dog?

That night in the Ing-Gals’ loft apartment, Laura is burning the midnight oil, literally, doing her homework. The famous dictionary stands at the ready.

Mary snipes at her to blow out the fuckin’ lamp and go to bed.

ROMAN: Where is Carrie? Don’t you think they’d let her sleep up with them, rather than stay downstairs alone?

DAGNY: One hundred percent they would.

Mary puffs her prissy self up as big as she can in bed, and says, “Look. I did all the cooking, and the cleaning, and my homework, and I managed to finish.”

“That’s cuz you’re perfect,” says Laura. Ha!

Finally, Mary literally commands her to turn the light off.

Then Laura opens the shutter and sits down to read in the moonlight, which Mary mistakes for lamplight.

DAGNY: We haven’t had a Go to Sleep scene as stupid as this in a while.

Laura then, though she should know better by this point, more or less dares God to turn off the moon. 

Which He does.

WILL [as GOD]: “FUCK YOU, LAURA INGALLS.”

The next day, Doc is attendin’ or tendin’ the wolves at the Old Sanderson Place.

DAGNY: God, he’s sweaty. 

DAGNY: Does Doc treat animals AND people?

WILL: Well, yes. Remember, Nels said he was qualified in both.

DAGNY: Oh yeah!

DAGNY: I wonder how he manages that. You’d imagine he’d have as many animal patients as human ones, maybe more. There really should be more references to Doc’s veterinary practice if he’s been doing both this whole time. He’d be so busy.

WILL: Yeah. I mean, not like they need to go full-on All Creatures and have him with his arm up a cow’s ass half the time.

DAGNY: I think they should. I think it would be a very entertaining show that way. A country doctor trying to balance his human and animal practices. . . . 

WILL: It sounds like you’re talking about a spinoff.

DAGNY: It would make a great spinoff. But they never would have given him one in the Twentieth Century, because of the anti-gay bias of the times.

Anyways, Doc tells Andrew Garvey the wolves will be fine. (So they’re doomed!)

Then the mother wolf allows Jonathan Garvey to muzzle her.

Doc tells Andrew you should always be wary of wild animals, despite his own conduct suggesting exactly the opposite.

Then he and Andy do a sort of call-and-response rendition of “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” – a medieval saying later popularized in the U.S. by Ben Franklin.

Andy attributes the phrase to Bead Almighty, though.

Then Doc and Jonathan Garvey stand up together. At 6’2”, Doc’s always been one of the taller Grovesters – but Merlin Olsen was 6’5”. The effect is weird.

WILL: Doc’s turned from Gandalf to Frodo!

Garvey sees Doc off, and they have a brief conversation about the importance of not keeping the wolves as pets. No mention of any other concerns about their presence in this community.

Doc promises Garvey he won’t tell anybody about the wolves. (Spoiler: He totally does.)

Then, Charles-style, Doc makes kissy-noise to his horse (a first on this show!), and off he goes.

Meanwhile, Mary and Carrie clump out to a tree, in which Laura, perhaps inspired by her Unky Chris’s hard work, is making good progress building a treehouse.

“You come down here this minute and get yourself off to school!” Mary screams.

Laura just Parrot-Pollys her own words back at her, then swings down on a rope.

DAGNY: Melissa Gilbert is so happy she gets to sass Melissa Sue Anderson. You can tell.

Meanwhile, in the schoolyard, two Ambiguously Ethnic Kids and H. Quincy Fusspot are rolling around in the dirt. What’s with all the dirt-rolling, I wonder? Must be a craze that swept the schoolyards in the 1870s.

Meanwhile, Laura and Andrew Garvey are eating their lunches and discussing the wolf sitch.

Laura doesn’t find it worthwhile to tell the story of how her family was once surrounded by wolves (in Kansas).

Nellie suddenly appears in her fancy purple dress, and offers them a bribe to tell her what they’ve been talking about.

Laura lies, but Nellie doesn’t fall for it.

With the temptation of candy too acute to bear, Andy quickly cracks and tells her about the wolves.

DAGNY: What an idiot.

He serves up the story with all the trimmings, including Doc Baker making a special visit to the Old Sanderson Place to ensure the wolves’ health and survival.

“How interesting,” says Nellie (hilariously).

Equally hilariously, Nellie then gives Andrew a candy, but doesn’t offer one to Laura, since she “didn’t tell me anything.”

The bell rings (we don’t actually see the Bead in this one, unfortunately), but Nellie actually runs the other way, towards the Mercantile.

Nellie passes a Nondescript Helen and (possibly) Not-Linda Hunt on her way, as well as the Yellow-Wheeled Buckboard.

“Where is she going?” says Andy.

“To keep her promise not to tell anyone,” says Laura.

“But she crossed her heart,” says Andy. (A saying we authenticated last week.)

“She hasn’t got one,” says Laura.

Double ha! Well done, Lawrence (M.) Konner.

Then we cut to the Mercantile, where we can see in the background an advertisement for Cashmere Bouquet Toilet Soap (introduced in 1872).

(The poster calls it “Pearce Co.’s Cashmere Bouquet Toilet Soap,” which is a little strange, since Cashmere Bouquet was always made by Colgate.)

Mrs. Oleson is filling an order for Doc when Nellie runs in to report three wolves residing at the Old Sanderson Place. (Andrew Garvey didn’t actually say how many there were.)

(Meanwhile, Mustache Man drives by outside.)

“He knows,” says Nellie. (Indicating Doc, not Mustache Man.)

(Nellie’s Doc gotcha here is an exercise of power over an authority figure that’s unprecedented for her on this show.)

Doc, also breaking his promise not to tell anyone, frowns and says it’s true. 

WILL: Why doesn’t he lie? Does the Hippocratic Oath say you can’t tell lies?

DAGNY: Oh, no, doctors lie all the time.

Then Doc makes a rather extreme statement about how Jonathan Garvey has the best knowledge of wild animals of anyone he’s ever met.

To date we’ve seen nothing to support this claim, unless you count Parrot Polly taking to him right away. 

Mrs. Oleson doesn’t like Doc’s answer, and says, “What are you, a doctor or a veterinarian?”, which is odd, since she previously has spent quite a lot of time complaining about him being a vet.

After Doc’s gone, Mrs. O instructs Nellie to rat Garvey out to Jud Lar[r]abee.

I know her behavior seems evil, or at least is meant to seem so, but really, this is a logical thing to do, given the context. 

I actually expect CHARLES would do exactly the same thing, though maybe with a little more investigation before going straight to Lar[r]abee. And you’d think Doc, as the Chief Public Health Officer, would have an ethical responsibility to report dangerous animals to the authorities. Right?

It’s not really that different from the typhus breakout. When Doc and the others found the rat-infested grain shed, did he just shrug and say, “Well, that’s none of my business”?

(Dr. Omega: “Some vets might turn a blind eye, as Doc Baker does, in the interest of the animal’s health, but as you point out, it is a breach of the public health responsibilities we are ethically beholden to.”)

Then we see Mr. Hanson emerging from the Mill! He’s not been seen since “To Live With Fear,” Part One – ten episodes ago.

He and Jonathan Garvey discuss Sharles and Caroline’s trip, and Garvey says he “looked in on the girls the other day” and reports they’re doing fine in their parents’ absence. (“The other day” doesn’t make sense, since by the events we’ve seen, Ma and Pa left only yesterday [Sunday].)

Hanson then says a Grovester named Jackson has reported a cow killed by the wolves that have been terrorizing the area. (Presumably this would be the cow we saw attacked by the dog pack earlier. He doesn’t mention the calf, though; could it have survived?)

Hanson says the “wolves” didn’t even eat the cow, “yust left it there for the vultures and the maggots.” 

Garvey says wolves hunt for sustenance, so it makes no sense they’d leave a kill behind.

(It actually does happen in real life, though it’s fairly rare.)

Hanson says he has no idea about that, since he isn’t David fucking Attenborough. (Paraphrase.)

WILL: Did he dye his mustache?

DAGNY: I think so.

Then he tells Garvey it’s time to get back to work.

DAGNY: You were the one gossiping, Lars.

After school (?), in the Barn of Garve, Laura is blaming the Brothers Grimm for the wolf’s bad rap.

Jonathan G comes in (after work?), and Andrew says he’s decided to name one of the cubs “Jonah,” and Garvey says he’s a wolf, not a whale. Rev. Alden would love that joke.

Then Garvey says wild animals don’t have names, and it doesn’t work to keep them as pets.

Laura responds she once had a pet raccoon named Jasper, and that worked out just fine until he gave her rabies.

Actually, I only wish she said that. Garvey goes on to talk about how once in Chicago he saw “a lady with a lion on a leash.”

But he goes on to say the lion’s depression was apparent in its face. 

The last bit seems fairly ludicrous to me, but whatever. 

Anyways, all in all, it is a much better wildlife story than “My Best Friend the Crow,” by “Uncle” Chris Nelson.

And it persuades Andrew to let the wolves go free once the mother is stabilized.

Later, we see Laura working on her treehouse again. (The same day?)

She knows her way around a hammer better than that pantywaist John Junior, that’s for sure.

Then she heads back to the Ingalls barn to get a ladder, and Mary marches out from the house and yells for her.

WILL: Why’s she using her full name?

DAGNY: She’s just being a snag-rag.

Laura makes a joke about being Mary’s slave that no one would make today, but it’s pretty mild.

Mary says it’s “time to eat” (supper?), and Laura says her cooking is inedible.

WILL: Oh, I doubt that. I’m sure Mary’s probably a very serviceable cook at this point.

DAGNY: I’m sure that’s true. Laura’s just trying to get a rise out of her.

Mary screams and screams again.

DAGNY: Is that a new dress for Mary?

Actually, it isn’t – it’s a new and poofy pinafore that she’s wearing over her dresses this week.

Once Laura has submitted, Mary tells her the gossip about Hamburger Jackson, the murdered cow.

Laura snaps that since her own wolves are in quarantine, they have an alibi for the crime.

Then we see Jonathan Garvey at work. At suppertime? Can’t be, so this must be Tuesday, though the show doesn’t give us any indication that much time has passed. This is unusual for Little House, which is normally quite good at accounting for time.

Jud Lar[r]abee drives up in his own Chonkywagon and leaps down as Not-Richard Libertini and Mustache Man pass by in the thoroughfare.

This time it’s Garvey who doesn’t look at him.

ROMAN: What is he writing down?

WILL: He just came up with a really funny idea for his blog.

(Carl the Flunky passes by then.)

Anyways, Lar[r]abee has heard about Andrew’s wolves and demands they be handed over. He shows Garvey the carcass of a sheep in the back of his wagon – presumably the third one to be killed.

Garvey protests, again fairly unbelievably, that the forensic evidence of the sheep “don’t look like a wolf kill to me.” (Would a dog kill look all that different? I suppose that depends on the size of the dog. These days the dominant line of thought seems to be dogs and wolves both descended from a now-extinct common ancestor wolf, though throughout history they have been considered both the same and distinct species.)

(Then again, apparently wolves have stronger teeth and jaws than dogs, so maybe there should be more broken bones, or something.)

Lar[r]abee says he’s going to see to it himself that Garvey’s wolves die; but Garvey, with the quiet authority that comes easily to giants, says he wouldn’t advise him to try that.

DAGNY: This town really needs a lawman.

In response, La[r]abee’s face starts vibrating alarmingly with rage.

DAGNY: Wow. That outdoes even Aldi’s quivering.

Commercial break.

When we come back, Not-Nyssa the Tony Soprano dog leads the vicious pack out of the woods.

WILL: How long has this pack been together? Wouldn’t somebody have seen them before now?

Meanwhile, in the schoolyard, Not-Linda Hunt, the Smallest Nondescript Helen of Them All, and a girl who bears an unfortunate resemblance to Ellen “My Ellen” Taylor are skipping rope.

Andrew Garvey accidentally kicks a ball into a gap under the Mercantile porch.

DAGNY: Don’t go down there! It’s like that M. Night Shyamalan movie where the old people lived under the house.

If it seems odd the Olesons would leave a big ugly eyesore of a hole under their store, remember that Mrs. O was planning to have Uncle Chris work on a few more projects before he skipped town.

Thanks a lot, Mary Ingalls!

While he’s under the porch, Andy hears Jud Lar[r]abee and Mrs. Oleson discussing his wolf-killin’ plot.

Cut to Andy racing into the Barn of Garve.

DAGNY: I like his little cart.

WILL: Yeah, well, that’s the one he brought the wolves home in when they were berry-picking. I don’t know why he brought it. How many quarts of berries was he thinking they’d pick?

DAGNY: Oh, no, if you had a cute little wagon like that, you’d bring it everywhere.

WILL [as FRED WILLARD]: “I’ve got a weal wed wagon! I can’t do my work!”

He loads up the wolves, connects with Laura, and the next thing you know they’re hiding them in the Ingallses’ barn.

Meanwhile, inside the Little House, Commandant Mary orders Carrie to go collect her sister.

Things get very exciting now.

Carrie and Bandit are crossing to the barn when the dogs appear on top of a hill.

Mary hears them and runs out. 

WILL: Now watch this.

In terror, Mary seizes Carrie by the arm and drags her across the farmyard . . . only she trips, and Carrie hurtles into the ground face-first!

We rewound this sequence and watched it several times. NO, not because we thought it was funny. (What kind of monsters do you think we are?)

DAGNY: You can tell that isn’t the real Mary and Carrie.

WILL: What? It’s totally them! They do the whole shot without a cut.

DAGNY: No, look, there is a cut. It’s right there.

WILL: That isn’t a cut, they just fell down! You really think they’d have a hidden cut in the middle of this shot, like in Rope?

DAGNY: But she falls so hard! Why would Landon allow that?

WILL: Oh, no, I’m sure he wouldn’t. But I bet it was an accident, and he was like, “Holy shit! Yeah! Keep it!!!”

ROMAN: Well, they’ll have to switch to Carrie Two now, since Carrie One’s face got smashed.

They make it to the barn in time and bar the door. You may ask, reader, why Mary drags Carrie to the barn rather than back to the safety of the house, the latter of which actually seems closer to their position in the farmyard.

I don’t know why.

Whatever the reason, the snarling creatures first try to get into the barn, then turn their attention to the chicken coop.

WILL: Where did all these mad dogs come from? They’re all different breeds. . . . It’s like when Pee-Wee saves all the animals from the burning pet shop.

A pointer who seems to be the pack’s sort of second banana is the first to leap the fence, and the children are subjected to the dying screams of the birds.

DAGNY: Wow. This is grim.

ROMAN: Seven-plus.

Then SPOT also starts screaming! 

WILL: My God, they’re KILLING that stupid cow?

DAGNY: A lot of animals have died in this one.

A Base-Under-Siege Story is a rare thing on Little House. This one really does seem influenced by Straw Dogs, Sam Peckinpah’s infamously violent and horrifying film in which Dustin Hoffman has to defend his country cottage from murderous British rustics.

Rather than put on a record of bagpipe music to keep their courage up, Mary (who’s filthy from her fall) suggests they sing a song.

(This is of course reminiscent of Ma singing in The Pilot when she thinks they’re about to be killed by the Osage in Kansas.)

Unexpectedly, Andrew Garvey pipes up to request the Stephen Foster classic “Oh! Susanna” (already a golden oldie by the 1870s).

(Andy actually calls it “Old Susanna,” which I think is cute.)

They begin, whilst outside the mad dogs continue snarling and howling with rage.

The brilliant, terrifying irony is destroyed, however, when David Rose has the orchestra join the kids in a way-too-cheerful arrangement of the Foster tune. 

WILL: That’s David’s worst musical moment so far. Hands down.

I realize it’s meant to sound triumphant. It does sound triumphant! But really this would have been a fantastically suspenseful cliffhanger, otherwise.

Well, a missed opportunity. Anyways, when we come back, David has regained his senses, and is giving us scary thrumming music once more.

It’s now nighttime, and the kids are still stuck in the barn.

DAGNY: Bandit is far superior to Jack. Jack would be barking like crazy the whole time.

ROMAN: Yeah. And shaking his head because of the foxtails.

The dogs seem to be gone. They’re silent, at least.

DAGNY: Are they building a Trojan horse?

Carrie slurps that she’s hungry, but Mary doesn’t think it’s safe to venture out yet.

WILL: Just like in Cujo. She’s probably right.

Then they hear a scratching sound. It’s very quiet and not really sinister-sounding; but when Mary goes to investigate, she finds the mad dogs are digging to get under the barn walls. (This part seems influenced by the scene in The Birds – another great Base-Under-Siege Story – where Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren hear a soft tapping and find the birds have practically pecked through the door to the house.)

Mary screams that they need to get up into the hayloft . . . only Stupid Laura took the goddam ladder for her treehouse!

They use a table to scramble up to the loft (not super-believable in a barn of this size).

Meanwhile, the dogs outside are going crazy. A lot of them are, um, male.

The kids are able to push Bandit and the cubs up into the hayloft, but the dogs get in before they can save the mother.

Well, Mama Wolf, who’s gotten her muzzle off, leaps to attack the invaders.

WILL: “Come for me, Gmork! I am Atreyu!”

But she’s ripped to shreds (offscreen).

ROMAN: Did Andrew Garvey just faint?

DAGNY: If he did, Mary would want to date him. She does love nancy-boys.

WILL: So do you, fortunately!

Mary ponders their situation, then says since Bandit knows the way to the Old Sanderson Place (as established in the beginning), they must push him through a window and hope he’ll go for help.

Bandit rushes off past the outhouse.

WILL: Willie should be hiding in the privy.

But Not-Nyssa (another male) has been lurking outside and gives chase.

Not-Nyssa is a lot faster than Bandit. In fact, Bandit isn’t even really running, instead doing his usual goofy hopping as he goes through the field.

Realizing he can’t outrun his pursuer, Bandit tricks him into following him into a hollow log. Bandit can slip through, but Not-Nyssa’s too big.

WILL: He’s like the General Woundwort of dogs.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Garvey puts his horse away in the Barn of Garve. (Why’s he coming home so late?)

He notices the wolves are gone and rushes into the house. He and Alice realize neither of them knows where Andy is. (Alice doesn’t seem terribly concerned, strangely.)

Bandit appears at the door, and Garvey notices he’s bleeding from his hind leg – a bite from Not-Nyssa, I assume.

ROMAN: Do these dogs have rabies? 

WILL: I don’t think so.

ROMAN: But they can’t know that. Won’t they have to shoot Bandit now, just to be safe?

WILL: Yes.

I asked Dr. Omega if he thought these dogs were likely to be rabid. My sense (as a complete amateur, of course) was that it’s not likely, since a rabid dog has a brain disease and therefore would be unlikely to remain able to hunt in a group.

But he says it’s actually pretty likely:

It’s a good question, since the dog pack in the show attack humans despite presumably having other, larger animals to feed on nearby. Dogs experience a “furious” rabies presenting with progressive behavioral changes, so conceivably, a dog in the earlier stage could still conform with the pack behaviorally. Later, the aggressive behavior would likely lead to transmission within the pack, but also to destruction of the individual exhibiting such behavior (i.e., the pack would enforce its hierarchy; disease could spread, but eventually it would undermine the entire pack).

If rabies were suspected in Bandit, they would have had to quarantine him. I’m not sure of the exact timeframe of adoption of a 10-day quarantine, but in the Nineteenth Century, there was recognition of the need to quarantine an animal that was potentially exposed, for observation in case of development of disease.

And I suppose we have seen this in the show before, when Pa ties up Jack to watch him for evidence of the disease after he’s bitten by Jasper 2.

Anyways, Garvey concludes he must have been wrong about the wolves, and that the mother has attacked! Cursing himself, he rushes back out to the barn with his gun.

But he hasn’t even saddled up before Jud Lar[r]abee appears, accompanied by Mustache Man and Not-Richard Libertini. All three are armed.

ROMAN: My God, Mustache Man is evil in a lot of these stories.

Garvey won’t listen to their nonsense, but says if they want to come along to investigate the trouble, that’s fine.

Back in the Ingallses’ barn, the dogs are swarming.

DAGNY: There is a LOT of dog genitalia in this one.

Pointer the second banana dog jumps up on the table and starts trying to climb into the hayloft.

But Mary grabs some sort of canvas sack and starts whipping him fiercely across the face.

ROMAN: This is brutal.

But seeing this is no task for an underling, Not-Nyssa himself leaps up and rips the bag from her hands.

Fortunately, Mary also has a pitchfork.

DAGNY: Jesus Christ! 

Only then, Jonathan Garvey and the Pips burst in and blast the dogs to death.

DAGNY: Oh my God, they just start shooting into the barn? They don’t even know where the kids are!

Mary collapses in exhaustion, and Andrew Garvey starts blubbering about how “the mama wolf saved my life!”

WILL: Well, that’s not exactly accurate.

Nevertheless, Garvey accepts this claim and gives Jud Lar[r]abee a dirty look, then hugs his son.

Meanwhile, Mary weeps.

DAGNY: Mary is a fucking mess. She did a great job in that situation, though. 

WILL: Yeah. Why doesn’t anybody give HER a hug?

ROMAN: Yeah. Larabee should.

WILL: How are they going to explain all this to Ma and Pa? Where will they even start?

Then, in a strange epilogue, we see Garvey and the kids placing the cubs with another mother wolf. (Wolves apparently do adopt orphaned cubs.)

WILL: How on earth did they find this other mama wolf? Garvey just knew about it? He said “there ain’t no wolves hereabouts.”

DAGNY: I don’t know, but this must be where the term “baby mama” comes from.

Garvey says he’s going to get Andrew a puppy that “Old Man Stimson’s hound” just had, and that’s it.

Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

STYLE WATCH: Andrew Garvey seems to have somehow acquired the elaborately patterned shirt worn by the Elaborately Patterned Shirt Kid in “Little Women.”

THE VERDICT: R.I.P. Spot! A thrilling and very scary Little House indeed. The wolf plot is kind of seventies enviro-nonsense, but Landon clearly relishes telling outright horror stories, and this one really delivers.

Longest recap ever, I know. Thanks much to Dr. Omega, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL OUR GROOVY READERS! See ya again soon.

UP NEXT: The Creeper of Walnut Grove