“I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away,” Part Two

You’re Not the Boss of Me; or

Do Not Hasten to Bead Me Adieu

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: “I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away” [sic], Part Two

Airdate: March 13, 1978

Written by Carole and Michael Raschella

Directed by William F. Claxton

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Fate takes Mary to a blind school in Iowa, where she – and the show – begin to move in a new direction.

RECAP: As some of you pointed out in the comments last time, the strength of Melissa Sue Anderson’s performance in this pair of episodes resulted in a 1978 Emmy nomination for her – the only one any of the cast received during the series’ run.

MSA was nominated in the category of lead actress, which might seem an unusual choice. I’ve heard that Landon preferred she be nominated in the supporting category, but because the Emmys focus on a performance in a single story, and because Anderson was the female lead in this story, lead actress it was. I wonder what Grassle and Gilbert made of that.

She was up against the likes of Kate Jackson and Michael Learned in the category, but none of them won. Instead, Sada Thompson from Family – a show I never watched – got the prize. 

You can catch a glimpse of MSA at the awards ceremony here:

There’s a famous story that NBC planned to cancel Little House at the end of the 1977-1978 season, but changed their minds when “’I’ll Be Waving’” became an overwhelming ratings success. I don’t know if that’s true or just lore, but certainly we’ll see that Part Two has an epic, valedictory feel. All it needs to be a proper series finale is them blowing up the blind school at the end of it.

But I’m getting ahead of the story, so let’s begin. We watched the two parts back to back with my sister Peggy joining us.

WILL: Oh no! It’s the bad theme arrangement again!

DAGNY: They switched in the middle of a two-parter? They can’t do that.

They could and they did.

PEGGY: They should have changed the opening so Mary goes ass over teakettle down the hill.

We start with a lengthy previously-on, hitting, well, pretty much all the scenes you’d expect. They leave Seth out, though.

Then we see a black-and-yellow surrey approaching what looks like a rather grand farmhouse in the country.

WILL: EVERYONE SHUT UP! It’s starting.

If you look closely, you can see a line of people walking single-file along a fence towards the house.

Driven by a guy who’s obviously the long-lost twin of Walnut Grove’s resident Gray-Haired Dude Mr. Nelson, the surrey carries Pa and Mary as passengers.

ALEXANDER: Is that their Uber driver?

The rig is quite fancy – Not-Mr. Nelson wears a top hat and everything. 

I don’t really associate Iowa with luxuriousness, though Dagny, Amelia and I did recently attend an opulent and very strange dinner party there. It was in a huge old mansion on a hill like the Clue house, and it actually had the feel of a murder mystery, too, except nobody read a will or anything. (Also, not nearly enough people got murdered in my opinion. It’s a long story.)

Pa helps Mary down, then asks Not-Mr. Nelson to come back and pick him up before 4:00.

There’s a sign at the front of the house reading The Something School for the Blind, but I can’t make out what the “something” is.

Mary and Pa wait in a reception room, where they are eventually joined by a well-dressed bald man of late middle age who has an elegant little beard.

The man spirits Pa away to sign the contract or whatever, and suddenly a voice with a sort of old-time newsreel narrator inflection says from offscreen, “I’m looking for a Mary Ingalls!”

The camera cuts to the speaker, revealed to be a very handsome young man in an expensive-looking gray suit. (Of course this is Adam, but we don’t know who he is yet, so pretend you don’t know that for the next two sentences.)

Mary identifies herself expressionlessly.

“Uh-huh, I thought so,” says the man, who introduces himself as “Adam Kendall – your teacher.”

We see a young woman pass behind him, lightly touching the wall.

Adam says he’ll take Mary to her room.

Meanwhile, Charles is telling the well-dressed bald bearded man of late middle age, “I just hope I’m doing the right thing.”

DAGNY: He’s got kind of a cute little face, like those old apple people.

The man, apparently the school administrator, says, “Mr. Ingalls, plenty of families hide their blind children from the world as if they were mentally ill instead of just being unable to see.” I think some people would say mentally ill people shouldn’t be locked away either, but I understand this is meant to be a progressive view for the time.

WILL: He looks like a Satan-worshipper to me. Was he one of the old people in Rosemary’s Baby?

He wasn’t; I don’t know what I recognize him from. The actor is David Opatoshu. Maybe it’s The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, or Alfred Hitchcock Presents? I have seen a lot of those.

Or it might have been the original Star Trek, Buck Rogers, or Alien Nation. Or was it Fantasy Island?

Additionally, Opatoshu had a recurring role on Dr. Kildare, and appeared on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible, Daniel Boone, Hawaii Five-O, The Bionic Woman and Police Woman. 

Movie-wise-speaking, he was in Cimarron, Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, and Exodus. (At first I thought the IMDb said he was in Equus, but that’s something completely different.)

Final fun fact: The Twilight Zone in which Opatoshu appears costars our own Dabbs Greer!

Anyways, the superintendent gives Charles a piece of trivia: that blind schools were once known as asylums. And indeed, last week I found a picture of the real Iowa blind school Mary Ingalls attended that’s titled “Blind Asylum.”

The man discusses the school’s method, which involves isolating students from their over-helpful families the first three months. Charles balks at this, but the guy is persuasive.

ROMAN: He trusts this principal. He learned his lesson not trusting Dr. Mixter.

Then the man leads Charles down the hall, on the way greeting a student as “Paul” who addresses him back as “Mr. Nash.”

We don’t see Paul’s face here, but a glance at the credits reveals we’ve met him twice before! He was the kid who advised Mary on how to buy a Bible in “The Gift,” and in “His Father’s Son” he was a red-blooded American youth who genuinely enjoys deer hunting, and who was contrasted with John Junior, the Lord-Byron-reading sissy.

The kid has gone by a different name each time, but we shall assume he’s the same character until the show gives us information that incontrovertibly prevents us from doing so. He’s played by Peter Haas. 

Mr. Nash tells Charles he should give Mary a quick goodbye and then leave. Charles is upset, but once again trusts the superintendent.

By this point, they’ve arrived at Mary’s bedroom. Adam is with her.

DAGNY: Michael Landon!

WILL: What?

DAGNY: The mirror shot.

WILL: No, Clax. That’s two in a row you’ve flunked.

DAGNY: Well, shit.

Nash asks Adam to step out, and for the first time we can tell for sure, from the way he walks, that he’s blind himself. That Adam is, that is.

Pa says the room is nice.

DAGNY: It’s a hell of a lot nicer than her room at home. 

PEGGY: Yeah, but she can’t see it.

Making up a lie about catching an earlier train, Pa says he has to leave.

Mary begs him not to abandon her there, but he just says he loves her and goes.

Out in the hall, Mr. Nash looks at Adam and says, “School begins.”

Adam knocks on Mary’s door, then just walks in without waiting for an answer.

He tells her to get unpacked – a request that takes her aback.

Adam says dinner will be served at six.

AMELIA: How will she know what time it is?

DAGNY: They probably have a clock that chimes.

ALEXANDER: Did they have clocks back then?

He leaves. On the piano, David Rose picks up where he left off last week and gives us more slasher-movie music.

WILL: This music’s really scary. It’s like something from Alice, Sweet Alice, or I don’t know quite what.

Mary feels her way to her carpetbag.

AMELIA: For a poor blind country girl, she’s got a lot of makeup on.

She finds the vanity, where she first touches the mirror hopelessly, then balls her fists in silent fury.

OLIVE: Oh, she knows she’s still beautiful even if she can’t see herself. 

PEGGY: She’s good.

WILL: Yeah. The Mary episodes are almost always worth watching.

Later, we see some students wandering the halls, and Adam comes up the stairs with a tray. Touching the walls briefly, he arrives at Mary’s room.

Once again, he enters without waiting to be admitted.

PEGGY: I suppose he doesn’t need to knock, he can’t see anything anyway.

Adam says dinner is late because the student cook used cayenne instead of cinnamon in the apple pie.

WILL: Oh my God!

DAGNY: What?

WILL: It’s the cinnamon chicken!

I know I don’t have to tell anyone here that a future plot hinges on this exact same mixup. 

WILL: I wonder who thought this was such a great gag that they had to use it again and again?

AMELIA: Cayenne and cinnamon don’t even look that similar.

OLIVE: They’re blind, Amelia.

Adam sits down at the table and tells Mary to get started. He’s smug and rather impatient with her.

Mary feels her way over, and Adam says, “Your supper is part of your homework.” He announces the main course is roast beef.

Mary poutily says she just wants to eat in peace.

“When you eat in the school dining room, you can pick your own company,” Adam says brusquely. “But for now, this is schoolwork, so you’ll have to eat with the teacher.”

“I don’t like people looking at me,” Mary says. She sounds fairly brusque herself. In fact, I’d say if this were a brusque-off, they’d be neck and neck.

Adam says unless she relearns to use a knife and fork, she’ll be stuck eating with her hands the rest of her days.

“Look, my parents didn’t send me here to have you teach me table manners!” Mary spits out.

“Yes they did,” Adam says in a firm voice; then he adds coldly, “Just because you’re blind doesn’t mean you have to eat like an animal.”

He tries to walk her through eating with silverware, but she defiantly grabs a baked potato and starts eating it like an apple.

“Don’t use your fingers!” Adam says angrily.

“If you don’t like watching a blind person eat, why don’t you just get out!” Mary snarls.

Adam lectures her about her attitude, and finally, in a rage, she throws her plate of food across the room . . . and I feel like this is the moment we realize how far she’s fallen. Two weeks ago, can you imagine Mary Ingalls throwing her dinner at the wall under any circumstances?

“The roast beef was good,” Adam says drily, and then tells her to clean up her own mess.

“See you in the morning,” he adds as he’s walking out, and he clearly means it to sting, as Bertie Wooster might say.

Mary sits for a moment, thinking.

Well, big-time shades of The Miracle Worker in this scene, and throughout the episode, in fact.

Then we get an exterior shot again. This time we can see the sign reads The Burton School for the Blind.

Cut to Mary and Adam sitting in the school music room, or one with a full-size orchestra harp, at any rate.

DAGNY: That’s a nice-colored wall.

PEGGY: I would call that aqua.

WILL: The settee is more of a chartreuse.

Adam tells Mary to walk towards him, and she says, “I don’t want to.”

“Do it, Mary,” Adam says unpleasantly.

DAGNY: I finally realize who Adam looks like.

WILL: Who? Bradley Cooper?

DAGNY: No, Justin Trudeau.

DAGNY: Justin Trudeau has the same personality, too. He’s firm but compassionate, plus he falls down a lot.

Adam, of course, is played not by either of these personages, but by the impossibly named Linwood Boomer. (The kids collapsed in gales of laughter when I told them his name.)

Boomer is an actor, Canadian-born like Trudeau, who went on to become a successful TV writer/producer. By the mid-1980s, the latter work had become his career focus, and he worked on Silver Spoons, Night Court, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and The Mindy Project.

But his biggest success came with Malcolm in the Middle, a show he created based on his own life as a child.

I never got into Malcolm, but I do like the They Might Be Giants theme song.

As an actor, he mostly worked when he was young, on shows such as Fantasy Island, Voyagers!, and yes, Love Boat.

He also made appearances on Malcolm and, most recently, on Santa Clarita Diet.

Anyways, Adam tells her to use her hearing to understand where he is in the room. She takes a couple steps forward, but he snaps, “Don’t shuffle!”

As a motivator, Adam says, “Think of the people who will be watching you . . . and walk with confidence.”

OLIVE: This is like My Fair Lady. Is he going to put a book on her head?

(I do think My Fair Lady – or Pygmalion – is also an influence on this story.)

Putting her hand out – fairly low – Mary walks towards Adam.

WILL: Is she going to bump his crotch?

OLIVE: God, Dad.

WILL: Hee hee hee hee hee hee.

Adam smiles and says, “You see, it’s not so hard.”

But Mary replies with a harsh “No – I don’t see.”

She then says she doesn’t care about the simplest elements of life anymore because she’s still disabled.

Adam whispers, rather nastily, “I care, because it’s my job to teach you. If I don’t teach you, I don’t get paid.”

Speaking to her almost like an enemy, he says she can have five minutes to “sulk” and then he’s going to make her have dinner – “without throwing it.” Linwood Boomer really leans into the tough part of Adam’s “tough love” approach. I think that easily could have backfired, and the character come off as genuinely unpleasant. (I think to a certain extent that does happen with Almanzo at times.)

Yet, there’s something underneath his sardonic manner that shines through. Perhaps it’s because he’s a teacher, a career that demands sternness at times, instead of just a regular person. I know teachers who play mind games myself.

Anyways, he exits, and a mixture of emotions plays on Mary’s face.

In the front hall, Adam reports to Nash that everything’s going fine with his new pupil.

Then we get a “learning” montage accompanied by gentle, lyrical music from the Rose.

First we see Adam teaching Mary how to make her bed, but he doesn’t think she does it well enough.

DAGNY: Will, you should go to this school.

WILL: Oh, very funny.

Then we see him, with the aid of a ruler, helping her to write home.

Then we see them dining together, Mary sitting up properly and behaving herself this time.

Mary apparently graduates from this part of the program, because next we see her joining the other students in the big dining hall.

DAGNY: This is very crowded for a room full of blind kids.

Finally, he takes her into a classroom and says, “Mary Ingalls, today you learn to read” – a statement that surprises her.

He’s touching her arms in a very familiar way.

Adam says that “thanks to Louis Braille” (he doesn’t pronounce it the French way), blind people can read with their hands.

Braille was a Frenchman who went blind as a small child. His ingenious coded “writing” system of raised dots, ultimately named for him, was not fully appreciated by the world till after his death.

Adam opens a braille Bible, and taking Mary’s hand, walks her through Genesis 1:2-3.

Then he grabs a braille primer and starts to teach Mary the alphabet.

WILL: Braille is a brilliant system.

PEGGY: Yeah, it’s like Morse code.

WILL: Or computer programming, or coding, or whatever.

(I know the depth of my understanding of so many different topics must be impressive to you, reader. It’s a gift.) 

Others have noted that braille is misprinted as bpaille here. It’s clear they tried to fix it, though.

Brilliant braille may be, but it’s also probably anachronistic. Louis Braille developed his code in 1824, and while by the 1880s it was popular the world over, American blind schools were resistant, and it wasn’t until 1916 that it became the preferred system here as well.

Mary does well, which she attributes to her success at school back home. “Reading was my best subject,” she adds.

WILL [angrily]: No it wasn’t, it was math! That’s what they sent you to Minneapolis for!

DAGNY: You don’t need to yell at the characters.

Anachronistic or not, Mary is clearly excited by the possibilities braille affords her.

At home, Ma comes running to Chaaaaarles with a letter from Mary, which brings them up to date on her progress.

After a break, we’re back in Iowa, and Adam walks into the music room with Mary holding his arm. 

A girl of about ten or so who walks with a crutch passes them. Adam greets her as “Jenny,” and she says hello pleasantly. 

Then she adds, “Afternoon, lady.”

Adam tells Mary that Jenny is a talented musician, and Mary expresses surprise she could tell Adam had a woman with him.

Adam is like, “Duh, ever hear of your own ears?”

Mary thinks a moment, then observes that the girl had an unusual step.

Adam tells her Jenny survived a terrible wagon crash that killed her parents.

ROMAN: That happened all the time then, huh? Isn’t that how Jason Bateman’s parents died?

David reverts to the horror piano music when we cut to a class full of kids reading, with Jenny herself in the foreground.

Mary is also amongst them – now apparently a whiz at braille.

WILL: Mary’s such a Brainiac, it’s no surprise she took to it.

DAGNY: Plus she thrives in a structured system. She’d be great in the Girl Guides.

Back in Walnut Grove, an ill wind is blowing nobody good.

Charles bumps into Jonathan Garvey in the Mercantile.

Garvey tells Charles he’s got them a gig – someone named “Sam Ballard” needs some firewood chopped.

Caroline runs in with another letter. She and Charles are delighted to learn Mary has graduated and can return home.

Charles says they’ll both go to pick her up, and Garvey volunteers to take the little Ing-Gals.

AMELIA: Even the baby? How old is that baby?

WILL: Well, that’s a bit up in the air. At least two episodes old.

AMELIA: And Jonathan Garvey’s taking her? Who’s going to feed her?

ROMAN: Men have the genes to lactate, Amelia.

AMELIA: Over a WEEKEND?

ROMAN: Sure. It could be a very special episode. “Weekend at the Garveys’.”

Despite us not having seen any snow, since we figured Mary was dropped off in November of 1881(-G), we’re probably in about April of 1882 now, with the bulk of the Education of Miss Mary Ingalls scenes taking place over the winter.

Back in Iowa, Jenny is playing the piano for Mary and Adam.

(Jenny is played by a Jennifer Factor – her only acting part to date, but unless I’m wrong, she did go on to become a distinguished poet and teacher.)

Jenny excuses herself, and Mary, who looks very pretty in this scene, tells Adam she’s “always loved music” but “never learned” to play herself.

ROMAN: Is she going to remember Granville and start crying?

Adam sits down next to her and says he could teach her to play the piano.

She’s doubtful, but Adam says blind people can accomplish as much creatively as anyone else. As proof, he brings up John Milton, the blind Seventeenth-Century poet.

“He wrote Paradise Lost, one of my favorite books!” Mary exclaims.

DAGNY: I call bullshit on THAT. Milton is so boring.

WILL: John probably made her read it.

I actually like Milton – when I was in college, I won a prize for an essay I wrote on Paradise Lost. To date, it’s the only award I’ve won for my writing. (I peaked early.)

[UPDATE: I did once take third place in a statewide limerick contest, however. – WK]

Dagny’s not wrong, though – Milton is boring. 

Milton went blind at age 44, and if I remember tortured his daughters for the rest of his life by making them write down all the poetry he was constantly spewing.

Well, relations between Mary and Adam seem markedly improved, to say the least. They sit close together on the piano bench and speak softly into each other’s faces.

ALEXANDER [as ADAM, sadly]: “Did you go blind from masturbating? I did.”

PEGGY: Isn’t he a little old to be her love interest? He’s not a teenager.

WILL: It’s probably the same age difference as Laura and Manly.

PEGGY: Like I said!

DAGNY: It’s believable for the time, though. She’s lucky he isn’t sixty.

(Linwood Boomer was 22 when he joined the cast.)

Mary confides that she’s become so accustomed to life at the school, she’s afraid to go home.

Adam tells her he’s leaving too – destination Winoka, Dakota Territory. 

(Winoka, as you probably know, is not a real place. I’m not even sure it’s a real Indigenous word, though some on the internet claim it’s Osage for “Great Spirit.” Most online sources seem to suggest Osage people refer to the Great Spirit as Wakonda or Wah-Kon-Tah, though.) 

(There is a historical site in Missouri called Winoka Lodge, but apparently it was a hunting lodge built and named by white men in the 1880s or 1890s.)

(In Oklahoma, there’s a town called Waynoka, which supposedly takes its name from a Cherokee word meaning either “sweet water,” “sand hill,” or “peaceful woman.”) 

(And of course here in Minnesota we have a city named Winona. Winona Ryder was born there, and is named after the place, which itself is named after a tragic figure in a Dakota legend who leapt from a cliff rather than marry a man she didn’t love.)

(Probably the most macabre use of the name Winoka also comes from Missouri. Apparently, there’s an urban legend or campfire story there about a “Camp Winoka,” a haunted place where a bunch of Girl Scouts were murdered long ago. It isn’t true, though.)

Anyways, Adam says he’s going to establish a new blind school there.

Mary absorbs this news with grace, but says, “Then I’m glad I’m going home.”

DAGNY: Melissa Sue Anderson is making more of an effort with the romance storyline than she did with Whatsisface. 

WILL: She probably knew Landon would kill her off if she didn’t.

Then Mary says a sighted person like Adam can’t really understand the dynamics of a blind person going back into the world. She describes it as a frightening place, “full of faceless people.”

She turns towards him and whispers, “Even you. . . . I’ve never even seen you.”

“Well then, look at me,” Adam says, and lifts her hands to his face.

AMELIA: She’s moving really slowly.

ROMAN: She doesn’t want to knock over another lamp.

Mary is clearly impressed by his chiseled jaw and all that. 

He tells her his eye and hair color . . . and then he says:

“What do you look like, Mary?”

Stunned to realize he’s blind too, Mary begins crying, then smiles and pulls his hands to her.

PEGGY: He probably can see and just wanted to feel her. She’d never know.

Probably not, but he certainly does make the most of the opportunity, caressing her lovingly.

WILL [as ADAM]: “I suppose I should tell you, I’m married.”

He even touches her lips.

AMELIA [as ADAM]: “What do your boobs look like, Mary?”

PEGGY: Just to be absolutely clear, he is her TEACHER.

DAGNY: Yeah. It’s a total conflict of interest. It’s not ethical.

All joking aside, this is a pretty magical Little House moment.

And the next thing you know, Not-Mr. Nelson the Gray-Haired Uber Driver is bringing Ma and Pa to the door of the school.

They enter to musical accompaniment by good ol’ Jenny.

Mary’s waiting at the door for them, and greets Ma by telling her she loves her.

She embraces them both, then immediately turns to introduce Adam, whom she calls “the most wonderful teacher in the world.”

Later, Mary serves them a lunch she made herself.

WILL: Ma should take a bite of cayenne apple pie and throw up.

But actually, Mary baked a cake for them. She apologizes for it looking a bit funny, which is cute.

“It’s as if this whole thing had never happened!” Ma says with wonder.

“Things do change, though,” Mary says seriously. Then she makes a sincere speech about how grateful she is they sent her to the school.

Then she announces that she wants to go with Adam to Winoka to teach at the new school he’s planning to found.

“I’ll be a teacher,” she says, “just as we always planned.”

Ma smiles and looks down, then bursts into tears. Mary is alarmed, but Ma tells her it’s from happiness. She says she’s proud of Mary for realizing her own dream of teaching – “a dream I made myself forget.” 

DAGNY: Grassle is REALLY good in this one.

WILL: She sure is.

Charles mists up himself, then says let us eat cake. We’ve seen in the past he does like it.

Afterward, Ma and Pa load their carpetbag back into the surrey, which this time is driven by Carl the Flunky in a fake red beard.

ROMAN: That’s the worst beard I’ve ever seen.

Pa directs Not-Carl to take them to what sounds like “the Kohler Hotel” to me. You’d think they’d have guest quarters on campus, but it seems they don’t. 

They leave Mary and Adam on the porch, holding hands.

WILL [singing]: Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum! Bum-Ba-Dum!

Just kidding, we’re not done. After a commercial break, we see the Kohler Hotel in the middle of a rainstorm. A woman stands on the front steps as a hansom cab drives by.

Burton, Iowa, seems to be a much larger city than I would have guessed. In fact, it’s very similar to Rochester, Minnesota (because it’s the same footage repeated).

In the hotel room, Pa paces before a mirror muttering to himself.

OLIVE: Whoa, nipping out!

Suddenly he goes and wakes up Caroline, who’s asleep despite the lantern being alight.

Pa tells her that the problem with the Grange is still going on, despite it being nearly a year since it started.

Pa says Walnut Grove is all washed up, with the Olesons even likely to lose the Mercantile.

Sounding like she has a heavy cold, Ma says they’ve managed through bad times before. But Pa says why should they do that, when they could all move to Winoka and he could get a job there!

As precedent, he cites their vagabond wanderings before coming to Minnesota. He does not mention their relocation to the Black Hills of South Dakota, which blew up in their faces like a trick cigar.

Pa says they’ll (conveniently) retain ownership of the Little House, since nobody in their right mind would move to Walnut Grove now.

Ma seems to be full of objections . . .  

DAGNY: Why is she BEING like this?

WILL: She’s gonna miss her good friend Harriet Oleson.

. . . but finally she says what the hey, let’s do it.

Delighted, Pa says they should immediately go back to the blind school to tell Mary of their decision. She points out that it’s the middle of the night. Why was that mysterious woman standing on the steps, then? Was she a ghost?

I suppose since they live on farm time, Caroline might consider 9:30 “the middle of the night.”

Not-Carl drives them back out to the school. How are they paying for all these cab rides? Uber charges add up when you’re traveling.

Despite it being “the middle of the night,” Mr. Nash is up and fully dressed, apparently working.

Ma and Pa run up to Mary’s room.

AMELIA: Are they gonna catch them in bed together?

The next morning, it’s still raining, but that doesn’t stop a group of cute little blind kids from going for a walk.

Pa tells Adam that it’s settled, they’ll take Mary home, then meet him in Winoka in about a month’s time.

Knowing the young people want to say a romantic goodbye, Ma nudges him into the cab, which again is driven by Not-Mr. Nelson.

PEGGY: It’s Matthew Cuthbert.

WILL: He was on a different one.

Adam and Mary talk like lovers do – appropriate, considering the rain.

AMELIA: Mary’s jacket is gorgeous.

Mary and Adam kiss tenderly, and Adam whispers, “I’ll be waving as you drive away.” Mark it down, quotation-mark-title trackers.

AMELIA: And that guy has cool pants.

Adam does indeed wave. Mary does too.

DAGNY: That carpetbag’s gonna get soaking wet. I hope it’s not full of Mary’s braille books.

And off they go. 

WILL [singing]: Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum! Bum-Ba-Dum!

But wait, not yet! Back at home, the Winds of Doom are still a-blowin’, even though they’ve probably been gone at least two weeks.

At the Mercantile, Nels is packing up what remains of his inventory, but he greets Pa and Mary warmly when they come through the door. 

Pa asks if Nels wants to buy his livestock, but Nels says he’s having a going-out-of-business sale and isn’t really in a position to.

Who should enter, then, but the Bead!

“Mrs. Simms!” Mary says, smiling.

WILL [as THE BEAD, tersely]: “I’m divorced now, actually, it’s Miss Beadle again.”

(Also, what is that huge forest outside the front door of the Mercantile???)

The Bead, who is believably a little awkward in this scene, tells Mary she and her pig-farmin’ hubby are leaving town for good.

DAGNY: Look how great Miss Beadle’s eyebrows look. As opposed to all the men on this show.

Then she says, “Mary, I want you to have this.”

PEGGY [as THE BEAD]: “My switch.”

Actually, it’s a brooch that the Bead received from her own mentor.

Choking back tears, she says goodbye, and Mary hugs her. This is certainly the saddest part of the episode – for she does leave forever. 

Miss Beadle was never a favorite character of mine when I was younger, but on this pass through the series I really came to adore her. 

Charlotte Stewart would go on to appear on Eight is Enough, Highway to Heaven, The Young and The Restless, Thirtysomething, Coach, Life Goes On, and The Office.

At the movie theater, she was in Irreconcilable Differences (anybody remember that?) and a couple of Tremors movies.

Apart from Little House, she’s probably most identified with the works of David Lynch. She played Mary X, the mother of the mutant baby in Eraserhead, and she played Betty Briggs in all the incarnations of Twin Peaks.

And of course, she had a great guest appearance in Pamela Bob’s hysterical rumination on Little House, Livin’ on a Prairie.

She also gave us what’s arguably the best interview with a cast member we’ve done so far. Check it out if you haven’t already.

And for heaven’s sakes, buy her wonderful book and order a totebag from her!

One night, Pa plays with Baby Grace at the Little House whilst Mary shows Laura how her braille writer works.

She’s working on a letter to Adam. Laura says she should just write it longhand and have somebody read it to him, but Ma says it’s an erotic letter, dummy. (Paraphrase.)

Laura shrugs.

OLIVE: So is she dating Seth now, or what?

Then Mary says, “Pa, are we going to church tomorrow?”

AMELIA [as MA]: “No, since you went blind we don’t believe in God anymore.”

Ma says she wasn’t sure if Mary would want to go, but Mary says she does.

And suddenly we’re there. I don’t see any organ, though.

Something really seems off to me about the shot of the congregation. It took me a minute to figure out what it was, but it’s that the camera has been placed on the opposite side of the room from where it usually is. It’s a strange effect, one which makes the room seem smaller, somehow.

Anyways, today we just have the Ingallses, the Olesons, the Garveys, Doc and Mr. Hanson (sitting across from each other in the back row), Mrs. Foster, Carl the Flunky, and a woman we’ve never seen before. Strange that she should be the sole non-regular there, but I suppose everybody else has left town.

Reverend Alden steps up to the lectern and makes pretty much the same observation.

With no preamble, he launches into the sermon, saying he’s been angry at God for destroying the town, and at the railroad barons too.

DAGNY: Doc looks hairier than usual.

The Rev says he takes inspiration from Mary, who at first also seemed to be punished by God, but who in reality was blessed by Him.

PEGGY: Is Mary smirking?

ROMAN: Yeah. She’s forgotten people can see her.

Soon Aldi’s crying so hard he can barely talk.

WILL [sympathetically]: Oh, Aldi.

PEGGY: What?

WILL: Well, look at him crying.

PEGGY: He’s been crying the whole time.

WILL: No, he was just quivering at first. Dabbs Greer went to the famous Academy of Quivering Acting.

Then he asks Mary to come up and lead a prayer. We notice she’s wearing the Bead’s brooch.

She’s also wearing her sluttiest dress.

Charles leads her up to the front, where the Rev kisses her on the forehead.

And actually at this point we see there’s another strange woman in the front row, this one with sort of Alpine stylings. 

Mary’s speech is surprisingly depressing. She basically says they’ll all see each other again when they’re dead, and nobody’s blind in Heaven.

Then she opens her braille Bible and reads Psalm 15. Seems like a fairly generic one to me – if there’s specific resonance with our story today, I can’t figure it out.

“May God go with you all,” Mary closes, and we end with a freeze frame, a technique I believe they’ve only used twice before – once when Mr. Edwards adopted the Sandersons, and once when Laura saw the Headless Horseman in the street. (In other words, the three most iconic moments of the series so far.)

Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum! Finally, it’s the real ending.

STYLE WATCH:

Charles appears to go commando again.

THE VERDICT:

The most significant turning point in the series so far, this is the beginning of a new chapter and it more than lives up to its reputation. It’s a dramatic triumph and as impactful as a punch in the stomach at times. Anderson is fantastic – so are all the regulars – and Linwood Boomer makes a simply stunning debut as Adam. The “look at me” scene, in particular, is wonderful.

WILL: Wouldn’t it be easier for Alice Garvey to induce lactation? Why would you jump straight to Jonathan?

UP NEXT: The 1978 Walnut Groovy Awards!