“Meet Me at the Fair”

Mehwwy in the Sky With Diamonds; or

What Did Fake Irish People Ever Do to Michael Landon?

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: “Meet Me at the Fair” [sic]

Airdate: November 28, 1977

Written by Arthur Heinemann

Story by Bradley and Ray Berwick and Arthur Heinemann

Directed by William F. Claxton

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Carrie gets the ride of a lifetime when two young idiots vie for Mary’s affections at the Redwood County Fair.

RECAP: 

WILL: You wanna watch Little House?

DAGNY: Sure. Remember, I’m sick, though. I’m dripping from my nose and eyes. I feel like The Thing.

WILL: I know, that’s why I wanted to watch it. Your comments are always goofier when you’re sick.

First things first: the theme. Thank goodness, we’re back to the proper Season Four version after a brief return to the Season Three arrangement last week.

WILL: You know, it’s hard to say “Little House” with a Cockney accent. [with a Cockney accent:] “What yer on about then? Watchin’ Lih-‘l ’Ouse?”

We open on the Number Eleven train, “Reno,” last seen in the final shot of the preceding episode.

Is Reno delivering Joe Kagan home to Walnut Grove? Of course not, Walnut Grove doesn’t have a train station, what a preposterous thought.

WILL: Wow, the train’s even decorated.

DAGNY: James J. Hill, baby.

You can see all the train’s passengers waving out the window as it arrives.

The camera follows the train around the bend, and we see we are in fact in a larger town than Walnut Grove. And in the center of the shot is a hot-air balloon.

It appears they’ve tried to cover it, but it’s not too hard to spot a modern registration number on its side – N401AA.

Thanks to the wonders of the modern age, we can use this number to instantly identify the balloon as a Raven S-50A, built in 1977 and flown for another thirty-plus years. (Its final flight was in 2009.)

This particular balloon doesn’t seem to have been used in many movies and shows, but it was in The Concorde . . . Airport ’79.

Anyways, on the ground, a marching band strikes up, playing a sort of dying-Cyberman-sounding klink-klank march.

The title comes up, and just like in “‘I’ll Ride the Wind,'” they’ve put it in quotation marks this time for some reason.

Well, tons of people get off the train. The station in question appears to be Springfield’s – not the new, tiny Springfield train station we saw last week, but rather the old, big Springfield train station, which we saw several times over the past few seasons.

A horrible clown menaces the train disembarkers, but they don’t seem to mind.

We can also see this train is piloted by a J.M. Newby. In fact, presumably that’s the man himself in the window.

Meanwhile, the marching band wheels around town. The bass drum head says “Beaver’s Band Box” – a music store that existed in Tucson, Arizona (more on the location below), from 1964 to 2011.

[UPDATE: Our dear friend Midrael Viejo, a Tucson native, writes that his mom always had his trombone repaired at Beaver’s.]

A second but no less horrible clown leaps in front of the band as impromptu drum major. 

Even worse, this one’s armed.

The group parades past a Kellogg Brothers saloon, which supports the theory we’re in Springfield, but could also mean we’re in Deadwood or at some other locale within the Kelloggs’ hospitality empire.

DAGNY: You can tell they’re not really playing. And where are the fifes?

WILL: It’s the 1880s, not the 1780s.

A third horrible clown appears. At the risk of overdoing the Doctor Who references so early in the recap, all these clowns give the scene a queasy undertone reminiscent of “Terror of the Autons,” in which harmless children’s entertainers are revealed to be the murderous puppets of an alien intelligence.

The band rounds another corner, and yep, we see in fact the whole town resembles both Springfield as seen last week and Deadwood, Dakota Territory, as seen in “Gold Country” last season.

The out-universe reason for this, of course, is that all three episodes were filmed on the same set – Old Tucson Studios in Arizona, a shooting location for many Westerns throughout the Twentieth Century, including Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Cimarron, Rio Bravo, Three Amigos!, and Tombstone.

Old Tucson was also used to film episodes of Kung Fu and Father Murphy. I’m beginning to think Michael Landon, Merlin Olsen and Radames Pera were some kind of blackmail syndicate, digging up dirt on people and forcing them to appear in all three shows, or else.

The writing credits pop up – Arthur Heinemann of “Doctor’s Lady” fame gets credit for the script, with the story apparently suggested by “Bradley and Ray Berwick.”

Ray Berwick was famous mainly as an animal trainer. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock on The Birds, a cherished classic in our house and my personal fave by that director. He was apparently well liked by Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, and the rest of the gang from that one. (Berwick was, not Hitchcock.)

Additional projects of his include Gremlins, Lassie, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre, and the Mel Brooks Hitchcock parody High Anxiety.

He wrangled animals for Damien: Omen II and for The Visitor, a little-known and bizarre sci-fi/horror/fantasy thing from 1979 that’s worth a look if you like little-known and bizarre sci-fi/horror/fantasy things from 1979.

While known primarily as a bird handler, Ray Berwick apparently was also the official owner of Jeffrey, the dog actor who plays Bandit.

As for Bradley Berwick, this would apparently be Ray’s son – at least, Ray’s obituary mentions him having a son of the same name. 

The venerable IMDb suggests Bradley in fact did some acting under the name “Brad David,” though it is a little confused about the matter, listing three separate profiles for “Brad David,” “Bradley Berwick” and “Brad David Berwick.” So take it with a grain of salt; these may not all be the same person, but I think they probably are.

Anyways, Bradley/Brad David acted on Marcus Welby and a number of other shows, and he appeared in 9 to 5, WarGames, and Stripped to Kill, the last of which I have seen and remember as pretty entertaining and not as exploitative as it sounds, though like many suspense and horror films of the time, it’s “problematic,” if I recall.

Bradley/Brad David also seems to be the singer behind the rather abominable 1965 diss-track “I’m Better Than the Beatles,” though if his promised star movie vehicle Mischief Makers ever materialized, the internet has no knowledge of it. 

Clax is back as director.

Anyways, the parade continues on, as we see a vintage fire wagon coming along behind the band. 

This vehicle is identified as the “Redwood City Pumper No. 1,” a specific identifier that nevertheless creates more problems than it solves. 

Those of you who’ve paid close attention to these educational recaps will recall Walnut Grove is located in Redwood County, Minnesota.

However, this wagon is apparently from Redwood City, not Redwood County.

Minnesota has no “Redwood City,” but the county seat of Redwood County is Redwood Falls. (Perhaps tellingly, there is a Redwood City, California.)

Redwood Falls, Minnesota, did exist at the time of our saga, and it did host a county fair as early as 1873, so I think for the moment we’ll assume that’s where we are, though naturally your in-universe theories why that town would be identical to both Springfield and Deadwood are welcome.

DAGNY: Is that firefighter Timothée Chalamet?

Suddenly we jump out of the parade and into the back of the Chonkywagon! Because yes, apparently the Ingallses have all come to Redwood Falls, or wherever we are, for this festival.

The wagon passes a sign advertising “Cass McCray, Balloon Pilot.” Others have noted this is likely a nod to Kent McCray, one of Little House’s main producers over the years.

The first thing Laura does is beg to ride the balloon, but Pa says it’s too dangerous. 

DAGNY: That’s how I felt when Alexander went on the helicopter ride at the Eden Prairie AirExpo. I was like, “I’ll never see my child again.”

We did see him again, of course. (And in fact, he’s home with us today!)

Pa’s primary objection to the balloon ride, though, is that it costs a dollar ($30 today).

My dad was similarly cheap with frivolities like this. (Also, we were Ingalls-ishly poor ourselves.)

I’ve never been on a hot-air balloon ride myself, but when I was eight I did win an elephant ride at the circus as a prize in a coloring contest. 

My coloring job was actually not that great, which won’t surprise anybody who examines the artistic masterpieces I’ve created for this blog. I’ve always believed the circus pulled the winner out of a hat, truly.

DAGNY: I think Caroline may really be wearing a corset today. Look at her back.

The firefighters announce a demonstration to be held later in the day. Actually, the original Old Tucson sets themselves burned down in 1995. (Sadly, a collection of Little House memorabilia was also destroyed.)

But the place was rebuilt and you can visit there today if you wish.

There are a lot of people at this fair or festival, and the Chonkywagon hasn’t even stopped when a blond teenage boy starts screaming Mary’s name from the crowd.

“Patrick, what a surprise!” cries Ma.

You will probably remember that after Mary’s long-standing romance with You Know Who went down in flames, another boy came sniffing around her at once – before she’d even made it back to Walnut Grove, in fact!

Now, this boy was called Patrick, and when the recap for that story posted, a Walnut Groovy reader stated his opinion that both that Patrick and this one are the same character, despite being played by different actors. I’m inclined to agree.

In “Times of Change,” Patrick was played by Mike Lookinland of Bobby Brady fame. But obviously a big star like that costs money, and perhaps Landon wasn’t willing to pony up for a character that’s essentially ten trillion percent generic.

So instead, in this episode, Patrick is played by somebody named Michael Morgan. He was in a handful of other things, the most notorious of which had to be The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon about Charlie Chan that was considered so racist, Asian groups testified to the FCC about it. (This was in 1973; those who complain about “Cancel Culture” being a recent phenomenon, take note.)

Michael Morgan died in early middle age. There are some weird rumors about him in fan forums – that he was Yvonne De Carlo’s son, that he died of a sudden brain hemorrhage or was murdered, etc., etc. But I wasn’t able to verify any of them.

So anyways, back to the story. Yes, Patrick has morphed into a different form (hey, also like the Thing!). 

Plus, his wardrobe is significant.

DAGNY: You can tell he really wants to impress Charles.

WILL: How so?

DAGNY: Because he’s wearing PINKY!

Why, so he is.

Patrick tells Mary he came up to the fair yesterday, and in fact he’s working there to make enough money to take Mary on some rides. What kind of amusement park rides existed at that time, I wonder? Well, perhaps we’ll find out.

Patrick and Mary make plans to meet, but the minute he steps away Laura turns completely obnoxious – jelly, obvi.

WILL: I hate when kids copy each other like that.

DAGNY: It’s quite true to life.

Pa shuts the girls up by giving them a little spending money and telling them to go register their entries. I wonder what they’re entering? Mary will have done some kind of Stitch Witchery nonsense, I suppose.

And maybe Laura’s competing in the Biggest Chompers category. Perhaps they’ll have her bite through something!

The Ing-Gals disappear into the crowd, and a banner confirms we are in fact at the Redwood County Fair. 

Dags and I love fairs – in fact, we got engaged at the Minnesota State Fair. When the kids were small, we would take them right away when the gates opened at six on the first day. 

This was, of course, long before the Infamous Incident of the Line-Cutters at the Waffle Stand in 2019. Fortunately, even I have mostly gotten over that by now; and we still go to the Fair every year.

Pa parks the wagon. (Parking is always a huge pain at fairs; we live within walking distance of the State Fairgrounds, which is really the way to go if you can.) 

Ma and Carrie wander around, and we see they’ve brought Bandit with them, which seems odd. (Mightn’t he run off?)

Carrie asks to go on on the carousel, but Ma says she’s got to enter the pickle-making competition first. (She’d be a shoe-in for Worst Peeled Fruits and Vegetables, I can tell you that much.)

We see some sort of mustached gomer talking to a toddler about how rides are nothing to be afraid of.

Unfortunately for him, whilst he’s bent over a mysterious man appears and steals his wallet.

This mystery man has a full beard and wears a vest perhaps made by those companies that manufacture sweatpants that look like work pants.

This vested pickpocket quickly wanders away, but we notice he’s closely followed by a rather wobbly older lady.

DAGNY: She looks like my Auntie Marcy. Watch, she’ll catch him. She’s the Miss Marple of Little House.

Meanwhile, Ma and Carrie arrive at the hall where they’re exhibiting the baked and canned goods. Looks quite proper.

Actually, at the Minnesota State Fair at least, entries need to be dropped off, like, over a week in advance so they can be judged and displayed by the time the fair starts. My ex-wife, Amelia and Olive’s mom, is a champion baker whose cakes have taken first place at the Fair several times. (So if you’re a stalker who hopes to track down our real identities, perhaps a good place to start would be the rolls of the Minnesota State Fair prize winners from the past twenty years or so, ha ha!)

Anyways, we see a mom hitting her son for tasting the frosting of a cake on display. (Landon always thinks moms hitting kids is funny.)

Mrs. Oleson is also there, standing in line to submit her own entries. “Well, Caroline, how nice to see you here!” she cries with fake enthusiasm when she sees Ma.

Or maybe she’s just awkward rather than fake.

Either way, I love how she always says Ma’s name “Caro-LINE” even though she knows quite well Ma pronounces it “Caro-LEN.”

Mrs. O also adds a “Hello, honey” directed at Carrie, which I think is cute. She’s not irredeemable.

Ma tells Mrs. Oleson she’s entering canned cauliflower, pearl onions and “bread-and-butter pickles” in the contest.

Bread-and-butter pickles, in case you don’t know, are sweet pickles sliced in rounds, ideal for burgers. When I was a kid, I loved them so much I once ate them till I got sick, and as a result I’m not too keen on them today.

The name “bread-and-butter” to describe them probably wasn’t in wide use until the 1920s, though the pickle type itself likely did exist much earlier.

Mrs. Oleson is entering several items in the same categories, though she notes she’s put them into “pastel jars” to make them look more appealing. I’m not sure what she’s talking about exactly – they look like standard clear jars to me.

Also in the hall is the Vested Pickpocket, who steals another wallet. We see he’s quickly concealing the stolen items in a slotted briefcase he carries.

The Rather Wobbly Older Lady is still following him, too.

If the Vested Pickpocket looks familiar to you, that’s because he’s played by Dick Armstrong, whom we once met as price-gouging Deadwood grocer Grady Jennings in “Gold Country.”

Outside, the horrible clowns are doing their horrible thing.

WILL: I bet Landon loved clowns.

DAGNY: Totally. I can just see him laughing his head off at them.

Smiling Nels wanders the midway, goggling at the games. The Vested Pickpocket sizes him up, but he moves along too quickly.

WILL: Did you see Nels check out that girl?

ALEXANDER: I think she was checking him out.

Poor Nels tries out a rigged “win-the-dolly” game, but loses.

Some little boys giggle at him the whole time, which is cute.

Around the game, we see signs advertising a Red Dog Cafe and a “Dr. Geo. Gordon, M.D.”

As for the barker himself, he’s played by Enzio Cantini – but this appears to have been his only film or television job.

Charles bumps into Nels then, and asks him if he wants to go see “the wild jackass-riding contest.” (I guess you could say “jackass” on 7+ TV shows in 1977. I’m not sure you can today.)

In the crowd, we see Not-Lizzy Caplan, to date Little House’s most frequently appearing prostitute. 

She’s dressed quite conservatively this time, and appears to be on a date, though whether it’s a paid one is unknown. Perhaps she married a rich client and retired from the business? Or perhaps the guy’s her pimp? He is literally a shadowy figure.

Then there’s a sudden scream about a thief, and some guys grab a man and haul him away.

Standing next to Charles and Nels, Vested PP tuts that you can’t even attend a country fair anymore without thieves spoiling it.

Meanwhile, at the balloon stand, a young man with longish yellow hair is wandering around. Mary comes running up to him.

“WELL,” he says in a voice super-saturated with innuendo, “if there’s somethin’ I can do for YOU, you just NAME it.”

Mary says she’s looking for Patrick, and the guy interrupts and says, “That should be the other way around – he should be looking for such a pretty thing as you.”

Mr. Smooth then waves a fly out of her face. You’d think that might dampen the seductiveness of his pitch.

Mary, who’s in stupid rather than cunning mode today, overexplains the situation.

The young man, whose features are fine and polished like a porcelain doll’s head, talks circles around her.

ROMAN: He looks like he could be Melissa Sue Anderson’s brother.

He has a fake Irish accent. What did people with fake Irish accents ever do to Michael Landon, I wonder? They’re always villains on this show.

DAGNY: Why is his voice so funny?

WILL: You mean besides the accent?

DAGNY: Yeah, I mean the way it’s dubbed over.

It’s true – even though all of the outdoor dialogue was surely redubbed by the cast, this guy’s voice seems to have been recorded in a completely different acoustic.

The man says he and Patrick both work for the tyrannical balloonist McCray, then he continues putting the make on Mary until Patrick appears and he steps away.

Patrick is upset because his wallet’s been stolen, and in fact, we see the Vested PP and Rather Wobbly lurking darkly in the background.

Mary tells him not to worry, her pa gave her some money, but Patrick won’t hear of them using that. He’d sooner his girlfriend starve than use her own money for food!

DAGNY: Oh my God, not again.

They’re about to leave when the other young man reappears, dressed in a preposterous costume, including a hideous shiny puffy silk shirt, an absurd flowing cape, and jodhpurs, though the last weren’t popular outside of India until the 1890s.

He also wears a white military hat which it may interest you to know is called a bearskin, or, sometimes, a BUSBY (!!!).

The man starts jabbering again, and in an aside Patrick tells Mary this “Cass” is full of shit. So as you probably guessed, the guy is himself the famous Cass McCray, Balloonist Extraordinaire.

McCray sends Patrick off to distribute flyers so he can steal his girlfriend. In fact, even before the latter’s left, McCray says, “Mary, you shall be my guest.”

Only, as others have noted, the way he says it sounds more like “Mehwwy” than “Mary.” I don’t like to pick on anybody’s speech difficulties – I stammer myself, at least when speaking publicly. That’s one reason you won’t see a Walnut Groovy podcast anytime soon.

But since this is just one of many weird choices by the actor playing McCray, I think it’s okay to mention it.

That actor is Dick DeCoit. He briefly played Mike Horton on Days of Our Lives in the seventies, and he was also on Maude, Barnaby Jones and JAG. 

And he was on an episode of Just the Ten of Us. Oh my GOD, did I love that show! A girlfriend of mine in college and I used to laugh our heads off watching it in reruns on USA. 

His character was a rather hard-hearted gym manager named “Spud,” but sadly I don’t remember the exact story very well, or any of them really.

https://youtu.be/W_mQ7hAaGh0?feature=shared

Finally, in what was surely his magnum opus, DeCoit made some sort of self-produced soap opera of six-minute-long episodes (?) called Desire and Deceit in 2010. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but you can watch it on Plex if you wish.

WILL: Some people online say he looks Timothy Olyphant – Seth Bullock.

ROMAN: I think he’s maybe more like a young Malcolm McDowell.

Anyways, off McCray goes with Mary, and we see there’s a tall thin young man with long hair wandering around in the background.

WILL: Hey, Alexander, it’s you!

ALEXANDER: That does not look like me.

Sure it does.

Meanwhile, a guy on horseback waves an American flag in front of the grandstand. An announcer identifies him as “Mr. Harold Hanson of Mankato.” 

I have no idea why the Redwood County Fair would have a color guard from Mankato. (Mankato’s in Blue Earth County – two counties away from this event.)

Then we see Charles has persuaded Nels to enter the “wild jackass ride” event as a team.

The announcer says there’s a $50 ($1,500) prize. We can see Carl the Flunky is watching in the background.

Not-Alexander himself opens the donkey gates, and here come the donkeys. 

WILL: Have you ever been to a donkey basketball game? The animal rights people don’t like them. Of course, there isn’t much they do like.

When I was a teenager, a donkey basketball company came to my school and all the teachers rode the donkeys and played the game. I can’t speak to how humane or inhumane it was, but it was certainly a memorable night.

The donkey basketball phenomenon, while nationwide, seems to have its nucleus in my home state of Wisconsin. And reader, I can’t say I’m very surprised.

This game is similar, just minus the ball. The object is apparently to catch a donkey and ride it to a target. 

You can tell these donkeys are hardly “wild jackasses” – the stuntmen are clearly faking being thrown from the placid beasties.

David Rose gives us a wild fiddle tune – I think a famous real one, though I’m ashamed to say I can’t place it. I’m getting old, you know.

DAGNY: They can pull the donkeys with a rope? That doesn’t seem fair.

WILL: It was the Wild West, woman.

Anyways, Charles and Nels win the contest. The crowd goes wild.

DAGNY: There are a lot of extras in this one.

It’s quite strange that although this was obviously a team victory, Charles screams “You won!” and Nels screams back “I won!”

WILL: This is idiocy, but it’s fun idiocy.

DAGNY: Yeah. And I love the Charles and Nels friendship plots.

After a break, we see Vested PP is still hard at work, whilst Laura loses at a shell game.

The shell-game guy is Steve Eastin, an actor and acting teacher who’s still working today! In fact, just last year – more than four and a half decades after this episode – he was in Killers of the Flower Moon.

Elsewhere, Cass McCray is walking arm in arm with Mary.

“Mehwwy,” he says, “would you say yes to something if I was to ask you?” 

WILL: Could you stand talking to somebody with a fake accent like that so long?

DAGNY: No.

McCray goes on to suggest Mary would make a perfect Beautiful Assistant for his balloon act.

Then we see a funny squawking woman (sadly uncredited) fall into a dunk tank. She screams that she quits, because the contestants are just too damn talented.

The dunk tank barker immediately starts shouting for somebody to take her place. He’s played by Sandy Rosenthal, who was the Jim Croce lookalike Springfield Clarion reporter in last week’s episode. 

But since he’s shaved his mustache, I think we can assume he’s a different character altogether in this one.

Having lost all her money on the shell game, Laura volunteers for the dunk tank, which pays quite well – $1 an hour, or thirty bucks in today’s money!

The marching band is still a-marching, and the clowns are still a-clowning. 

I agree that clowns are terrifying, but as much as I love horror, it makes me sad that there’s no longer a place for the traditional clown as a source of joy in our culture. 

I don’t know any clowns myself, I don’t think. But I have a friend whose uncle was one, and apparently he was very depressed as he watched the John Wayne Gacy/Pennywise archetype come to dominate his art form.

And speaking of creepy, the marching band includes some rather weird looking performers, including a trumpet player who I think might be Satan himself.

ROMAN: Why is that guy marching with a French horn and not a mellophone?

R is a French horn player himself, so he knows the regular “curly” horns aren’t normally used in marching bands, though I guess it’s not completely unknown.

Then hey, it’s Nellie and Willie! 

Strangely, they’re sitting in a cart with Bandit, whom Willie is feeding a caramel apple.

Willie goes to buy another apple (might we have another diarrhea storyline to look forward to?). 

We see Willie’s parents have given him some serious cash to carry around.

Vested PP sees it too, and takes it.

The apple vendor, who’s a little strange and creepy too, kind of gropes Willie as he tells him to leave. Fairs do bring out the weirdies, I can vouch for that all right.

Meanwhile, Nellie spots Laura in the dunk tank.

She tries to sink her. She doesn’t throw very well, though.

Back in the culinary arts building, Ma and Carrie are still waiting in line.

DAGNY: After all this has happened? I’m not sure I buy that. It’s gotta be like two in the afternoon by now.

This raises the question of when the Ingallses departed on this journey. Redwood Falls is about a day and a half from Walnut Grove on foot. Did they camp out the night before? Probably, I suppose – and yet they make no mention of it to Patrick when he says that’s what he did.

Pa appears then. He’s in a great mood, saying, “This place is packed tighter than your pickles!”

DAGNY: Is that a euphemism?

Ma asks Pa to take Carrie to have some fun, but he says he wanted to go to “that bull auction.” As I’ve said many times, I grew up in the country, and I actually once went to a bull semen auction – probably what Charles is actually referring to, in fact. (Even Michael Landon wouldn’t dare say “semen” on Little House on the Prairie.)

As for the auctions themselves, they’re not as exciting as you might think.

Anyways, Pa says he’ll pass Carrie off to Mary and Laura and they can watch her.

Then Nels comes running in to tell Harriet about his prize, but he’s so disheveled from the donkey ride that she shuns him.

DAGNY: Why is he dressed like a hobo?

WILL: Yeah. He looks like Patrick Troughton.

Out at the dunk tank again, Nellie has failed to dunk Laura. 

There’s a girl in the crowd who appears to be wearing Laura’s old yellow bonnet (“Dagny’s favorite”).

Laura notices that the boy who dunked the squawking lady has come back, and she quick as a scat convinces Nellie to switch places with her, telling her the game is rigged and it’s impossible to get dunked.

So of course Nellie gets dunked immediately by the baseball-throwing kid.

WILL: They should have told us that kid turned out to be a famous early ballplayer. You know, like Flat-Finger Three-Eye Brown, or somebody like that.

Meanwhile, Cass McCray and Mehwwy are passing the win-the-dolly game. A boy who looks a little like Albert and perhaps even more like Not-Albert is trying his luck.

McCray and Mary bump into Patrick. McCray starts to steer her away from her boyfriend, and she seems to go willingly. 

WILL: For supposedly being the smart one, she’s easily manipulated.

DAGNY: I know. Mary’s the dumbest.

Well, Patrick fails to win the dolly, and then McCray steps up and does it perfectly. 

He even orders the barker to give him a better prize, so obviously the game has been rigged in his favor, though I have no idea why it would be. Does he own the whole fair?

McCray gives her the dolly, then sends Patrick away to fire up the balloon.

In a hilarious moment, then, Laura ruins a family photo by walking through as it’s being taken.

She stops to watch a clown eating fire.

WILL: I’ve never liked fire eaters. They really bother me for some reason.

Pa suddenly pops up and hands Carrie off to her. She’s very annoyed.

DAGNY: That’s the right reaction. Wait, what on earth is that getup?

Dags was referring to a very strange-looking boy or young man with extremely long hair and a shirt open to the waist who’s walking with a cane.

Not to be a spoilsport, but this Strange-Looking Young Man was actually standing right behind Laura in the preceding shot too.

VPP and Rather Wobbly are still at it too.

DAGNY: So this one is just, like, scene-ettes? 

ROMAN: Yeah, Robert Altman directed this one. That’s why there’s so much overlapping dialogue, too.

At the balloon stand, McCray is doing his spiel, inviting those with “intestinal fortitude” (a phrase not around till the 1910s) to take a balloon ride.

DAGNY: He’s dressed like the green guys from The Wizard of Oz.

McCray is a terrible pitchman, essentially admitting he just wants the crowd’s money, and then shouting stuff like “You should be ashamed of yourselves!” when nobody volunteers.

He grabs Mary, who’s put on a paper top hat for some reason, out of the crowd and literally shoves her into the balloon basket.

A guy immediately steps up then to join them on the ride. I don’t understand, because Mary’s so hot?

It’s worth noting there are some brown-skinned girls in the crowd – an unusual sight on this show.

Meanwhile, Laura is impatiently waiting in line for the carousel with Carrie and Bandit.

Laura hears a fiery roar, which she says means the balloon’s about to go up. I’m no expert, of course, but it’s unclear how the balloon in this episode actually works. The roar suggests burning gas, but earlier, we saw Patrick gathering firewood for McCray. 

The earliest balloons actually did use wood-burning fires onboard, which sounds terribly dangerous, doesn’t it? But by the Nineteenth Century, it seems, most hot-air balloons actually were gas-fueled. 

Laura then abandons Carrie to go see the balloon show. Presumably she assumes that’ll be over before Carrie gets to the front of the long line.

Then Bandit runs off to chase a (presumably?) female dog, to a weird sexed-up arrangement of “Cutesy-Poo Recess” on the clarinet.

So the balloon takes off, though it remains tethered to the ground – presumably for ease of relanding in the same spot.

David Rose accompanies this with a charming/irritating new melody in the high strings. It echoes “Beautiful Dreamer,” the Stephen Foster song, but I found the arrangement a little harsh on the ear.

We get a break from the music when we go to commercial, but when we come back it just starts right up again.

Laura runs back to the carousel to find Carrie still at the end of the long line. She says she got to the front but had to go to the back again because Laura didn’t leave her any money.

Laura pulls her out of line and they cross the fairgrounds in front of a Morgan’s Feed & Fuel – another chain, apparently.

They find Ma and Pa. Ma screams when Laura points out Mary in the balloon.

ALEXANDER: Mary should throw up on them.

The balloon lands, and McCray introduces himself, using his full name, “Cassius.” (Cassius was a scheming Shakespeare villain, if you recall, and probably not such a great person in real life either.)

“Mr. McCray, do you do this very often – I mean, take young ladies up without asking their parents’ permission?” says Pa.

DAGNY: What a hick.

McCray apologizes, and Pa gives his blessing for Mary to continue helping him.

DAGNY: I really hate this guy. It almost makes me sorry we’re watching this one. He’s probably the worst Little House character so far.

WILL: I don’t think much of his acting, either.

ROMAN: I don’t think he’s that bad. Red Buttons was worse.

DAGNY: Plus there’s no way Mary would like him, either.

WILL: Well, that’s the writing. It’s just like the one where John cheats on her – it’s supposedly her story, but she’s really just an object in it.

McCray says he’ll take Mary to see if she won the needlepoint competition (see? told you), then gives some instructions to a gray-haired dude named Tom.

Meanwhile, Patrick, who barely seems to have any lines in this one, watches McCray and Mary in disgust.

Carrie starts quacking that she hasn’t been on any rides yet, and Pa yells at Laura to go take her on one for fuck’s sake. (Paraphrase.)

Then Carrie reports Bandit’s run away. See, didn’t I call that? Why on earth would they bring him in the first place? I suppose because the Olesons are their usual dogsitters, as we’ve theorized in the past.

Ma and Pa head off, and then Laura spots Bandit and chases him, so poor Carrie is left alone yet again.

In the exhibition building, Caroline wins the pickling contest. Behind her, we get a good look at a very attractive lady with an exceptional figure we’ve seen wandering in the crowd several times by this point. In close-up, she’s a little older than I would have thought – another goddess to be added to the pantheon of Little House on the Prairie MILFs.

And when the winner is announced, Nels (who you’ll recall has always had a crush on Ma) claps his hands off.

Then Laura can’t find Carrie, and we see Bandit and his gal pal stealing caramel apples and (wait for it) POPCORN. (Surely this is a Landon sex joke.)

As it turns out, Carrie has wandered back to the balloon area where Tom the Gray-Haired Dude is supposed to be on guard duty; but he’s drunk and passed out in a haystack.

Carrie climbs into the balloon basket, and then the Vested PP appears and steals Tom’s watch.

VPP is still accompanied or pursued by the Rather Wobbly Older Lady, and David gives us some full-tilt-boogie hilarious music when she appears. (It doesn’t quite work, since the show hasn’t let us in on the joke yet.)

Patrick arrives at the exhibit hall just in time to see Mary lose to people with names like “Maddie Morgan,” “Ingeborg Berman,” “Mrs. Peter Henderson,” and “Agatha Niemals.”

DAGNY: She didn’t even get honorable mention? What a disgrace.

Mary complains of her disappointment, but, standing next to her, McCray says, “Mehwwy – I’ll make it up to you.”

DAGNY: “Mehwwy – I’m going to muwder you tonight.” That’s who he reminds me of, the guy from whatever it’s called, Sleeping With the Ants. You know, with Jodie Foster.

WILL: Yeah. Jame Gumb.

But rather than saying he’ll murder her, McCray just says he’ll take her to lunch, then he kisses her foreheard, which would have been quite a shocking affront in the Nineteenth Century.

They depart, as a Henrietta Maston is announced as winner in the quilting category. Dejected, Patrick watches them go.

DAGNY: He’s much cuter.

Then, in a jealous rage, Patrick runs out to the balloon and chops it loose with an ax. I don’t understand, why is it still inflated? Wouldn’t the fire need to be fed continuously, so it doesn’t collapse?

Well, no matter. Inside the basket, Carrie wakes up and starts waving with delight as Patrick stares in horror.

The balloon flies over the crowd, most of whom (including Carl the Flunky!) just wave stupidly rather than do anything to help.

Needless to say, Ma and Pa are not pleased when they see Carrie in the runaway balloon. You guessed it, Ma lets out a big “Oh, CHAAAAAAAARLES!”

Leaping into action, Patrick steals a horse and starts chasing the balloon.

ALEXANDER: How is the horse going to help?

DAGNY: I know, it isn’t a pegasus.

Charles leaps onto the fire wagon and they follow him.

To some excellent if nutty chase music, the balloon blows out into the countryside.

Running out of steam somewhat, it starts scraping the ground, but Patrick can’t quite catch the rope.

Meanwhile, the fire wagon and some riders are catching up. We were delighted to see Mustache Man has joined the rescue party.

Carrie, meanwhile, continues waving stupidly.

In an excellent shot, then, Patrick catches the rope, but he gets pulled off his horse and dangles from it. I don’t know who the stuntman is, but the likeness is good enough.

Charles shouts to the firefighters that they should spray the balloon to put out the fire. So I guess the canister between the balloon and the basket had a continuously burning wood fire in it? With a bunch of HAY right underneath it in the basket (which we saw when Carrie fell asleep)? I don’t know that I believe that, but whatever, the balloon comes down.

Patrick confesses his crime, and McCray suddenly drops the fake Irish accent to start screaming at him in an equally fake New York or New Jersey accent.

Preposterously, THIS is what makes Mary turn against McCray.

WILL: He’s a horrible person, but surely he’s justified in being upset, right?

DAGNY: Absolutely. Patrick’s lucky he doesn’t set the police on him.

Well, at the end of the day, the fair winds down. After a long wait, we get the punchline of the VPP/Rather Wobbly storyline, when Rather Wobbly steals VPP’s briefcase full of loot and puts it in her own larger suitcase. Kind of a small payoff, if you ask me. (The actor playing Rather Wobbly was a Helen E. Hintz, who also appeared in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.)

Bandit comes back then, and the Ingallses head for home. Strangely, we see all the people walking by not the big old Springfield train station we saw at the beginning of this episode, but a smaller one that’s, you guessed it, identical to the tiny new Springfield station of last week. Madness!

Bandit’s abandoned girlfriend looks after the Chonkywagon sadly.

ALEXANDER: Who’s going to take care of the puppies?

Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

STYLE WATCH: Charles appears to go commando again.

THE VERDICT: Dags is right that this episode, which in some ways resembles “Founder’s Day” from a few years back, is vignettes in search of a compelling plot. But it’s silly fun, there are, like, a zillion new extras to keep track of (which was a hoot for me), and Carrie gets her moment of glory at last.

UP NEXT: Here Come the Brides