To Run and Hide

Where the Buffalos Bone; or

The Man Who Let Ernie Kovacs Die

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: To Run and Hide

Airdate: October 31, 1977

Written by John T. Dugan

Directed by Michael Landon

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Doc Baker Kills Another One™ and suffers a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, Mrs. Oleson begins seeing his con-man replacement and becomes an alcoholic nymphomaniac.

RECAP: All the kids were back for this one!

We open with some awesome “Westerny” music in the orchestra as the Non-Binary Kid, apparently late for school, and having recently got a haircut, races through the thoroughfare.

Behind them, an unknown man drives a Chonkywagon at a safe pace – no doubt seeing the child in the road ahead. (Good Grovester.)

Meanwhile, from the north, another wagon appears. This one is drawn by a pair of Bunnies and driven by the Random Guy who cheered for Nellie when she competed in the horserace against Laura.

Outside the Mercantile, Nels is unloading boxes from the Yellow-Wheeled Buckboard. We see this story is again written by John T. Dugan, the new guy from last week’s episode.

Nels goes in and asks Harriet to help him, but she says she has a doctor’s appointment for “dizzy spells.”

Rappin’ Nels makes some remarks about Harriet’s dizziness. I know some of you readers are big Rappin’ Nels fans, but even you must admit this is a weak entry in the catalog.

We cut to Doc attending some pantsless “comedy” old-timer who seems like a relic from an earlier generation of Western entertainments. (A Walter Brennan-type, perhaps.)

The old-timer, whom Doc calls “Jed,” is complaining of pain in his joints, but Doc says it’s mostly just age catching up with him.

I actually don’t think Jed looks that old, but apparently the actor, Eddie Quillan, was 70.

And in fact, Quillan’s resume does date to the Golden Age of movie westerns and beyond – his first film credit was at least as early as 1926, and possibly even in 1922.

He appeared in movies including The Grapes of Wrath, the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty, Brigadoon and Hello, Dolly!, but he was primarily a TV performer. He was a memorable presence on Western shows like Death Valley Days, Bonanza, The Rifleman, The Wild Wild West, Daniel Boone, and Gunsmoke, and also appeared on Jack Benny, Petticoat Junction, The Addams Family, Perry Mason, Gomer Pyle, The Jeffersons, Father Murphy, and Highway to Heaven.

We’ll also see him several more times on this show; he and Michael Landon were apparently close friends.

Sadly, Quillan was disappointed by his acting career, which he felt unfairly limited him to bit parts.

Doc gives Jed a box of pills – probably aspirin, which as we’ve seen Doc prefers to opioids.

With some embarrassment, Jed says he can’t pay his bill in cash, and offers Doc a bag of apples instead. (Still in the fall of 1879-E, then.)

Jed departs, stumbling against Doc’s hatstand as he does so.

Doc takes the apples with no complaints, even though we see he’s already got a closet full of them.

WILL: John T. Dugan is obsessed with apples. He’s the one who wrote “Apple Boobs”!

“My cupboard runneth over,” Doc says to himself. I also speak terrible puns aloud when I’m alone. Unlike Doc, though, I usually go into a little dance at my own wit afterwards.

Outside, Jed greets Mrs. Oleson pleasantly, but she snubs him.

Jed does appear to be in fairly bad shape, as he struggles to get back into his wagon. Poor guy.

If you listen, they’ve also dubbed a weird sound effect over his efforts that I believe is supposed to be his joints actually creaking. Sounds more like a cat meowing to me, though.

He addresses his horse as “Gladys,” which is cute.

Then, inside, we get a completely unexpected closeup of Mrs. Oleson’s bosom.

DAGNY: She’s no Caroline, but she’s not bad.

Doc respectfully averts his gaze; but his pet skull’s eyes are literally bugging out of its head.

Mrs. O tells Doc she’s experiencing lightness in her head and heaviness in her crotch.

Fairly nastily, Doc accuses her of lying, saying “last week” her symptoms were exactly the opposite. 

WILL: She came in saying she felt light in the crotch?

Mrs. Oleson says she believes she has the same condition as “Elmira Lamour” – the heroine of a dime novel she recently read, The Ruinous Romance of Elmira Lamour.

WILL: So John T. Dugan is obsessed with apples, breasts, and penny dreadfuls.

Doc, who’s making all sorts of grotesque shapes with his lips in this scene, listens intently.

Mrs. Oleson says in the book, Miss Lamour suffered from “the vapors.”

Again with a slightly nasty edge, Doc says these days “the vapors” are known as “gas.”

Actually, for hundreds of years, the term “vapors” was used to explain (or dismiss) a host of women’s health issues, including many understood today to be legitimate ones, like depression and PMS. It was believed these issues were inherent in women’s bodies and were caused by “vapors” emanating from the uterus.

By Doc Baker’s time, physicians were beginning to understand how various physical and psychological issues factored into these conditions. I’m no expert, but at a glance it doesn’t seem anyone in history ever just wrote them off as flatulence, except perhaps assholes like Doc Baker when they wanted to belittle their patients’ concerns. 

(And as far as I’m aware, men also experience gas.)

Later, to happy-dippy music, Doc leaves the office, affixing a nice note to the door first. 

(His printing is rather childlike, but I suppose some of his less literate patients might struggle with spidery Nineteenth-Century script, just like our ignorant children can’t read cursive.)

If you watch closely, you can see a big hairy dude in 1970s sunglasses reflected in the lamp on the side of the building – a crew member, no doubt.

I scrutinized the crew list for this one to see if I could identify him, but I’m just not sure. (Lighting technician R. Michael De Chellis? Uncredited sound recordist Robert Davenport?) 

In the street, Doc greets Carl the Flunky, who gives him a rather adorable smile.

Doc heads to a familiar house. Like the Feed & Seed, it’s a cursed location, once inhabited by the Clark family, then later by the Taylors. 

The house’s first victim was Mr. Clark (Gelfling Ginny’s father – manner of death unknown).

More notoriously, the evil property sent young Ellen Taylor to a watery grave and then tortured her mother into madness. 

To date, only Laura Ingalls has had the necessary strength to escape its clutches. 

Both these families are now mysteriously gone – all dead, surely.

But there’s a new one living there called Novack.

The husband is putting a new roof on, whilst his pregnant wife watches from below.

The wife says, “Stanley, aren’t you workin’ awfully hard for something you aren’t sure is gonna happen?” 

WILL: What does she mean? It might never rain again?

In some sort of fake Dracula accent (Novack is a common name in the Czech Republic, Poland, and many other countries), Stanley Novack screams, “What you mean, is not gonna happen! Look at you, Beth! Seven month now!”

I will say right now, there’s a lot of screamed dialogue in this one, more than we’ve had since the glory days of Charles’s insane frenemy Mr. Kennedy.

Beth Novack points out, quite unnecessarily I’m sure, that her two previous pregnancies ended in miscarriage. (The evil house at work again!)

Stanley screams, “Hey! I told you, Beth, no more talk like that! This time it gonna happen! I know! That’s why I fix room for baby!”

His screams build towards a climax, I daresay reaching Annie Wilkes “cockadoodie car” levels.

“Beth!” he screams. “You gonna have BIG! BEAUTIFUL! HEALTHY BABY!!!”

In fact, he screams so animatedly that he topples backwards off the roof.

Stanley Novack is played by Michael Pataki, whose resume is quite incredible.

It includes The Twilight Zone, The Flying Nun, Happy Days, All in the Family (R.I.P. Norman Lear), The Amazing Spider-Man, Cagney & Lacey and many others.

He was on both the sixties Batman TV show and Batman: The Animated Series in the nineties. He was on Kung Fu with Radames Pera and Father Murphy with Merlin Olsen.

He did voices for Ren & Stimpy and Dexter’s Laboratory.

And he did both the original Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Movie-wise, he was in Easy Rider, Rocky IV, Airport ’77, The Andromeda Strain, and a number of weird sexploitation movies.

[UPDATE: Yesterday, August 10th, 2025, Dags and I watched The Ugly Stepsister, a satirical Norwegian feminist horror retelling of Cinderella – highly recommended – and reading up on that movie brought to my attention that Michael Pataki actually directed what The Guardian called a “lowbrown porn musical version” of the same story. I’ve never seen it, though. – WK]

He was of Hungarian parentage, which explains the Dracula accent, and he was in a few vampire movies, including Love at First Bite and one from the Count Yorga series. In fact, he once played Dracula himself in a movie called Dracula’s Dog.

He played Dr. Loomis’s mean coworker in Halloween 4 – one of the better Halloween sequels, as I think I’ve mentioned in the past.

And finally, in 1982 he played “Man Who Moons Courtroom” in something called Night Shift with Henry Winkler and Shelley Long.

Well, Mrs. Novack comes running around the house, but Stanley says he’s fine.

Doc Baker arrives in his phaeton. Stanley at first protests he doesn’t need to be examined, but relents at the request of his wife. (If you’re not put off by the screaming, he seems quite nice.)

Stanley says he landed “face down – BOOM!”, though since we saw him tip over backwards he must have performed a complete somersault on the way down – quite a feat.

Doc gives him a onceover, but he seems okay.

ROMAN: Doc should punch him.

WILL: Yeah. That’s what my doctor did when he was checking me for diverticulitis.

Stanley insists Doc not waste more time when it’s Beth he’s come to see. “I never been sick, not ONE DAY in whole life!” he screams.

Doc shrugs, and, saying “Come on, Mother,” invites Beth in to show him her hoo-ha and such.

Meanwhile, Stanley slaps himself on the stomach and says, “Opa!” – an expression often stereotyped as Greek, but actually common in a few countries, including several Slavic ones.

After examining Beth, Doc says, “Everything’s fine.”

ALL: [GASP IN HORROR]

ROMAN: There it is, the kiss of death.

Beth, who kind of looks like she could be Doc’s sister, says she’s been carrying around his pregnancy instructions everywhere. Seems a bit much.

ROMAN: Now when she says “I follow them to the letter,” does she mean she follows them exactly, or that she just looks at the letters because she can’t read?

No acting slouch herself, Beth is Collin Wilcox, famous as the girl who falsely accuses a Black man of rape in To Kill a Mockingbird. 

A civil-rights activist herself, she was so convincing in the part that some NAACP members had to be reminded she was simply an actor in a movie when she appeared at a meeting.

She also appeared on episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Untouchables, Dr. Kildare, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, The Waltons.

Plus she was in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and last but not least, Jaws 2. 

Doc goes outside and gives a good report to Stanley, who screams and screams and screams.

Driving back to town, presumably, Doc encounters Mary and Carrie in the road, carrying their slates and lunchpails.

OLIVE: Where is Laura?

Doc gives Mary the update on Mrs. Novack.

AMELIA: Isn’t this a HIPAA violation?

DAGNY: Doc doesn’t get HIPAA at all.

He also gives her the excess apples.

Carrie has a rare intentionally funny moment when she slurps “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” then adds, “I don’t think he ever wants to see us again.”

“An apple a day” as a concept dates to the mid-Nineteenth Century, but this exact phrasing probably didn’t appear till a little later.

At the dinner table that night, Stanley Novack is obviously feeling quite ill, though he tries to deny it.

Beth isn’t fooled, though, probably because he isn’t screaming ecstatically like he usually does.

Also because he collapses at the table.

WILL: Oh my God, it’s Lord Grantham!

Meanwhile, at Casa dell’Ingalls, Ma is nagging Ol’ Four Eyes – excuse me, I mean Mary – to quit studying already and go to bed.

Suddenly Beth Novack appears at the door. She’s apparently come on foot. According to our map, the House of Evil is probably about a mile from the Little House – about as far away as the Old Sanderson Place.

Ma and Pa leap into action – Ma to go investigate Stanley’s condition, and Pa to fetch the doctor. Mary keeps Beth at the Little House. 

Once Doc arrives at the House of E, he reexamines Stanley with a stethoscope and diagnoses internal hemorrhaging.

ROMAN: Can you actually HEAR hemorrhaging?

DAGNY: Sure. It sounds like somebody blowing bubbles with a straw.

Doc prepares for what surely would be a gruesome bleeding procedure, but Stanley dies before he can start.

ALEXANDER: He’s screamed his last.

Glum faces all around.

The episode continues its slow turn into unbelievable waters when Doc announces he can’t bear to deliver the bad news to the widow, even though he presumably has to do it all the time, and we’ve actually seen him do it at least once before.

Death-Hag Caroline gleefully volunteers to take that duty on, though.

Charles offers to take Doc home, but, visibly upset, he says he’d rather walk.

Back at the Little House, Mary has fallen asleep, and Beth Novack wanders the room like a tragic widow in a story, which of course she is.

AMELIA: Where is Laura?

WILL: I have no idea where Laura is.

Ma and Pa arrive home, and report that things went, well, fairly poorly.

AMELIA: She’s pretty good.

WILL: Yeah, I think so too.

Cut to Charles and the Chonkies arriving in town to talk to Doc. Well, I expect Charles will do most of the talking.

Charles notes that two weeks have passed since Stanley’s funeral, and everybody in town thinks it’s odd Doc hasn’t been out to give Beth a checkup since. 

(Remember, with Grace having flown the coop for sunny California, there are no other options for prenatal care, though I’m sure Kezia would give it a whirl if you asked her.)

Charles says Caroline has been spending her days watching over Beth.

DAGNY: This shot doesn’t make any sense. Where’s that light coming in from? He’s standing right in front of the window sideways, you wouldn’t see it on the wall behind him.

Mary, on the other hand, has been taking the night shift, and even staying overnight.

ROMAN: If you were going to send somebody to comfort a widow, would it be Mary? The coldest Ingalls of them all?

Doc responds with uncharacteristic flippancy, then blurts out that he’s retiring, okay?

Doc’s age is a question that has inspired some debate, and not just at Walnut Groovy. Kevin Hagen was only 49 by this point in the series, but the general consensus seems to be that Doc the character appears older, and of course we have had stories involving his aging before (notably You Know What).

Setting that theory aside, if Doc was 46 when we first met him in “A Harvest of Friends,” going by our strict timeline of adventures, he could be as old as 72 now.

Turning surly, Doc starts bitching that because everyone pays him in foodstuffs, he’s as poor as everybody else in this godforsaken town, which surprises Charles.

DAGNY: Charles has no respect for anyone who knows how to make money.

But Charles quickly deduces Doc is just upset about Stanley Novack’s death.

DAGNY: Charles is the town psychologist and social worker-in-residence. Charles Ingalls, LICSW-CIPSW. 

Doc says a new doctor, “Asa T. Logan,” is on his way from Philadelphia already.

CHARLES: If you’re not gonna be doctorin’, what’re ya gonna be doin’?

DAGNY [as DOC]: “Sexin’!” 

Actually, Doc says he’s bought “the Old Jenkins place” (from whom? and the word didn’t get around?), where he plans to grow corn.

DAGNY: Doc hasn’t looked at Charles once in this scene.

Rather than immediately invite Doc to join the Grange, Charles simply looks disturbed.

Out at the House of Evil, Mary has made Beth Novack some lemonade. 

WILL: Lemonade in the fall? In Walnut Grove? That’s idiocy. Where did the lemons come from?

WILL: What’s next, she makes a pitcher of piña coladas?

OLIVE: She probably just peed in water. They called pee water “frontier lemonade.”

The sky is rather beautiful, and Mrs. Novack says she’d like to go into town to see Doc, but Mary reminds her he retired. (This story jumps ahead in fits and spurts.)

WILL: They’ve got her in that poofy pinafore again.

DAGNY: Well, she’s filling out. I’m sure NBC didn’t want to upset the censors by revealing that Mary Ingalls has boobs.

Meanwhile, at Doc’s office, a man with a blond shock of hair has arrived. At first we only see his silhouette on the wall.

DAGNY/AMELIA: Is that Donald Trump?

No, it’s Asa T. Logan.

AMELIA: So he’s the new doctor, huh?

WILL: Yeah, he regenerated. Actually, he does look a little like Peter Davison.

Dr. Logan asks what Walnut Grove’s social scene is like, and to his credit, Doc manages not to burst out laughing at the question.

Dr. Logan asks how good the hunting is in these parts, then produces a rifle and starts pointing it around the office!

Doc Baker starts to tell him about Beth Novack’s iffy pregnancy, but Dr. Logan shuts him down and says he’ll determine his patients’ priorities from now on, thank you.

WILL: Why didn’t they call Timothy Farrell back from medical school? He’d be better than this asswipe.

Doc says Logan can keep all his leftover junk. (Always nice when someone vacating your new property leaves you such “gifts,” isn’t it?) 

But Logan, whose speech and bearing are so twitchy and formal and strange, he seems to have come from a nuthouse rather than a Pennsylvania medical school, insists Doc take his physician’s bag.

Dr. Asa T. Logan is played by an actor with the even more improbable name of Burr DeBenning. 

DeBenning was in some interesting horror films, including The Incredible Melting Man, Wolfen, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. 

He was also in William Friedkin’s Cruising, and appeared on episodes of The Virginian, B.J. and The Bear, CHiPs, Starsky & Hutch, Wonder Woman, Sheriff Lobo, The Mod Squad, and of course Father Murphy and Highway to Heaven. (By this point, there was clearly a clause in people’s contracts obliging them to appear in Landon’s TV shows in perpetuity.)

Anyways, Doc leaves, pausing on the steps to tear his H. Baker, M.D. sign off the siding in a sudden spasm.

Clearly the sign was better attached than Kevin Hagen expected, since it takes him a few attempts to rip it free.

Then Doc shocked us by littering – the telltale crime of those who have given up on life.

(As a side note, you’ll notice this one is rated 13+ for “foul language.” I’ve now watched it three or four times in a row, and I have no idea what that refers to. (Opa?))

Just when Doc thought things couldn’t get worse, who should turn up but the Widow Novack, dressed in mourning.

AMELIA: Is she gonna slap him like Mrs. Kintner in Jaws?

Mrs. N arrives in a Bunny-pulled buckboard driven by Mary. Others have pointed out that in another strange blooper, Melissa Sue Anderson’s bonnet was reflected in that same lamp outside Doc’s door when he was tearing down the sign, before she was supposedly driving up. 

Well, stammering awkwardly, Doc tells Beth he doesn’t do no doctorin’ no more nohow.

OLIVE: Not only does he have livery lips, he has, like, a butthole mouth.

Beth unhappily accepts this. (Doc’s retirement, not that he has a butthole mouth.)

Doc tells Beth she’ll be fine. Twice!

WILL: Every time he says it, it’s like the hammer-strokes of doom.

Doc drives off in his phaeton, with Mary staring icily after him.

Meanwhile, Beth Novack goes in to see Dr. Logan.

Dr. Logan, we see, has joined the Walnut Grove Screamers’ Society, yelling about all the stupid garbage Doc left behind.

Beth literally has to ask for her doctor’s opinion after the examination. He says things look all right, then sarcastically adds, “Just remember you’re not the first woman to have a child,” as if getting pregnant was just a big attention grab in the first place.

Beth reminds him she’s had two miscarriages, and Logan shouts, “Dr. Baker told me!”

DAGNY: He’s not even looking at her. This whole episode is about people not looking at people. Who directed it?

WILL: Landon.

Then Dr. Logan opens Doc’s cupboards and starts throwing apples around, screaming the whole time.

DAGNY: This is like you the other day when you couldn’t find the Scotch tape.

Beth asks if she should come back again before delivering, and Logan says, “Mrs. Novack, I treat patients – I do not hold their hands! Good day!”

Probably no actor in Little House history has leaned so quickly, completely and unbelievably into terrible “villain” writing, except of course for Richard Basehart as Hannibal Applewood.

Clearly understanding this guy is an idiot and an asshole, Beth Novack leaves. As she goes, we see Dr. Logan has started decorating the office with such things as a dead snowy owl and other hideous pieces of taxidermy.

After a break, we get an unusual shot of the Grove from water level. Ben Slick and Carl the F can be seen walking and driving by, respectively.

Not-Richard Libertini is wandering around too.

We’ve recently been watching 30 Coins, a delightful albeit gruesome horror show from Spain, which features a similar cast of regular villagers who pop up every week. 

WILL: Do you think 30 Coins and Little House have much crossover appeal?

DAGNY: No, but I do think Little House would be funnier if it was more like 30 Coins. Although I can imagine the casting. Charles could be Father Vergara.

WILL: Or Mr. Edwards, maybe.

DAGNY: Yeah! He has more of a dark side. Elena and Paco are Adult Laura and Manly. . . .

WILL: Nellie is Merche, Willie is Antonio, Salcedo is the Bead. It all works perfectly.

[UPDATE: After further discussion, Dagny, Roman and I think perhaps Mary would make a better Merche.]

Back in the surgery, we get a good look at Dr. Logan’s redecorating efforts, which include a mule deer, a red-legged partridge, and a coyote that appears to be screaming. (Appropriate for this episode.)

We also get a close-up of Dr. Logan’s supposed medical degree. Logan’s terrible doctoring is explained when we see this document, because although we can’t really make out the name on the certificate, it certainly isn’t Asa T. Logan or anything like it.

It also doesn’t appear to be from a Pennsylvania medical school at all, but rather Universitas Harvardiana (which of course did exist by this time).

Anyways, Mrs. Oleson is there complaining of crotch lightness and/or heaviness once again.

Dr. Logan, deducing that Mrs. O is rich (unlike Beth Novack), treats her with genteel manners and diagnoses her with, you guessed it, the vapors.

ROMAN: He does look like Peter Davison. He just needs the celery.

Mrs. Oleson says oh no, it’s not the farts. (Paraphrase.)

Logan then hypothesizes she has what sounds like “ectirius gravis.”

I expect this is a mispronunciation by the actor, or maybe the character, of icterus gravis – jaundice.

For two thousand years, Western medicine was essentially based on the idea that health is determined by the distribution of four “humors” within the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.

By the 1870s, the “four humors” system had fallen by the wayside, but as an explanation for jaundice it was reasonably accurate. Bilirubin – the yellow stuff in yellow bile – is released from the liver into the blood, which gives patients a yellowish appearance. (Jaundice today is actually considered more of a symptom of other medical issues than a condition on its own.)

I think its use here is probably John T. Dugan’s little joke about Mrs. Oleson having a “bilious” or ill-tempered personality. (Personality defects were popularly, if not medically, thought to be centered in the liver well into the Twentieth Century.)

Anyways, if it was a little joke, Burr DeBenning sort of ruined it by mispronouncing icterus. (John T. Dugan probably shot his TV when he saw the final.)

Then Dr. Logan changes his mind and decides Mrs. Oleson has “a small fissure of the ductus venosus.” 

The ductus venosus is real, but it’s a blood vessel that only exists in the liver of fetuses; it closes upon birth.

If there’s some kind of little joke in this choice of malady, I have no clue what it is.

Happily, Dr. Logan says, relief can be found in a bottle, and he produces one labeled Dr. Logan’s Female Remedy from the cabinet.

We can see it sits next to a bottle labeled Dr. Logan’s Male Remedy.

Dr. Logan sells her a bottle for $1 (about $31 in today’s money) and tells her to drink it until she feels better.

Now, the following scene is both appallingly overacted and howlingly entertaining, so buckle up.

We cut to the Oleson residence at night. Mrs. O is drunk and singing “Home on the Range” whilst Nels stands at the top of the stairs listening in disbelief.

(“Home on the Range” was around by this point, though the version Mrs. Oleson sings wasn’t published till 1910.)

Nels comes down and says “About time for bed, isn’t it!”, to which Harriet responds, “Nels! You devil” and makes either a laughing face or a blowjob face, I’m not sure which.

Nels protests he just meant it’s late, and Harriet slyly says, “No . . . it’s never too late,” and starts making kissing noises at him.

I could transcribe all of Harriet’s dialogue here, but it really is MacG’s delivery that makes it great.

The short version is she’s never felt better than when she started taking Dr. Logan’s miracle cure.

Nels examines the bottle and declares it’s just a 90-proof alcoholic spirit. You’ll recall the Mercantile used to carry such “medicines” and Harriet would chide Nels for drinking them in secret, so it’s a little silly they would flip things around like this here.

Indeed, Nels points out Harriet is “the head of the Women’s Temperance League” – a body we’ve not yet heard mentioned on this show.

I have a friend named Tim Pennyfeather who was a teetotaler in college; I used to call him “the Women’s Temperance League.” Now he drinks and I don’t, but we’re still friends; life is funny, isn’t it?

Harriet launches into “Home on the Range” again, this time backed up by David Rose, and this time interpolating the line “where the buffalos bone,” which cracked us up.

Eventually she tips over in her chair and passes out. (David gives us a little slide whistle, too.)

Then we see Doc Baker, dressed in civilian clothes and trying to plow a field, but he can’t control the horses.

Mary and Carrie pass by again.

AMELIA: Seriously, where is Laura? 

WILL: She isn’t in this one.

AMELIA: Why?

WILL: I don’t know. 

ROMAN: Maybe the house sucked her into the basement again. It is the House of Evil.

Mary says she can give Doc some tips on how to drive a plow. During her demonstration, we see “the old Jenkins place” is apparently one of those giant Victorian houses that dot the landscape in the Little House on the Prairie Universe. (Probably the one just west of Lake Ellen, if it’s roughly between the Little House and Walnut Grove.)

WILL: So does Doc continue to live in this house after he goes back to being a doctor? 

Unless I’m wrong, the only time we’ve seen Doc’s home was in “Doctor’s Lady,” in which it appeared to be a simple room, I assumed above the Post Office. Then again, the Bead also lives above the Post Office, plus it has at least one additional room to rent out to visitors and/or estranged husbands. Doesn’t seem like that big of a building, truthfully.

Anyways, there also seem to be some radio towers or something visible in the distance in this scene.

Mary tells Doc she misses him.

DAGNY: Is this the one where Mary and Doc get together?

ROMAN: Yeah. It’s “Doctor’s Lady 2.”

AMELIA [as DOC]: “You know, Mary, you’ve really matured lately. . . .”

OLIVE [as DOC]: “Girl, I know what you’re hidin’ under that poofy pinafore. . . .”

Then Mary makes up a lie about Carrie having internal pains. But Carrie spoils the ruse (a development Mary surely should have anticipated).

Caught out, Mary says, “Well, she did have a stomach-ache last week. . . .”

AMELIA: Watch, she’s actually hemorrhaging. 

ROMAN: Yeah, she’ll die when she gets home and he’ll feel even worse.

Back in town, Creaky Old Jed is carrying a rooster in a cage. At first I thought it was Matilda from last week, but it isn’t.

He catches Dr. Logan in the street and asks for more aspirin. But, addressing the old man as “Mr. Haney,” Logan says he’s “closed.”

It soon comes out that the real reason Dr. Logan is “closed” is that he won’t accept foodstuffs in lieu of payment the way Doc Baker did.

Jed Haney tries to convince him the rooster would make great stew meat. And of course, the wonderful coq au vin is traditionally made with an older male chicken.

The concept is immortalized in this exchange from Two Fat Ladies – up with Little House in the pantheon of history’s most entertaining TV shows, if you’ve never seen it, and to date the only other show I’ve ever recapped. (The old blog looks a bit primitive these days, but you should have seen it in 2014.)

JENNIFER PATERSON: Originally, this dish was made with an old cock – not an old hen, an old cock, because they had the flavor.

CLARISSA DICKSON WRIGHT: A lot of good in an old cock, isn’t there?

Then we see Beth Novack, attended by Mary, sitting in her rocker and reading the Nativity story from the Bible out loud. (Luke’s version.) Was this common practice among pregnant women during the period? It isn’t Christmastime.

She immediately goes into labor, so I guess ol’ Luke did the trick.

To crazy music, Mary races to town to get Dr. Logan, but he’s out.

In an unexpected but delightful development, Mary checks in with her old employer Mrs. Whipple at the Post Office!

We haven’t seen the Whip since the Season Three premiere “The Collection” – 25 stories ago.

She has been mentioned a few times since, though. Notably, we know she’s retired from seamstress-ery and now works part-time at the Post Office (with Kezia).

Mrs. W says she hasn’t seen Dr. Logan, and huffs that he’s “probably out again shooting innocent animals.” (As we’ve discussed in the past, sentimentality about animals would be rare in this community; still, I think it’s fair Mrs. Whipple might draw a distinction between hunting for food and killing owls and things for fun.)

Reader and Friend of Walnut Groovy Maryann sent this wonderful picture of the young Queenie Smith, which I hadn’t seen before. You’ll recall she was a ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1910s.

Sadly, this is Smith’s final Little House story, as she passed away in the summer of 1978 at the age of 79.

Out at the House of Evil, Caroline is trying to talk Beth Novack through labor.

In a familiar line of thinking we’ve heard several times over the years, Beth prays for a boy, so her husband’s line will continue. 

AMELIA: Don’t worry, Beth, you’ll still count as a family even if you’re just girls.

WILL: I know. It’s not like he was the Duke of Argyll or something! 

AMELIA: That’s not exactly what I meant, Dad.

Stepping into the other room, Caroline drops the mask, hissing at Pa and Mary that she can’t do this without a doctor’s help.

Then Beth starts screaming that something’s wrong and they need to get Doc.

Charles rushes off, and finds Doc muckin’ the auld byre.

Doc pouts and says Beth’s in good hands with Caroline.

Charles pushes back, but Doc shouts, “Can’t you understand? I’m not a doctor anymore!”

Losing his temper, Charles shouts back, “Well, if you’re not a doctor then what are you? You’re not a farmer, we know that!”

Some might say this is an uncharacteristically nasty crack from Charles, but I don’t know. We have seen him be nasty before, though it’s usually behind people’s backs.

But I think Charles’s anger about Doc’s inept farming comes from his belief in people’s abilities as specifically given by God for a purpose. He’s angry at Doc not for failing at something new, but rather for turning away from a gift God has given him, a gift none of the others have, to help those in need. He’s refusing a calling from God, at everyone’s expense – that’s what makes Charles furious.

This calling is also a burden, though, and Doc’s agony is real as he screams, “I’m the man who let Stanley Novack die!”

Well, actually he doesn’t scream that. Unfortunately, Kevin Hagen spoils this otherwise Emmy-worthy moment by getting Stanley’s name wrong, screaming, “I’m the man who let Stanley KOVACK die!”

ROMAN: That’s a pretty big whoops for this show.

OLIVE: Couldn’t they have gone back and redone it?

AMELIA: Yeah, especially when the family name is so important to the mom.

I wouldn’t normally do this, but there actually is a cosmetic surgeon in Chicago named Stanley Kovak, and he bears what can only be described as a startling resemblance to Michael Pataki, if you ask me, that is. 

Anyways, Charles yells at Doc some more, saying he can’t abandon a God-given responsibility just because he’s a perfectionist. (Paraphrase.)

Finally grabs Doc by the shirt and shakes him violently.

WILL: This is like in The Exorcist where Father Damien is like “Fuck this exorcism shit” and just beats the crap out of Linda Blair.

And just like in The Exorcist, it works.

Doc arrives in time.

WILL: How do you rate her labor acting?

DAGNY: It’s better than Caroline’s, but it’s not great.

Beth is thrilled to see him.

WILL: It should come out that Doc’s the real father.

In the outer room, Mary and Pa listen to Beth’s screams and groans.

OLIVE: Are they making Mary listen so she doesn’t get pregnant?

DAGNY: Yeah, it’s Nineteenth-Century birth control.

In the bedroom, Doc determines the baby is a breech birth, and has to perform an emergency baby-turn-around-o.

Outside, Pa and Mary hear Ma call “Chaaaaaaaaaaaarles!”

The baby is alive, a boy, and fine.

AMELIA: Oh my God, the baby really looks like him.

WILL: Like the dad?

AMELIA: Yeah. Kovack.

DAGNY: That is a very new baby for TV. It makes you wonder if it was really hers.

WILL: What? You think they actually filmed this episode around her pregnancy and delivery?

DAGNY: No, but maybe it was a crew member’s.

AMELIA: It’s probably Melissa Gilbert’s. That’s why she isn’t in it.

OLIVE: It’s probably Mary’s, with her new hot bod.

Strangely, on the wall is the same picture of John Wilkes Booth that was displayed in Mrs. Whipple’s house in “Soldier’s Return.”

ROMAN: Does the roof collapse now and kill them all? Since Stanley never finished it?

WILL: The house’s final revenge.

No, it doesn’t. Our story ends with Doc vowing to go kick Dr. Logan’s ass, and thanking Charles for everything.

OLIVE: He’s thanking Charles? Caroline and Mary did all the work.

WILL: That one’s so stupid.

AMELIA: I liked it.

Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Hanson is neither seen nor mentioned in this episode.

STYLE WATCH: Mrs. Oleson wears her classic green dress, but in an unusual twist, accents it with a black hat rather than the usual red one.

She also wears “ladies’ Pinky” at one point.

Charles appears to go commando again.

THE VERDICT: Unbelievable and full of errors, “To Run and Hide” nevertheless features some great character moments, good performances by Hagen and Wilcox, a Mrs. Whipple cameo, and a very fine score by David Rose.

UP NEXT: The Aftermath