The Stranger

The Charles Effect

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: The Stranger

Airdate: February 20, 1978

Written by Arthur Heinemann

Directed by Michael Landon

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: A depressed child who lives in a palace and is somehow related to Nels comes to town. He’s got some problems, but fortunately Nels knows a good social worker.

RECAP: Little House took a week’s hiatus on February 13th, 1978, to make room for a Bob Hope comedy special. I never really liked Hope much, but my mom did meet him once in a grocery store in my hometown, where he was vacationing.

When the show returned, you’d be forgiven for thinking you wound up on the wrong channel, since we start with grainy stock footage of Napoleon’s onetime home, the Château de Malmaison!

Harpsichord music plays on the soundtrack as red-liveried personnel drive a carriage up to the house.

The title of this one is “The Stranger.”

ROMAN: Oh, based on the Camus book? Does Charles kill an Algerian on the beach?

Inside the chateau, presumably, we see a boy in a military uniform open a door into a huge wood-paneled office where one man sits at an enormous desk whilst another stands to the side.

The real Malmaison is located about nine miles outside of Paris, but the side-stander greets the boy in English, saying, “Hello, Peter.” 

(Credited as “Mr. Tate,” the Side-Stander is Stephen Coit, who was on Bonanza, The Virginian, and Barnaby Jones, and who was in Robert Altman’s very good Philip Marlowe mystery, The Long Goodbye.)

The man at the desk asks the boy if school’s over for the year, but the boy says no.

Arthur Heinemann wrote this one. With five stories, Heinemann has dominated this season so far.

The boy, who looks a bit like a young Vickie Lawrence, approaches the desk, where the seated man is writing in a ledger or other large book.

The man says he really doesn’t have time for this, but looks up when the boy says he was “expelled for cheating and stealing.”

ALEXANDER: Just like Roman, Mr. Two Minutes Late for Band Class.

The man, Peter’s father according to the side-stander, sets down his pen and takes a letter the boy hands over.

Peter’s father reads the letter and sends the boy to his room. He has a slight European (French?) accent.

The boy gives him a look of surprise, resentment, or some combination thereof and exits.

In the pit, David Rose tinkles away on the harpsichord as the camera lingers on some doodads.

In Peter’s bedroom, a late-middle-aged maidservant makes the bed whilst chattering at “Master Peter.” Peter himself sits stiffly in a bergère chair.

The maid has a weird fake English accent and says, “Why don’t you pop in and say hello to your grandmama?”

But Grandmama herself spoils this plan by immediately appearing and dismissing the maid, whom she addresses as “Maggie.”

Grandmama is a classic Dowager Countess type, stick and all.

(And she’s not the first dowager we’ve had this season.)

This dowager’s English accent sounds genuine, and she asks Peter to explain his expulsion.

Peter aloofly says he and his friends frequently shoplift, with the best thief amongst them designated “Artful Dodger” for a week. This is a reference to Oliver Twist, in which the Artful Dodger is the most skilled boy pickpocket in London.

And Peter says a friend of his called “Dennivere” stole the answers to “the Latin quiz” and shared them with the group.

Grandmama scoffs that boys will be boys. She says it in bizarre plummy old-fashioned language, though.

(The actor is Cicely Walper, who appeared in Love at First Bite; and she was indeed English, born – appropriately enough – in East Ham, London.)

Peter’s father enters, and Grandmama addresses him as “Mr. Lundstrom.” So apparently she’s Peter’s maternal “grandmama”?

Grandmama tells Mr. Lundstrom that Peter requires no punishment for such minor offenses. Mr. L says he doesn’t plan on punishing him, prompting an acerbic dig from the old lady.

Grandmama says she’ll use her influence to get the boy reinstated at school, a plan Lundstrom vetoes. Grandmama protests that the school is “the best around” and was personally selected for his son by Lundstrom’s late wife.

Lundstrom, whose first name according to the credits is Olaf, and whose accent therefore I suppose is meant to be Swedish, not French, says all the kids at that school are little shits. 

Lundstrom says he grew up without privileges and wants Peter to experience the same thing. He says he will be “making arrangements with my cousin” for the boy to do so – in Minnesota, which Grandmama describes as a “godforsaken wilderness.” (A bit harsh. Manitoba, now . . .)

DAGNY: I would beg to differ with that! Manitoba is the only province in Canada that has all terrains! Prairies, forests, mountains, deserts, tundra! 

WILL: Oh, so in other words it’s the real-life version of Minnesota as it’s depicted on this show?

Grandmama huffs at this, but Count Olaf points out her daughter would have approved.

Lundstrom, who speaks in the clipped manner of an old-timey movie star like James Mason, tells Peter not to worry, it’ll be fun. (Paraphrase.)

The actor is Nehemiah Persoff, who was neither English nor French nor Swedish but rather Israeli-born, and who was in practically everything, beginning with You Are There back in the 1950s. Big movies like On the Waterfront, Some Like it Hot, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Yentl, four American Tail films, The Last Temptation of Christ and Twins, and TV shows including The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Untouchables, Rawhide, Gilligan’s Island, I Spy, The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, The Mod Squad, Gunsmoke, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, Hawaii Five-O, Battlestar Galactica, Fantasy Island, Barney Miller, Magnum P.I., The Facts of Life, MacGyver, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Murder, She Wrote, and Angels in America barely scratch the surface of his resume, if you can believe that.

He also was on The Littlest Hobo, Dags’s favorite show, as well as on Highway to Heaven.

Back in Walnut Grove, we see the Yellow-Wheeled Buckboard driving through town. 

It passes Not-Richard Libertini, and there’s guy I don’t recognize in a “Wild West” vest crossing in the foreground.

Near the Mill, in a lovely tracking shot, we see some pampas grass, a tall white feathery stalked plant which, according to people on the internet who know more than I do, is not present in Minnesota. 

The buckboard is driven by Nels, and he’s accompanied by the other Olesons and young Peter Lundstrom. (Peter’s Atlantic crossing and journey from New York City to Minnesota are not depicted.)

When they arrive, Peter exclaims, “Thank heaven we’re here! I must use the water closet!” – an expression that mystifies outhouse expert Willie.

When Willie shows him the privy, Peter, who’s wearing a lace jabot (or the like) that looks more Seventeenth-Century than Nineteenth-, is horrified.

He also wears a blue paisley ribbon around his neck – a strange look.

WILL: He’s dressed like Jon Pertwee.

Mrs. Oleson is terribly embarrassed that a sophisticated child like Peter has to endure such conditions.

Inside, Charles himself is manning the checkout counter in the Olesons’ absence! So I guess the “auctioning away the Little House” thing was forgiven and forgotten quickly.

Mrs. Oleson brings Peter in. She poshes her own accent up (“you might find things RAWTHER primitive here”), and refers to herself and Nels as “Auntie” and “Uncle.” It is unclear at this point whether she or Nels are related to the Lundstroms, but either way since Count Olaf referred to them as “cousins,” they wouldn’t be Peter’s aunt and uncle.

Mrs. O tells Peter they’ll be installing indoor plumbing soon and takes him upstairs.

Nels explains the scenario to Charles, but does not clarify their relationship to Peter and his family. You may recall, Walnut Grove already has a Lundstrom family. Way back in “The Award,” Mary’s chief academic rival was depicted not as Nellie, but rather as a lice-infested boy named Arnold Lundstrom.

But Arnold hasn’t been seen since “The Talking Machine” in Season Two, so we can presume that since then he’s either moved away, or, more likely on this show, is dead.

Nels says he’s supposed to teach good values to Peter, but admits “I can’t even do it with my own!” Nels is always so self-effacing. It’s an extremely likable trait.

Upstairs, the other Olesons are setting Peter up in his room. The exact layout of the house is somewhat mysterious, but I suppose there are likely three bedrooms upstairs and a master on the ground floor.

DAGNY: Finally, somebody with a real suitcase, not that stupid carpetbag for the millionth time.

Willie bitches that Peter didn’t bring any toys, but the boy points out he did bring gifts. 

The three greedy Olesons tear open their packages. Mrs. Oleson and Nellie are delighted to receive fancy scarves and handkerchiefs. Harriet surmises hers is from “the Orient” – a term frowned upon these days. (The scarf appears to depict Mount Fuji.)

Willie just gets a tie.

OLIVE: Poor Willie. He just wants to be normal.

Peter is obviously depressed, but Mrs. O is too busy goggling over his fine things to care. Or simpering over them, if you go by the subtitle transcriptionist’s view.

ALL: “Simpers”?

These include a velvet Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, which really would have been period-appropriate.

Later, Nels comes upstairs.

DAGNY: That railing is very wobbly. You can see why he let go of it right away.

Peter is sitting up in the dark staring out the window.

ALEXANDER: Is he yearning for France? He’s like Napoleon in his first exile.

Nels kindly says he was also partly raised by an aunt and uncle due to a serious illness his mother had when he was a child. (Was his mother a Lundstrom? It’s likely. This aunt and uncle probably weren’t Olaf’s parents, though, because then surely Nels would call them “your grandparents” when talking to Peter.)

Nels assumes Peter is missing his father, but Peter calmly tells him that isn’t so, and that his father surely doesn’t miss him in the least.

This saddens Nels, who bids him goodnight. 

Cut to a bunch of Grovesters exiting church after services. They include the Gelfling Boy, the Non-Binary Kid, and Carl the Flunky.

Non-Binary and the Gelfling, accompanied by what look like miniature versions of the Midsommar Kid and the Kid With Very Red Hair, grab handfuls of dirt and wait for Peter, smiling nastily. (I can disabuse you of the notions you may have that kids in the country are any nicer than kids in the city.)

The Miniature Kid With Very Red Hair bows to Peter and says, “Good morning, your lordship.” This show’s prejudice against redheads is getting out of hand.

Peter disdainfully calls them “nincompoops,” and they immediately begin taunting him about it. (I’m flashing back to that incident at the 2019 Minnesota State Fair again, so I may need a moment.)

Then the Miniature Red-Haired Kid actually hits Peter in the face with a handful of mud.

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes!” Mrs. Oleson screams from the steps, but Nels snaps that she’s only making things worse.

After church, Peter demands Nels send him home, but Nels makes excuses for the bullies, which is not cool.

Peter responds by going on a hunger strike until he’s allowed to leave Walnut Grove.

Nels leaves, and Peter stands staring with cold fury at his reflection whilst Mrs. Oleson wheedles and pleads with him through the door. Commercial.

Peter is played by Michael Sharrett, who was in a wide range of very eighties things, including Diff’rent Strokes, Charles in Charge, Magnum, Silver Spoons, St. Elsewhere, Our House, and the must-be-seen-to-be-believed Matthew Labyorteaux vehicle Deadly Friend.

He also was on an episode of Baywatch.

When we return, we see Alice Garvey crossing the thoroughfare as Not-Linda Hunt, the Smallest Nondescript Helen of Them All, and some other girls run around a tree.

Alice’s pace is quite brisk, and you’d be forgiven for missing Carl the F and some other gent walking in the background.

Alice carries some packages into the Mercantile, passing on the way Peter, who’s sitting, dejected, on the steps in his Little Lord Fauntleroy costume.

Inside, she remarks dryly to Nels that “that statue on the steps could do with a bit of dusting.”

Alice, who you’ll recall recently took over for Mrs. Whipple at the Post Office, hands Nels a “telegraph” [sic] and Mrs. Oleson a package.

Upstairs, Willie throws a paper airplane out the window. Some prigs out there have complained that the airplane wasn’t invented until the Twentieth Century, but of course people have been making such paper gliders since long before that – some say for thousands of years.

Mrs. O comes in with the box, which Willie is horrified to see contains an identical Fauntleroy suit for him.

Nels is also horrified, but Cunning Willie, who quickly changes into the suit, grins like a Skeksis and reassures his father he himself likes it. He asks permission to go show it to his friends.

Outside, the previous gang of bullies have now been joined by both AEKs.

As Peter watches, Willie marches right up to the Miniature Kid With Very Red Hair and boldly starts tearing the kid’s clothes.

The boy, of course, rips Willie’s outfit to shreds in retaliation.

OLIVE: This is just like The Dark Crystal!

Interestingly, one of the other kids addresses the red-haired bully as Tommy, so we’ll assume that, despite being played by a different actor, this character is in fact Peeping Tommy, the Kid With Very Red Hair’s younger brother who perved on Laura, Mary, and Ellen Taylor in “’My Ellen,’” and who more or less caused Ellen’s death by doing so.

Mrs. Oleson runs out screaming and scares the boys away. Hilariously, Willie cries, “They ruined my wonderful suit!”

Inside, Nels says it’s come to his attention that Harriet wrote a letter to Count Olaf expressing Peter’s desire to go home.

He hands her the telegram – the Count’s reply.

We don’t get to hear what he said, but Harriet interprets it as an insult. And when she snarks that “he doesn’t even want his son home” in earshot of Peter, Nels snaps at her to shut up.

Peter runs off, and Harriet hilariously stage-whispers, “He didn’t hear what I said!”

“Everybody in Hero Township heard you,” Nels replies.

OLIVE: I don’t find their dynamic funny. I don’t think the trope where the husband hates his awful wife is such a joke. I find it sad.

Nels goes out and tries talking to Peter, but it doesn’t do any good.

The harpsichord comes in again at this point, playing something that sounds a bit like “Time in a Bottle.”

Nels goes back inside, and then, in a shocking moment, Peter seizes a chair from the porch and smashes the Mercantile window.

ALL: Oh my God!

ALEXANDER: Is this his French Revolutionary side coming out?

Charles appears from nowhere (of course) and stops him.

Nels comes out and screams at Peter, then sends him inside. We know he’s a fan of corporal punishment, so it’s not hard to imagine what’s in store for the boy.

Social Worker Chuck then talks Nels through the problem. 

And of course, Charles volunteers to take the boy and put him to work clearing fields.

And the next thing we see is Nels driving Peter out to the Little House. This is accompanied by a very interesting new variation on the title theme, in which the Rose monkeys with both melody and harmony. I like it, myself.

The Ing-Gals all come out to meet the arrival. As Nels stated earlier, this is summer (of 1879-G); otherwise the girls surely would have met Peter already in school.

ALEXANDER: No Carrie dialogue yet? Come on.

Clearly keen on taking the boy down a notch (though his sense of privilege hardly seems to have been the problem at the Olesons’), Charles tells Peter “the hired help sleeps in the barn” and takes him to the hayloft.

DAGNY: The hayloft? Why not the shoddy?

WILL: The soddy?

DAGNY: Yeah. Why not that?

I know I’ve told this story before, but I once was forced to sleep in hay at a French and Indian War reenactment camp on a rainy night, and I don’t think my lungs ever truly recovered.

Charles tells Peter to get changed and once and they’ll start a-workin’. Peter sasses him briefly, but Chuck threatens to beat him, and that shuts him up. (Of course we know from “‘Be My Friend’” that he’s just bluffing.)

Charles has him cut firewood all morning, shrugging when he refuses the offer of work gloves. 

At lunchtime, clearly delighted with how things are going, Charles grabs his severed-head bag and says let’s take a break.

Charles produces fried chicken and biscuits from the sack. Hard to imagine a better lunch, if you ask me.

Hunger-striking again, apparently, Peter refuses lunch, then is shocked when Charles orders him back to work.

Staring daggers, Peter picks up the ax.

WILL: He kills Pa. This is Landon’s final episode, and then Ma marries the handyman.

That night, Peter soaks his bloody hands.

Charles comes out and offers him some liniment, which Peter refuses. Then Pa tells him to come in for supper.

During the pre-prandial prayer, Charles surprises Peter by praising him highly to God.

Dinner looks like pot roast, and Peter takes some.

Pa quotes the Farmer’s Almanac, saying it’s predicted a good harvest.

Peter eats and drinks heartily, and Glopface Carrie copies him by guzzling her milk down in a single draft.

WILL: She should vomit over everyone’s food.

ROMAN: Yeah. “Oh damn.”

After a commercial, David gives us some fantastic farming music, and in an equally fantastic tracking shot we see Peter, Laura, and Mary working in the field. You can’t see exactly what they’re doing, but they’re walking the plowed furrows and doing something with long poles or sticks.

DAGNY: Is this a Landon shot or what?

They make smalltalk as they work, Peter telling them he doesn’t know much about his own father.

On the way home, Pa compliments their teamwork and says he wants to take them swimming.

But Peter whines that he doesn’t want to swim. My friend Leslie used to have a policy about dating that she called “NS – NG – NF.” This stood for “No swimming? No games? No fun,” as she refused to date any guy who didn’t enjoy such activities.

Then we cut to the girls swimming in Plum Creek, right next to the covered bridge that’s “always been there.”

ROMAN: Would they ever go swimming again after Ellen drowned?

Meanwhile, Pa and Peter stand in their long-johns on the bank.

Peter confesses the reason he didn’t want to go was because he can’t swim.

Pa says that’s all right, he’ll teach him. And more or less as he did with Mary out at Johnson’s Meadow (a location that looks suspiciously similar to where they are now), he simply throws the boy into the water.

OLIVE: Oh my God, Charles!

 Peter immediately begins dog-paddling and realizes it’s kind of fun.

That night, Pa takes Peter out to the barn, both of them talking about how much fun they had. 

OLIVE: The Charles Effect.

WILL: Yeah. They should have a plot where Laura is jealous and prays for Peter to die.

Peter then addresses Pa as “Uncle Charles,” and starts to thank him, but he chokes up halfway through and just hugs him.

WILL: That’s how I’d have felt when I was a kid if I got to leave rural Wisconsin and live in a French chateau.

Jolly music in 6/8 time then brings us back to the thoroughfare, and Pa and Peter head to the Mercantile.

Mrs. O is horrified to see Peter’s callused hands.

Nels happily tells Peter he’s worked off the cost of the window with 43 cents (about $13) to spare.

Peter says he’d like to continue staying at the Little House, as there’s more work for him to do.

A little sad, but relieved, Nels agrees.

When they’ve gone, Mrs. Oleson says, “Your cousin sent him to us to take care of” – establishing that Count Olaf is in fact Nels’s cousin, not hers. Now, we know next to nothing about Nels’s background, as most of the Oleson family history we’ve discovered relates to Harriet’s side. However, this story would seem to contradict one assumption we’ve made to this point, viz., that all the money in the family is Harriet’s and Nels married her for it. 

Since we learn little about the Lundstroms except that they live in a palace, we can’t add much to the saga, except that Nels obviously comes from serious wealth, possibly with European connections. This doesn’t really go along with his personality, or with his statement in “The Richest Man in Walnut Grove” that he’s simply “always been lucky with money.” But what can you do?

Of course, it’s also possible that Olaf Lundstrom married into that money, and the house was his wife’s. Was she Comtesse de Malmaison? It’s conceivable. And it would explain why her mother (a true dowager?) still resides at the chateau.

Anyways, Nels tells Harriet the Ingallses are richer than they are in many ways.

Then we get a musical montage! First we see Peter hauling big sacks of something or other.

Then Laura teaches him how to milk Cow, the cow.

He and Charles cut down a tree.

WILL [as SARUMAN]: “Rip them all down.”

Finally, Pa teaches him how to drive the Chonkywagon.

That night, or one night, anyways, Ma and Pa hang out at their Serious Talk Place, by the animal paddock.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Ma says – a saying from the Sixteenth Century, when presumably a penny was worth even more than it was in 1879 (which was 30 cents). (To the best I can figure, a British penny in 1546 would have been worth about $4 in today’s U.S. currency.)

Charles says he’s thinking about how he’ll miss Peter, and how he’s worried what his life will be like when he goes back home.

For apparently Count Olaf himself is coming to get the boy – tomorrow!

Anyways, Charles jokes that he’ll buy Ma a cup of coffee, and they head into the house arm in arm. They always seem to be drinking coffee late at night, don’t they?

After another break, we get to see Mrs. Oleson playing the piano and singing “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair”! (The song, by Stephen Foster of course, was published in 1854.)

Despite her boasting about her classical voice training, her singing is terrible.

We’ve heard her sing before, of course.

Oddly, while she’s sitting at the piano, she’s accompanied by an organ on the soundtrack. Since Granville Whipple died, she’s presumably the only person in town who plays. I guess that means she’ll become the church organist as soon as the new organ from last week gets delivered.

There’s a knock at the door. It’s Count Olaf, and he and Nels greet one another warmly.

Olaf has brought the Dowager along with him (from Europe?), introducing her as “Mrs. Caldwell.”

Nels tells Olaf Peter has a surprise for him, and says he’ll take him to him.

He also forbids Harriet from coming along.

Out they drive to the covered bridge.

Peter’s surprise is showing his father he can swim.

But when he looks for a reaction, Olaf simply compliments him on taking a summer job.

Disheartened, Peter says he’ll run back to the Little House and meet them there. (We determined the bridge is probably about a mile away.)

Olaf wonders why Peter’s upset, and Nels and Charles tell him it’s because he wasn’t surprised and pleased the boy could swim.

Olaf says, “I didn’t even know he couldn’t swim.”

Charles says there’s a lot he probably doesn’t know about his son.

WILL [as FRÄULEIN MARIA]: “The children just want to be loved, Captain! Oh, please won’t you love them!”

(Seriously, I do think The Sound of Music may be an influence on this story.)

Anyways, the Dowager squawks at Chuck sharply.

But Olaf tells her shut up and hears Charles out.

Blah blah, misbehavior is a cry for attention, blah blah.

When Chuck’s finished his lecture, Olaf asks him to walk with him to their farm.

Once there, Olaf climbs up the loft, where Peter is miraculously dry with his hair perfectly combed.

Speaking quietly and haltingly, Olaf apologizes, saying he wants to be a better father. He breaks down weeping, and Peter hugs him. It’s actually a fairly affecting moment.

Then they both start laughing and exchange words of love.

Back at the house, Ma is serving the Dowager tea.

Olaf and Peter arrive back, and Olaf tells the Dowager they’re going to stay longer than planned because he wants to go swimming.

The Dowager says, “May I remind you you have a stockholders’ meeting on Thursday?”

Olaf starts giggling crazily and says “My son and I can’t make it!”

Then everybody (except the Dowager) starts laughing crazily.

We close on Count Olaf and Peter walking to the creek.

OLIVE: Do they both drown?

WILL: Yeah, and Charles inherits all their money. But it turns out the estate was eaten up by debts . . .

Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

STYLE WATCH: Charles appears to go commando again.

THE VERDICT: “The Stranger” suffers by being in a season chock-full of classic episodes. But while “only the poor know how to live” might be a populist fantasy, there’s really nothing wrong with this story. Count Olaf’s change of heart is quick and perhaps over-convenient, but his reconciliation with Peter is moving nevertheless. (It helps that Nehemiah Persoff is a terrific actor.)

UP NEXT: A Most Precious Gift