The Creeper of Walnut Grove

Carri-et the Spy; or

Harriet Oleson’s Baadasssss Song

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: The Creeper of Walnut Grove

Airdate: October 24, 1977

Written by John T. Dugan

Directed by William F. Claxton

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Laura and Andrew call a truce with Nellie and Willie to solve a fairly obvious mystery.

RECAP: First up: the theme.

WILL: So these are the main characters, Roman.

ROMAN: Okay. Is the guy on the left Karen?

When we get to “The Town,” I realized some things have been bothering me about the credits lately.

First, it’s a different shot of Walnut Grove than in previous seasons, looking at the Mercantile from, well . . . from right on the banks of Plum Creek, you might say, ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

But that’s not all.

WILL: Wait, pause it. What is that? Did you see that wave of light or something moving in the bottom-left-hand corner?

WILL: Did you see it? Moving over the bush?

DAGNY: Yes, I saw it.

WILL: Well, what is it? It’s there every time! 

ROMAN: That’s probably because they reuse the same footage, Stepfather.

WILL: Well, what is it?

DAGNY: It’s just dust.

WILL: Dust? DUST???

ROMAN: Yeah, dust from the horses, drifting by.

WILL: . . . That’s some slow-drifting dust. The horses are long gone by the time it appears.

DAGNY: Well, what do you think it is?

WILL: I don’t know, that’s the thing! Aliens?

ROMAN: Maybe it’s excess radiation from Michael Landon’s tan.

Reader theories on this question are welcome.

With that out of the way, let’s get on with it. It’s “Cutesy-Poo Recess” once more as Bandit waits outside the schoolhouse.

WILL: It’s taken three years, but I really am starting to hate the school music.

Rather than wait for the story to start like the rest of us, Bandit simply barges in.

DAGNY: Ha ha ha!

WILL: You are such a sucker for Bandit.

Another new writer today – John T. Dugan, who begins a longtime relationship with the show. (Eighteen episodes in all!)

In addition to Little House, Dugan also wrote for Bonanza, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, Mission: Impossible, Adam-12, Columbo, Kung Fu, and Father Murphy.

He contributed an interesting episode to the original Star Trek series, under the pseudonym “John Kingsbridge.” (I know people seem to think using pen names will make them cool, but it never works.)

And Dugan wrote several episodes of Danger Bay, a Canadian adventure series that was a favorite of Dagny’s growing up. (I annoy her by confusing it with The Beachcombers, another of her favorites.)

WILL: Would you call Danger Bay an adventure series?

DAGNY: Yes! Adventure with nature elements.

WILL: And The Beachcombers?

DAGNY: Well, The Beachcombers was more like Magnum, P.I.

WILL: Well, that was an adventure series.

DAGNY: But it was more suspense/comedy/drama.

WILL: Well, what was Danger Bay like?

DAGNY: Did you guys have The Edison Twins?

After I stopped laughing, I told her we did not.

DAGNY: Well, The Edison Twins was also good. It was like The Peanut Butter Solution.

WILL: Well, I know what that is. Whether it was GOOD is arguable. . . .

WILL: But what was DANGER BAY like?

DAGNY: Well, what was the show with Opie?

WILL: Andy Griffith.

DAGNY: Danger Bay was like Andy Griffith, but with Canada and sea creatures.

WILL: But you said it was an adventure. Andy Griffith wasn’t an adventure, it was a boring sitcom.  

DAGNY: Yeah, I guess. But Danger Bay reminds me of it because the family element is stronger. Beachcombers was just middle-aged men hanging out.

Anyways, whatever genre these things were, Clax is back as director.

Inside, the Bead is holding a paper and strutting down the aisle. 

She’s wearing her Toht glasses today.

As she has with naughty dogs past, she dismisses Bandit from the premises.

DAGNY: Ha! Jack never came to town on his own.

In the gallery today, I see Laura, Nellie, Willie, Andrew Garvey, the Midsommar Kid, the Kid with Very Red Hair (Mean One), Not-Linda Hunt, an Ambiguously Ethnic Kid, Hangover Helen, Not-Ellen Taylor, and some newbies.

Mary is also there, once again wearing her godawful poofy pinafore.

Addressing a flop-haired strawberry blond boy, Miss Beadle says, “Timothy, this is an excellent essay. I’d say it’s another A-plus!” Why she’s singling him out for feedback on an essay in front of the whole class is beyond me.

Rather conversationally, Miss Beadle continues, “You know, I learned things about medical history I never knew before. But then, you’re the one that’s going to be the doctor, right.”

DAGNY: That’s right, defer to the man, even if he’s just a child.

Meanwhile, Tartan Nellie outs Andrew Garvey and Laura as possessing contraband reading material. 

DAGNY: Oh, is it porn?

Actually, it’s a couple of pulpy mystery stories, The Bleeding Hand Strikes Back and Murder on the Moors. 

Miss Beadle examines the books, which feature a detective called “Farnsdale Fremont, Master Sleuth of Scotland Yard.”

All the titles mentioned in this episode are fictional. Nellie calls them “penny dreadfuls,” a term we’re all familiar with now, but which would have been mainly used in Britain in the Nineteenth Century.

However, essentially the same literary genre did exist here in the U.S., where they were called “dime novels.” By whatever name, these were cheap mass-market books, often on adventure, horror, or mystery themes, churned out to satisfy the reading tastes of people who were literate but not highly educated – a demographic that had grown enormously since the Eighteenth Century.

WILL: They stock those at the Mercantile? It’s kind of low-class literature for them to have.

DAGNY: Yeah. Nels keeps them in the back room.

Regular readers know I mean no real disrespect to such “low” genres, which (then as now) attracted kids and young people to literature, and which (then as now) could be fantastically entertaining. (They were often racist back then, though.)

1878 alone saw publication of the following delightful titles:

Black John the Road Agent

Cato the Creeper; or The Demon of Dead Man’s Forest

Cloven Hoof the Buffalo Demon; or The Border Vultures

Death Trailer

Death-Face the Detective

Skeleton on the Hearth

The Death Track

The Death’s-Head Rangers

The Demon of the Deep

The Haunted Tower

The Madman of The Miami

The Madman of the Plains

The Masked Avenger; or Death on the Trail

The Mystery of Deadwood City

The Phantom Hunter; or Love After Death

The Phantom Miner; or Deadwood Dick’s Bonanza

The Red Wizard; or The Cave Captive

The Scalpless Hunter

The Silent Hunter; or The Scowl Hall Mystery

The Velvet Hand

The Witches of New York

The Wolf Children of the Llano Estacado

The Wolf Demon

White Serpent

And many, many others. By a fun coincidence, one popular series was published under the name Beadle’s! 

While most of the dime novels were “Westerns,” the Farnsdale Fremont titles in this episode seem decidedly British in flavor. I’m not sure if Dugan based Fremont on a specific character; but it wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, who didn’t appear in a published story until 1887.

Probably the best known fictional detective by this time period was Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin, the star of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter.”

Louisa May Alcott wrote a parody of Poe’s mystery stories (“V.V.; or Plots and Counterplots”) in 1865, but it doesn’t seem to have been widely read.

Wilkie Collins also furthered the genre considerably in the 1860s, and his books were known in America by this time.

Anyways, the Bead doesn’t give a shit what the kids read, as long as they’re reading. (An excellent policy!)

The school vomits everybody out then, and Laura notices her lunch has disappeared from its pail.

Andrew Garvey, whose hair today looks like it was designed by Cubists, gives her an apple. (So we’re in fall of 1878-E?)

Meanwhile, we see Andy’s dad shopping at the Mercantile, which is having a sale on padlocks.

DAGNY: Why are they advertising locks?

WILL: There’s been a rash of thefts lately.

MRS. OLESON: There has been quite a rash of thefts roundabouts lately.

DAGNY: Hm, you weren’t kidding.

Jonathan Garvey says meat has been disappearing from his smokehouse, and he and Nels discuss how all the missing goods have been food items.

Garvey departs, and Mrs. Oleson goes on about how happy she is the thefts are stimulating sales.

DAGNY: Does she wish it was a murderer so she could sell guns?

WILL: Of course. She’s actually a founding NRA member.

Then she says she’s going to raise the price of locks.

WILL: See, Savvy Businesswoman Harriet is back this week.

DAGNY: Yeah. She and Hanson should become arsonists. She could sell water buckets and he could build new houses.

Nels is shocked at his wife’s price gouging, though heavens knows why he would be at this point.

DAGNY: I was always worried about Nels’s health when I was a kid. Look at that huge vein in his temple.

WILL: Well, Richard Bull lived to be pretty old, so it probably was just good acting.

Harriet, who in addition to being the Mercantile’s CEO and COO is also its Director of Marketing, explains to her husband how it’s their job to convince customers to buy their goods on their terms.

She walks off saying if anything, she’s too soft-hearted. Nels mutters her heart is “hard as a rock,” but when she challenges him he says he actually said “I’ve got to check the stock.”

WILL: Rappin’ Nels! Appropriate, since it’s the fiftieth anniversary of hip-hop.

Over at the Mill, Laura and Andrew are discussing the robberies with Jonathan Garvey. 

WILL: He should accidentally behead them with that board.

ROMAN [as JONATHAN GARVEY]: “Oh, whoops!”

Garvey says given the thief steals food, they should profile the town’s fattest people. (Fat Joke #14.)

Andy says they’ve come up with a name for “the mysterious marauder.”

DAGNY: Is that like a Manitoba Mauler?

The name they settled on is “the Creeper.”

Andy says the Creeper might not be fat, but rather “somebody thin, with worms.” Gag, barf! Honestly, that image was NOT necessary, John T.

Meanwhile, Timothy, the Boy Wonder from school, knocks on a door at the upper part of the Mill. Mr. Hanson appears.

WILL: The Mill would make a good amusement park funhouse. That’s what they should do when they rebuild it for the fiftieth anniversary next year.

DAGNY: Hanson looks skinny, doesn’t he? Is he going to die?

WILL: No, no.

DAGNY: Good.

WILL: Not this week.

DAGNY: . . .

Timothy asks for a job, but Hanson sadly tells him he doesn’t have any openings. 

DAGNY: Do we know this kid from something? He looks so familiar.

WILL: I don’t think so. He kind of looks like a girl I dated in college, but you wouldn’t know him from that.

The actor, Johnny Doran, who has a relatively short resume, was in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The ABC Afterschool Special, and an episode of Robot Chicken.

But the thing that jumped out at me from his C.V. is The Wave, that terrifying true story in which a well-meaning teacher discovers how easy it is to turn nice ordinary Americans into Nazis.

Well, equally sadly, Timothy, who’s carrying one of those severed-head-shaped sacks we see Charles with from time to time, descends to street level, where he meets Doc Baker arriving in his phaeton.

DAGNY: Doc’s hat is falling apart.

A brief conversation reveals Timothy’s father, a Bailey Farrell, is recuperating from a heart attack. 

DAGNY: Is the dad lying in the back of Doc’s buggy?

Doc mentions Tim’s pa is unable to work, and says he should eat as much as possible to build up his strength. I’m not sure if that was really considered a treatment at that time, but it’s possible. Certainly they didn’t yet understand the relationship between a heavy diet and heart disease. 

Doc then changes the subject to a “college scholarship examination” that Timothy will be taking. (Tim seems a little young – Johnny Doran was fifteen – but we’ll let that pass. Far be it from me to nitpick.)

Doc notes Mr. Farrell’s infirmity must be hurting his ability to provide for his family. He offers to help, but Timothy says his pa’s too proud to accept charity.

DAGNY: So, the Creeper’s identity isn’t much of a mystery. Timothy’s stealing food to feed his dad.

WILL: Yeah. He’s the Jean Valjean of Little House.

“Salt o’ the earth, but Oyrish stubborn!” says Doc in a fake Irish accent. It’s been a few episodes since we’ve had an Irish stereotype on this show, but as I’ve pointed out before, rural Minnesota didn’t really have many Irish immigrants in those days. (St. Paul’s another story.)

My own theory is writers from big East Coast cities, like John T. Dugan, brought their own experiences of “poor white people equals IRISH” with them when they came to Hollywood and just sort of spewed them all over the place in their scripts. (Plus Dugan is itself an Irish name, of course.)

As for “salt of the earth,” that’s from the Bible.

Anyways, Tim runs off.

DAGNY: He’s really sweating through those pants.

ROMAN: Yeah, that’s an unfortunate look.

WILL: Why do you think Doc always wears black?

Out at the Little House, Ma is hanging laundry, and Mary and Carrie are churning butter. 

DAGNY: Is this the first time we’ve seen anybody actually churn butter on this show?

WILL: I think so.

Their churnin’ is quite slow.

DAGNY: Is that the right tempo? I always thought it would be faster.

WILL: Well, there was that guy on Two Fat Ladies who did it in time with Welsh folk songs. But that might be just because he was Welsh.

As long as we’re on the subject, here’s Dags’s and my favorite song about churning butter – surely the naughtiest one ever written.

Laura and Andrew Garvey are revealed behind a sheet. (Nothing improper’s going on, get your minds out of the gutter.) (But come to think of it, how come Laura DOESN’T take a romantic interest in Andy? He seems a better match than that scientist.)

Laura complains she’s hungry, having only had half a lunch, so Ma says they can have some apple pie.

DAGNY: She’s in a good mood. Did the handyman come back?

But her cheer dissipates when she finds her pie’s been stolen from the windowsill.

Pa comes home, and Laura says, having studied Farnsdale Fremont’s methods, she and Andy are forming “a detective agency.”

I love mystery stories myself, but I can tell you from experience they don’t equip you to solve shit in real life.

DAGNY: Does Andrew Garvey have, like, three rows of eyelashes?

Andy says they may only be kids, but so was Allan Pinkerton once.

WILL/DAGNY/ROMAN: The Pinkertons!!! 

Yes . . . the fuckin’ Pinkertons!

WILL: I thought they were complete villains. 

ROMAN: They were on Deadwood.

DAGNY: They are on The Gilded Age too. Strikebreakers!

Allan Pinkerton was a Scottish-born farmer who helped capture a gang of outlaws in 1840s Illinois. (Andy mentions this, calling it “the counterfeiting case.”)

From there, Pinkerton had an interesting personal history as a policeman, an abolitionist, and Abraham Lincoln’s spy chief during the Civil War.

But he was most famous for founding the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, who did do some actual detective work, but who are better remembered as skullcracking goons hired by government and corporate interests in the decades surrounding the turn of the Twentieth Century.

As Dagny noted, the rail industry (whose other unsavory practices we’ve seen recently on this show) used them as brutal strikebreakers against the early labor movement in this country.

A lot of people think the Pinkerton Agency doesn’t exist anymore, but it does.

Anyways, Carrie slurps she wants to help the investigation, and nicely, the kids tell her she can be a spy. 

Carrie runs off to hone her spycraft.

WILL: She’s Carrie-et the Spy.

DAGNY: Hee hee – that’s good.

DAGNY: Who know, maybe she’ll solve the whole case. 

WILL: Yeah. Timothy’s Valjean, and she’s Javert.

Well, Tim arrives home to his bedridden father, who croaks a friendly greeting.

The actor is Bernard Behrens, known to us from The Changeling, a horror masterpiece and Kaiser family favorite, in which he has a brief role as a boring friend of George C. Scott’s.

He was also in The Man With Two Brains, and his TV credits include The Bionic Woman, Baretta, Bosom Buddies, Highway to Heaven, and Friday the 13th: The Series, which both Dags and I found quite scary as kids.

He was in Roger Corman’s notorious Galaxy of Terror, in which he gets eaten by a monster, or something.

Finally, he stood in for Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the NPR radio adaption of the original Star Wars trilogy. (Ah, the Twentieth Century!)

Timothy seems to speak only in whispers throughout this episode, and in this conversation with the kindly Mr. Farrell, we realize he has lied, telling his dad he’s quit school and is working for a “Mr. Baxter” instead.

From the severed-head sack he produces “Baxter’s” “payment”: Ma’s apple pie and Jonathan Garvey’s ham.

DAGNY: A whole ham? That’s an expensive theft.

WILL: Yeah. It was always the first thing they’d go for on Supermarket Sweep.

The next day, we see Laura and Andrew scoping out the playground, where they’ve left some apple pie wedges to lure the Creeper.

They’ve disguised themselves as bushes, a trick from “For My Lady” Laura must have liked enough to reuse.

WILL: This is what we should do at the fiftieth reunion so we can get into the VIP stuff.

David Rose, meanwhile, is giving us some highly funky (well, for him) “detective” music. It’s a little gritty and decidedly seventies in style; more French Connection or Shaft than Sherlock Holmes. (Maybe not Shaft.)

Andy notes this was a tactic used by Farnsdale Fremont to catch “the Beast of Britain.”

The kids’ cover is blown, however, when Bandit rushes over barking. 

WILL: See, Bandit’s not all about saving lives and good behavior.

ROMAN: Well, he probably has rabies from last week.

When he stops, Laura notices the pie has disappeared.

DAGNY: How does this kid not get seen? In the middle of recess, with everybody out on the playground?

WILL: He has powers of invisibility. It’s from one of the scientist’s experiments that went wrong.

Then Laura, citing another Fremont book, The Curse of Crown Castle, idiotically has Bandit smell her lunch in the hopes he’ll track down the thief. But he just takes her sandwich.

A couple days pass then, and we join the Grovesters at church. They’re singing “Shall We Gather at the River?”

Church is packed; Johnny Cash Fusspot, Not-Carl Sanderson, Not-Richard Libertini, and Not-Paul Rudd are there, among many others.

Reverend Alden does some announcements before the sermon, which doesn’t seem proper, but what do I know.

He announces “Mr. and Mrs. Spadelli” are the proud parents of a new baby. 

WILL: Since when are there Italians in this town?

Aldi then asks the congregants to pray for Old Blarney Farrell’s recovery.

DAGNY: You’d think all these people would be Catholic.

ROMAN: Well, they could still pray for them, right?

WILL: In my Protestant church growing up, they taught us they were hellbound, so there was no point.

We were not Aldenite Congregationalists, of course, but rather the cruelest sect of Lutherans that anthropologists have discovered to date. (Don’t worry, my best friend in high school was Catholic, so I threw all that crap out the window a long time ago.)

ROMAN: The Midsommar Kid’s getting big. 

WILL: Yeah. He looks like you!

Then the Rev says, “Oh, Mrs. Oleson wishes to report that the Mercantile was broken into last night and robbed.”

“Yes!” exclaims Mrs. Oleson, rising like Maleficent at the christening.

Mrs. O is offering a $5 reward ($150 today) for the Creeper’s capture. A Republican through and through, she lectures the congregation about their immorality and the horrors of crime in the city, but Nels gives her the vaudeville hook.

She does manage to add that shotguns are now on sale at your friendly neighborhood Mercantile, and Aldi makes a pooh-pooh face at her.

WILL: Sometimes Dabbs Greer is a little over-the-top.

DAGNY: Yeah, that’s why Olive hates him.

After the service, Nels tells the kids they’ll be driving over to visit their Aunt Victoria, but Nellie responds, “Aunt Vickie’s a whore.”

At least, that’s what Dags thought. Actually, it’s “Aunt Vickie’s a bore,” but you really could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Nels smacks down this line of talking, telling the kids they need to show respect to “your mother’s sister.”

WILL: Her SISTER? But Harriet isn’t from Walnut Grove.

Yeah. Now I hope you don’t mind if I put the brakes on here, but every piece of information about the Olesons’ background is valuable, even if it contradicts what we’ve heard before.

With apologies to Farnsdale Fremont, here are the facts of the case as we’ve deduced them to date. (We’ll call it “Harriet Oleson’s Baadasssss Song.”)

1. Nels Oleson, not surprisingly, is of Swedish heritage, but we don’t know if he’s a native Minnesotan.
2. Harriet Oleson is not from Minnesota, but rather comes from Sullivan County in Indiana, near Terre Haute.
3. Harriet grew up in a wealthy family whose lifestyle included such luxuries as private voice lessons and regatta-watching. There are suggestions she exaggerates her background somewhat, but she does possess a fine silver cup (a family heirloom), and she tells Nellie that Nels married her for two valuable horses that were her dowry.

4. Nels met Harriet in Indiana, and it was his idea to come (back?) to Minnesota and open the shop. (Did he cash in the horses to raise the capital?)

5. Harriet’s maiden name is unknown. 

6. Her mother is still alive, or was so as recently as “The Monster of Walnut Grove.” She lives some distance from Walnut Grove, as Harriet leaves town for days to visit her. It is implied her father is no longer living.

7. Harriet’s other known relations include her niece, Kate Thorvald, aka “Doctor’s Lady.” Kate is a blood relative of Harriet’s (she looks it, too), but she mentions her father had more money than Harriet’s family. So, we can deduce Harriet is Kate’s aunt through her sister, Kate’s mother. Kate’s parents live in Chicago.

8. Harriet also has a cousin, Minerva Farnsworth, who lives in Minneapolis. It’s possible Harriet is herself a Farnsworth (that is, that her father and Miss Farnsworth’s father were brothers); but I think it’s unlikely. Miss Farnsworth is also much wealthier than her cousin, suggesting that her mother, like Kate Thorvald’s, married a very rich man from a different family. That would make Mrs. Farnsworth (Minerva’s mother) either Harriet’s father’s (older?) sister, or her mother’s. Either way would mean Harriet’s no Farnsworth.

Unfortunately, this episode’s introduction of “Aunt Victoria” is hard to square with this history. Nels explicitly says Victoria is Harriet’s sister, so there’s no getting around that. (If she were his sister it would make more sense.)

We can surmise Victoria is unmarried or a widow, since no uncle is mentioned. In fact, it’s possible that she is Kate Thorvald’s mother, who now has moved to Minnesota following the death of Mr. Thorvald, to be closer to Harriet. (Considerable time has passed since the events of “Doctor’s Lady,” after all.)

But as much as this theory is attractive (for one, it would make it possible we might see Kate again!), it doesn’t really make sense. We don’t know where Kate wound up, but it wasn’t Walnut Grove, and it seems unlikely Victoria Thorvald would seek to live closer to Harriet than to her own daughter. (Or her widowed mother, for that matter, though it’s possible Victoria and Harriet’s mom has passed since “Monster.”) 

Of course, maybe Victoria is just as bad as Harriet is, or worse, and Kate’s husband took steps to drive her away. But Nels seems to have no objection to the visit, so she can’t be that bad. Then again, if she has been living here, why haven’t we seen her yet?

Well, perhaps we’ll find out. One thing I do like about this history, though, is that it leaves plenty of room for the possibility that Harriet truly is in love with Nels, and that she married him for that reason alone. 

After all, he had no money himself – why else would he need to marry a rich woman to open a store? – and yet, for all her pretend worldliness, Harriet did marry him, left her comfortable and sophisticated family home, and followed him from leafy Terre Haute to Shithole Township, Minnesota.

Well, the last thing I want to do with this side discussion is distract from a shocking sight behind the Olesons: Doc Baker, walking ARM IN ARM with THE BEAD!

DAGNY: Wow, is she barking up the wrong tree.

WILL: Well, her biological clock is ticking.

WILL: We have seen her flirting with Hanson before, but never Doc.

DAGNY: Well, that explains it. She loves them, but as friends. She knows their secret and helps cover it up. She’s their beard!

Anyways, Mrs. O tells Nellie and Willie they can stay home, provided they watch the store. Overhearing this, Laura and Andrew Garvey get an idea, and ask their parents, who are all standing around together chatting, if they can stay in town after church.

DAGNY: Ma and Pa are getting awfully friendly with the Garveys. Do you think they’re all swingers?

WILL: Yeah. Chuck & Carol & Jon & Alice.

Laura and Andy approach Nellie and Willie and suggest they investigate the Mercantile – the most recent crime scene – together.

After Willie negotiates a senior partnership in the agency, the Oleson kids agree.

WILL: You know, they treat Willie just like Mrs. Oleson. Sometimes smart, sometimes dumb, sometimes evil, sometimes nice. . . .

They agree to use a method favored by Farnsdale Fremont in The Mask of the Mummy: fingerprinting.

Some viewers have suggested this is anachronistic, since modern police forces didn’t begin using fingerprints to identify suspects until the 1890s. 

However, the technique had been suggested to police by amateur sleuths at least as early as the 1860s, and in fact some suggest they were used for investigations dating back to ancient times. I think it’s fair to assume the brilliant Inspector Fremont is simply ahead of his time on this one.

In the case of the Creeper of Walnut Grove, our detectives use flour to dust surfaces all over the Mercantile, Nellie and Willie managing to dump a whole bag over both their heads.

Laura, her face stuffed with candy, screams, “Oh, there’s a ghost!” and laughs her head off.

Nels and Mrs. Oleson return in the midst of all this, and Nels kicks Laura and Andy out.

Hilariously, Mrs. O shrieks and yells “Get away from me!” when they pass by her.

Others have noted Nellie gets progressively more flour on her face between shots in this scene.

Nels threatens to beat them, but Harriet says she’ll “go change the children.” Rappin’ Nels says, “If you only could,” but when his wife questions him, he alters it to “I wish you would.”

After a break, and to sort of Burt Bacharach-y music, Laura, Andrew, Nellie, and Willie regroup. 

DAGNY: Are those new boots for Nellie? They’re nice.

Blink and you’ll miss them, but at the beginning of the shot, a wagon drives by that appears to be carrying Not-Richard Libertini as well as (presumably) his sons, the my-Ellen-murdering Mean Kid With Very Red Hair and his pervert little brother Peeping Tommy.

Together, Oleson Ingalls Garvey plots to plant some bait at “Tyler’s Feed and Grain.” Presumably this is the business better known (at least according to its own sign) as the Walnut Grove Feed & Seed? 

I suppose if it’s now run by a man called Tyler, he might have changed the formal name when he took possession yet not bothered with the expense of a new sign.

(Perhaps this Tyler is the son of Jim “Bull of the Woods” Tyler, the fake hero of Founder’s Day 1879(A)? Surely Big Jim himself would be too old to run a business by this point; I’d be surprised if he’s still living, in fact.)

Considering it’s one of Walnut Grove’s legacy businesses, the Feed & Seed has figured in just a few of our stories so far. Nevertheless, its history is an evil one. 

First it was run by Liam “Shifty O’Crafty” O’Neil, who took advantage of Charles’s serious injury to cheat him out a yoke of oxen.

After he was run out of town, management of the place went to a man named Peterson, who, while nice, allowed rats to overrun his grain stores, which led to a terrible typhus outbreak.

Improbably, the business survived, and now it’s run by Mr. Tyler, who apparently has the reputation of a fool around town. At least, it appears he doesn’t lock the F & S’s doors at night, and the kids think it likely all the Grovesters will believe he leaves large amounts of money unattended inside.

WILL: Where is Kezia? You’d think she’d love to be involved in these crazy schemes.

It is fun to see these four playing together nicely for once.

That night, Laura and Andrew infiltrate the Feed & Seed.

At first it actually DOES look like Andy’s going to kiss her in the dark.

DAGNY: Andrew Garvey!

ROMAN: This is weird music for kissing, though.

It’s true. The “sneaky” music is reminiscent of David’s dark masterpiece from Season One, “CRAB ATTACK!!” 

Back at the Olesons’ house, Harriet is enjoying some interesting reading material herself. The cover features a hottie in a miniskirt.

DAGNY: Now SHE’s reading porn!

The title of the magazine is The National Police Digest. This doesn’t appear to have been a real publication, but it’s obviously based on The National Police Gazette, a racy magazine founded in 1845 which, according to Wikipedia, was “the forerunner of the men’s lifestyle magazine, the illustrated sports weekly, the girlie/pin-up magazine, the celebrity gossip column, Guinness World Records-style competitions, and modern tabloid/sensational journalism.”

The Gazette still existed in 1977, which is perhaps why they decided to alter its title to the Digest for television.

The cover advertises that the issue contains “the beauty secrets of Cleopatra,” and in fact when the camera pulls back, we see Mrs. O’s face is slathered with a thick cream, her eyes are ringed with blue, and her hair is tied up with a gauzy scarf.

Ignoring the Egyptian cue from the script, David instead chooses to highlight Harriet’s clown-like appearance, giving us a snippet of “Entrance of the Gladiators” (aka “Thunder and Blazes”), the famous circus tune we’re all still familiar with today, even if we’re no longer familiar with circuses themselves.

The piece was written by Julius Fučík (don’t forget that Í!) in 1897.

Meanwhile, Nels is asleep in bed, and we see some weird tan lumpy legs sneaking around in the hallway.

ROMAN: Are those even human legs?

WILL: It’s an Auton.

But the weird tan lumpy legs are Willie’s (in his stockings).

Hearing footsteps, Mrs. O looks into the hall just in time to see Nellie and Willie sneak out.

She wakes Nels up, squawking that their own children are the Creeper!

Having heard the rumor about Tyler storing loot at the Feed & Seed, she assumes that’s their target, and off she and Nels go in pursuit.

WILL: MacG is good in this one.

Meanwhile, back at the Feed & Seed, the Oleson kids use a “secret” knock – “shave and a haircut, two bits.” (A slight anachronism.)

And when Mrs. Oleson arrives, Andrew Garvey screams “YEEOW!!!” and all four leap onto her.

Hilariously, Laura says, “Ew, it’s greasy!” as they’re apprehending the intruder.

But when Nels arrives they realize it’s not the Creeper after all, just Mrs. O covered by cold cream and straw.

Nels brings Laura home, where Pa (fully dressed, strangely – the others are in their jammies) gives everyone a pretty harsh lecture. Harsh for him, anyways. 

(Someone at the IMDb suggests this scene was inspired by an episode of The Flintstones. I find that pretty doubtful, but I guess I’m not one to talk.)

“Nobody goes out at night!” says Charles. “Nobody, unless it’s to go to the outhouse, and you darn well better have to go!”

Right on cue, Carrie steps forward and says, “I have to go.”

DAGNY: Wouldn’t they have noticed Laura went out?

WILL: Nah. They sneak out all the time on this show. Those dogs are useless.

DAGNY: But Mary’s there. She’s the best guard dog anybody could want on this show.

Then Pa bans the reading of all Fremont Farnsdale books.

Suddenly Carrie rushes back in to slurp that the Creeper’s in the henhouse!

WILL: It should be Uncle Chris coming back to abduct Caroline.

Pa checks it out, and reports the thief has absconded with “Matilda,” Ma’s “best-laying hen.”

Now, you’ll recall from last week that the Ingallses’ entire livestock possessions, with the exception of the Chonkies and Bandit, were killed by the feral dog pack. This would have been a crippling loss for this poor family, and I think it’s fair to Matilda’s theft would not be so casually received if it’s only a month or two later. 

Someone at the IMDb suggests the rescuers who blasted the dogs to death in “The Wolves” might have each donated a chicken to replace the dead birds. Not an impossible theory, of course, but why would they have done that? They weren’t responsible for the dogs. Certainly Jud Lar[r]abee wouldn’t help in a million years; and as for the others, they’re nicer, but they’re also just as poor as Charles & Co. 

I think we have to conclude it’s been over a year now and the Ingallses’ fortunes have improved somewhat. 

The next day, Laura and Andrew Garvey are fishing. (On a Monday???)

Despite their parents’ warnings, they continue to pick over theories about the Creeper. 

Andrew suggests setting booby traps to catch him, as Inspector Fremont did in The Headless Corpse of Midnight Manor and The Red Shroud of Satan.

(Oddly, Laura does not mention her own encounter with a real headless person in “The Monster of Walnut Grove.”)

Then, for no real reason whatsoever, Andy whips his fishing pole out of the water and smacks Laura in the face with a lily pad or some other horrible plantstuff.

DAGNY [laughing]: That was good. That might be the funniest thing that’s ever happened on this show.

Back at the Farrell house, Old Blarney is sitting up and stuffing his face.

DAGNY: Oh, the dad’s getting better! I thought he was in hospice.

Old Blarney laughs how he’s enjoying his diet of ham and eggs three times a day.

DAGNY: That would not be the recommended diet today for a cardiac patient.

WILL: Gives new meaning to “heart attack on a plate,” though.

Blarney and Timothy have another expository conversation in which we learn Tim is now pretending to have a night job. He also mentions his scholarship exam is coming up on Friday.

Then we see Tim creeping back to the Ingallses’ henhouse after dark.

Bandit, on guard duty, begins barking, and Pa rushes out, this time with his gun.

ROMAN: Is this the first time Charles murders a child?

To tense music, Pa approaches the henhouse.

ROMAN: I don’t like the music in this one. It’s way too much. We already know who the Creeper is, there’s no need for terrifying music.

Pa opens the door, and a bucket falls on his head.

Inside, the Ing-Gals all get up.

DAGNY: Caroline’s got Pima hair again in this one. I’m sure John Pima’s got several pictures of her from this one hidden around the house at home.

They find Pa standing in the doorway, dripping with thick green paint.

DAGNY: It’s You Can’t Do That on Television.

WILL: I was gonna say Double Dare.

DAGNY: Nah, say You Can’t Do That on Television. It’s Canadian.

Then we get the obligatory thirst shot of muscle-bound Charles, sitting naked in a tub covered with green bubbles.

DAGNY: He looks like that big green guy.

WILL: The Jolly Green Giant?

DAGNY: No, the angry green guy from the seventies.

WILL: Mr. Yuk?

Actually, she meant this guy.

Caroline rinses him off, but his hair’s still green. 

David gives us “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” in the orchestra.

WILL: Too far, Rose.

DAGNY: Yeah. I hate South Pacific.

The next day (again), Pa is sitting at the breakfast table wearing his hat – an etiquette no-no, though nobody seems to care about it today. I do, though.

Stranger than the hat is that today we can see the horse pen immediately outside the window. Apparently it’s grown tremendously in size; or perhaps they moved it closer to the house, so next time there’s a dog attack Carrie won’t have as far to run. Or, from the looks of it, both.

Pa yells at Laura, saying he’s going to punish her with extra chores on Saturdays and Sundays.

“Charles,” Ma says gravely, “not on Sunday.”

WILL: Oh my God, Ma. Give it a rest.

Meanwhile, Timothy shows up at school for his scholarship exam. Or no, that can’t be right, since he said it was scheduled for Friday and today’s only Tuesday. I realize you’re new to this gig, John T. Dugan, but if you think the Little House audience isn’t going to notice GROSS ERRORS like that, you’re mistaken.

Nobody else is at school except the Bead and Doc. Did they make it a holiday just so one stupid kid could take a test?

The Bead chirps, “You know, you’d be the first person to win a scholarship from these parts since John Junior!”

WILL: So obviously she doesn’t hold the whole cheating-on-Mary thing against him, huh.

DAGNY: Nah. Adults don’t give a shit about kids’ breakups.

Doc wishes Timothy good luck.

DAGNY: He’ll be a good doctor. His lips are pink and livery, just like Doc’s.

The test commences.

After a commercial break, we find ourselves standing inside the church looking down the steps.

DAGNY: This is a weird angle. We’ve never seen them from the church door.

WILL: It’s a new camera technique they developed in the seventies. It was called AldiVision.

The Kid with Very Red Hair is ringing the bell, and tons of people are pouring in for church.

DAGNY: Who are all these nobodies?

It is true this season has rotated in some new or at least lesser-used supporting Grovesters. In order of their arrival, today we have:

• The Sharp-Faced, Paranoid-Looking Brother from “The Wisdom of Solomon”;

• Not-Ellen Taylor;

• Mr. Nelson the Gray-Haired Dude, and a woman who looks quite a bit like our friend and sometime Walnut Groovy commentator Luba;

• A woman who looks like Jamie Luner (of Just the Ten of Us fame), and the man who looks like a French maitre d’;

• Not-Carl Sanderson;
• An AEK; 
• The Chonkies; and
• The Ingallses.

The Chonkies don’t actually enter the church, of course.

Pa sends the kids inside, but doesn’t want to go in, because under his hat (which can’t be worn in church), his hair is still green.

Eventually they do, though.

WILL: I know I’m color-blind, but his hair doesn’t actually look all that green to me.

DAGNY: It’s greener than the actual grass on this show, at least.

In a funny bit of business, Charles says they should just stand in the back, but Mary screams she saved them seats right up front.

Caroline chuckles and says “Nearer My God to Thee” – a verse set to music in 1856 and famous for being the tune played as the Titanic sank.

As they move toward the front, everybody explodes with laughter.

And we see several more Grovesters have turned out, including Not-Paul Rudd, the ZZ Top Guy, Not-Richard Libertini, the Nonbinary Kid, J.C. Fusspot, Not-Linda Hunt, Cloud City Princess Leia, Mustache Man, Mr. Hanson and Doc (sitting separately), the Bead, the Garveys, the Olesons, and:

• A guy who looks like 1970s Alex Trebek;

• A tall guy who looks like a scarecrow in somebody’s garden;

• A woman who looks like Mother Goose; 

• An Alice Garvey clone; and

• A woman who looks like Ian Ziering (according to Dags, anyways).

Finally, tucked away towards the back, there’s a petite, well-dressed woman with a familiar look.

WILL: Now, who does she look like? I can’t place her.

DAGNY: Can’t you? It’s pretty obvious.

WILL: It is? Who is she?

DAGNY: It’s Melissa Gilbert as an adult.

WILL: Oh my God, you’re right!

DAGNY: I think this proves your time travel theory. Adult Laura traveled back in time to relive this moment, it was so funny.

ROMAN: She’ll have to be careful not to touch Young Laura.

WILL: Yeah. Blinovitch Limitation Effect.

Rev. Alden comes in and gawps at Charles, then launches into the sermon. (Again, a very odd way to start a service.)

He quotes the Twenty-Third Psalm, but when he gets to the “green pastures” bit, he himself starts screaming with laughter. (Greer again overdoing it a bit.)

Everyone cracks up again, and Charles flees.

After the congregation departs – 

WILL: Look, Doc and Hanson are leaving together.

DAGNY: Afternoon delight.

– Miss Beadle approaches the Ing-Gals and tells them she received a letter from St. Paul that Timothy has won the essay scholarship. 

ROMAN: Notice she didn’t make the John Junior reference in front of Mary.

I’m sorry, but come on! Whether Timothy took the test on Friday (two days ago!) or Tuesday, there’s no way his essay could have gotten to St. Paul (160 miles away), been read and compared to heaven knows how many other entries, been selected as the winner, and had a notification sent and received in such a short timespan. (And why would they send the notification to the Bead rather than to the Farrell family?)

As for which university Timothy might be attending in St. Paul in 1879, at first the answer seems easy: none. While today there are four universities in St. Paul that did technically exist at that time – the University of Minnesota, Macalester College, Hamline University, and Bethel University, all within spitting distance of our house, actually – none of them had campuses in St. Paul until later.  

However, despite this recap already collapsing under the weight of its own trivia, a little more lifting revealed there was an institution at that time known as the St. Paul Medical College! Formed in 1871 as a medical prep school, by 1879 it had become a full-fledged medical school. Surely this must be the instutition conferring the scholarship upon Tim.

The new medical school was quickly absorbed by Hamline University (which moved to St. Paul from Red Wing, Minnesota, in 1880), but it closed in 1881 when all the doctors left to join an even cooler new medical school in Minneapolis. (People who live in St. Paul are still used to this sort of thing happening.)

Anyways, Laura and Andrew Garvey rush to deliver the message. Strangely, Carl the Flunky can be seen standing in the background, though he wasn’t actually present in the church. Maybe he got pink paint dumped on him in a deleted scene and is too embarrassed to go in also.

At the Farrells’, Timothy isn’t home, but Old Blarney, who’s feeling better, goes on and on about Tim dropping out of school and working for fake families like the Baxters and “the Harkeys.”

Laura and Andy quickly deduce the truth, then opt to leave without delivering the good news. 

In the Farrell barn, they find Matilda the chicken. They’re bummed because the case was solved through “plain old dumb luck,” but I don’t think they’re being fair to themselves. They did figure it out, after all.

Laura and Andrew find Pa and tell him what they learned. They don’t gather all the suspects and do a big reveal, Poirot-style, but you can’t have everything.

We come to a pretty quick resolution after this. The town’s male leaders all go out to the Farrell house and tell Timothy about the scholarship, saying they’ll support his da while he’s at college. 

When Tim tries to confess his crimes, Charles takes him aside and tells him he’ll just owe them one when he becomes a doctor someday.

This town experiences total economic collapse every four or five episodes, so it seems strange the Grovesters would make any such long-term promise. But I suppose since Doc’s had Mr. Farrell on a strict diet of pork and eggs, he’s assured the others Old Blarney’ll be dead of another heart attack before Tim’s out of school, and everyone else can live happily ever after.

Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

STYLE WATCH: Charles appears to go commando again.

THE VERDICT: Straight-up comedy is not Little House’s forte, but some silly fun is quite welcome after four heavy-ish stories in a row.

UP NEXT: To Run and Hide