Blind Journey, Part Two

Joe Versus the Volcano; or

“How Do I Look?” “Like You’re Gonna Kill a Baby and Alice Garvey, Now Go to Bed.”

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: Blind Journey, Part Two

Airdate: December 4, 1978

Written by John T. Dugan

Story by Carole Raschella, Michael Raschella, and John T. Dugan

Directed by William F. Claxton

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Everyone copes with Mr. Ames’s departure from the series.

RECAP:

AMELIA: EIGHTEEN-plus?

DAGNY: Jesus Christ!

ROMAN: That’s worse than NC-17. 

WILL: Yeah, the only place left to go is Triple-X.

We begin with a detailed previously-on, then rejoin our story exactly where we left off.

As the others make camp, Mrs. Oleson emerges from the river complaining that her hair and dress are ruined and she doesn’t know how she’ll be able to meet the magnificent Mrs. Terhune tomorrow.

But we see Harriet has a Plan B, as she sneaks behind a tree and puts on a wig that she must have purchased in Brookings.

Presumably a little later, she stumbles upon Joe Kagan, who’s bathing nude in the river. 

ROMAN: Is this why it’s eighteen-plus?

Oddly, this scene, in which Joe’s completely naked, is less graphic than “The Fighter,” in which he was mostly clothed, but which featured a closeup of his, you know, greater southerly region.

As Kagan laughs at her shocked reaction, Mrs. O loses her wig and hat in a bush, screaming about “you people” as she moves off.

Kagan continues cackling and refers to her as an “ol’ heifer.”

DAGNY: Fat joke.

(#28.)

The next day, the wagon train moves on, and in one of my favorite Little House mini-moments, Pa hands a little blind girl the reins and lets her “drive” for a while.

A point must be deducted, though, because we can see from some trees in the background that the wagon is not actually moving. 

In an odd coincidence, the same thing happened in “The Fighter.”

Anyways, we see the little girl next to the driving girl is wearing Laura’s old yellow bonnet (“Dagny’s Favorite”).

Then we see the wayfarers or voyageurs or whatever you want to call them awaiting Mrs. Terhune’s party at the Butler train station.

As we mentioned last time, Butler, South Dakota, is not really in the right place for a Winoka/St. Louis rendezvous on the way to Walnut Grove. (And it also didn’t exist in 1885.)

But it occurs to me that maybe this Butler is supposed to be in Iowa or Minnesota. 

There is a Butler County in Iowa, but its location doesn’t make sense for a meet-up either.

And Butler Township in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, makes even less sense.

Well, we’ll just accept they’re at the Butler in Dakota Territory and all just decided to take the long way to Walnut Grove.

Wherever they are, they all line up to watch the arriving train, and we get a nice shot of them in the following order: Not-Quincy Fusspot, unknown, the Kid with Very Red Hair (Blind One) (Michael Fiore?), Adam, Mary, Pigtail Annie, Janis, the Wagon Driver, Freckles, and two boys.

Christopher Bowman seems to be missing. Maybe his parents wouldn’t let him move to Minnesota.

Anyways, the boy on the very end we’ve never seen before; or he escaped my observation anyways.

And the one immediately to our left of him is one of the Ambiguously Ethnic Kids from Walnut Grove!

This is a major, major development. 

I mean, it’s not like all we did was shrug callously and go about our business when we learned Not-Quincy Fusspot, another Walnut Grove native, had gone blind. 

But with 49 appearances and counting, the AEKs are the very bedrock of the classroom scenes, even if sometimes just one at a time would be in the episode.

For one of these two kids, who have now been in school for 47 years in Little House Universal Time (LHUT), to go blind is a major change and a major shock. 

Not to mention so soon after Mary’s own loss of sight, er, manifested. 

This new local blindness, also of a child, must have sent shockwaves through Hero Township, and probably beyond.

Anyways, there he is – waiting for Mrs. Terhune.

Harriet Oleson, on the other hand, isn’t on the platform. She’s down on the ground under her parasol.

AMELIA: That’s a terrible dress.

DAGNY: Yeah, and with that wig.

ROMAN: And that dead bird on her head!

Yes, Mrs. Oleson is dressed in her infamous “watermelon” dress – a flamingo-colored horror with key lime accents – wearing her new wig and a hat with a huge dead bird on top of it.

DAGNY: What kind of bird is that?

AMELIA: That’s made of at least three different birds.

I think she’s right. It has peacock tail-feathers, the wings of a pheasant or other mottled game bird, and the head of a pigeon.

Well, Harriet runs to the passenger car to welcome Mrs. Terhune personally.

All the passengers get off. We don’t recognize anybody else . . . well, except the conductor, who was the no-nonsense blastin’ oil company rep in “The Long Road Home,” and Dying-of-Typhus Carl in “Plague.” He’s played by Bill Quinn.

Since this is Quinn’s third appearance on Little House, and since we’ve never written him up properly I’ll just do it now quick.

Beginning as a child actor in the 1920s (wow), he was also in Peter Gunn, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, The Munsters, McHale’s Navy, Dr. Kildare, My Three Sons, The Fugitive, The Virginian, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mary Tyler Moore, The Odd Couple, Days of Our Lives, That Girl, Ironside, Mayberry R.F.D. (God, we’re only up to 1971), Mannix, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, Barnaby Jones, Police Story, The Rockford Files, All in the Family, The Greatest American Hero, The Golden Girls, The Bob Newhart Show AND Newhart, and Bonanza AND Highway to Heaven. And for the most part, these are just shows he was on more than once!

He was a regular on The Rifleman and on Archie Bunker’s Place – the latter being the A New Beginning of All in the Family.

Moviewise, he was in the Karl Swenson vehicle The Birds, Twilight Zone: The Movie, the George Murdock/Charles Cooper vehicle Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Satan’s School for Girls (not to be confused with the John Ireland vehicle Satan’s Cheerleaders).

This not-dying-of-typhus conductor tells Mrs. Oleson she’ll find Mrs. Terhune in the “first car.”

Baffled, Mrs. O finds the first car is a box car, out of which are emerging a lady and several box-car children – all Black.

She’s stunned, of course, to learn the school will have Black students. 

But Charles mildly tells her we’re all God’s children (a sentiment he also expressed in an anti-racist context – more harshly – in “Freedom Flight“).

This time Pa alludes to Isaiah (the Book of the Bible, not Mr. Edwards), saying all the kids are “the little sheep of His flock,” and Harriet says, “I didn’t expect them to be black sheep.”

AMELIA: That’s a little on-the-nose.

Charles and Joe go to help the kids down, and Mrs. Oleson approaches the Black woman.

Mrs. O says she’d like to meet Mrs. Terhune, whom she met previously at a fundraiser for the (fictional) “Friendly Daughters of Mary Magdalene” – presumably some horrible nonprofit group.

The woman says Mrs. Terhune is “never happier to meet anybody.” Mrs. Oleson replies, “Well, where is she?” 

The woman, who is very beautiful, speaks with exquisite diction and wears a straw hat, says, “Well, right here, ma’am. Hester-Sue Terhune.”

Taken aback, Harriet says, “Well . . . you aren’t one of the St. Louis Terhunes.”

Hester-Sue, who quickly realizes this person is insane, nevertheless politely says, “No, ma’am – Pascagoula Terhunes.”

Pascagoula, Mississippi, is a place I knew nothing about; but I was delighted to learn it’s the home of the largest private employer in the state: the Ingalls Shipbuilding company!

It was founded in the early Twentieth Century by a Robert I. Ingalls, Sr. – apparently no relation to Charles, Laura, and the rest of the gang.

It’s also the birthplace of Channing Tatum, as well as the supposed site of a 1973 alien abduction.

It’s pretty clear to me these creatures are Ice Warriors, natives of Mars which are sometimes friendly, sometimes not.

But that’s Pascagoula’s problem to worry about. Anyways, Charles nicely steers Hester-Sue away from the madwoman in the tutti-frutti costume.

Joe Kagan approaches and says, “I’ll help you with your bags, Hester-Sue.”

To which Hester-Sue replies, “The name is Mrs. Terhune, and I’ll carry my own bags.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Joe says, adding with a touch of irony, “whatever your dignity demands.”

DAGNY: Another feminist to be taken down a notch.

WILL: Do you recognize her?

DAGNY: Yes. It’s Hester-Sue.

Dags is of course right, but I was referring to the fact she’s played by Ketty Lester, who was Joe’s late wife Janie in flashbacks in “The Fighter”! (We did her full bio in that recap, so do check it out.)

This might be the strangest case of separated-at-birth twins on the show so far, with the possible exception of Albert and Young Charles.

Hester-Sue sasses Joe, and he rolls his eyes as if she actually is his wife reincarnated.

There are about ten kids from St. Louis, more or less the same number as the Winoka School. They tromp over to join the Winoka students, with Charles and Joe behind them laughing their heads off at Mrs. Oleson’s surprise.

We cut to a shot of an enormous mountain of the sort you’d have to travel 700 miles from the real Walnut Grove to see.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s Lassen Peak or “Mount Lassen,” an active volcano (!) at the northernmost end of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

(If you’d told me we’d ever have an active volcano featured on Little House on the Prairie . . . well, I was going to say I wouldn’t have believed it, but I actually might have and just assumed I didn’t remember that episode. There are some I think I’ve never seen, especially as we get into the second half of the show. But I’m also just forgetful.)

Anyways, the little kiddos are singing “Wait for the Wagon,” a hit song from the 1850s that was apparently turned into a Confederate propaganda number during the Civil War. Since the war had been over for twenty years in 1885, I’m sure the kids know nothing of this (though Joe and Hester-Sue might).

The caravan stops for a break, and one of the Black kids, an adorable tot of about ten who has enormous hair, sits down next to Mrs. Oleson.

Muttering to herself, Mrs. O says, “I can’t believe I gave her all my furniture.” Nasty.

“You talkin’ to me, Miss Oleson?” says the child.

“Why would I be talking to you,” Harriet sneers.

“Why wouldn’t you wanna talk to me?” the boy asks, quite sensibly.

Frowning, Mrs. Oleson says, “Because, my feet hurt.”

The boy asks why she doesn’t ride on the wagon, and Mrs. O sniffs “Because.” The kid calls her out on that, but in a sideways manner, saying he sometimes makes bullshit excuses like that too. (Paraphrase.)

In a sad moment, the kid laughs, clearly thinking they’re having a snappy Walnut-Groovy-style conversation; but Mrs. Oleson suddenly says, “Oh shut up, for Heaven’s sakes” and he looks down quietly.

This kid is credited by his birth name, Marcus Wyatt; but he’s better known as Marcus Chong, a name that recognizes his parents, Tommy Chong and his wife, who adopted him the same year this aired.

As a kid, he was on Dallas and The Facts of Life, and in the John Joseph Thomas vehicle Blood Beach.

He was also in his dad’s Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie. (My own dad loved those movies.)

When he grew up, he played Huey P. Newton in Panther, a movie about the Black Panthers. (It was made by the Van Peebles family, but didn’t get great reviews.)

And he was in The Matrix, a movie I’ve never seen. Apparently the producers had some difficulty with him after it came out, which you can read about elsewhere if you wish; at any rate, he wasn’t in the sequels.

As David Rose and his French horn player contemplate our world’s many injustices, the wagon train gets moving again – pretty fast, too.

But not as fast as Laura and Albert, whom we suddenly see racing down the Little Driveway after school.

They’re followed by Carrie, which reminds me of Randy, the little brother in A Christmas Story. Randy really is the Carrie of that one.

They hand Ma a letter, which she describes as “from Butler . . . mailed three days ago.”

DAGNY: Three days? That’s faster than it takes to get local mail now.

Ma opens the envelope.

ROMAN [as MA, matter-of-factly]: “Well, Mary is dead.”

Actually, Charles projects they’ll be home in about a week. Like Dagny said last time, I’m sure the tail o’ kids they’re dragging slows them down, which also makes it hard to determine how far from Groveland they are.

“Within the week!” Ma says with palpable emotion. “Our Mary will be home within the week!” Ma’s part in this one is shit, but Grassle makes the most of it.

Back on the trail, we see it’s pouring rain.

It’s nighttime, and Pa and Joe are hanging out under a tarp.

Mrs. Oleson, still in her crazy outfit, emerges from a tent (or the back of the wagon? It’s hard to see very well) and bitches about the indignity of having to crap in the woods.

AMELIA: She’s basically Aughra in this scene.

Once she moves off, Charles says, “If it’s raining this hard down here, you can imagine what it’s like up in the mountains.”

AMELIA: What does that mean?

WILL: Well, they’re higher up, so the rain hits them first.

Actually, as it turns out Michael Landon, John T. Dugan, and Carole and Michael Raschella know more about mountains than we do. 

Charles and Joe strategize about how to cross the river again, seeing as it’ll be overflowing its banks from the rain.

Meanwhile, Mary and Adam are snuggling under a blanket nearby – near enough to hear everything they’re saying.

Adam is squirming and twitching like there’s a live toad in his sleeping bag.

Charles looks on the map and sees that the river can be crossed by ferry. They agree to head to the docks (or whatever).

Joe says he wants to go flirt with the lovely Hester-Sue, and excuses himself. I don’t understand, if she’s Mrs. Terhune, why doesn’t he assume she’s married? She didn’t bring a husband on the trip, but he could be a sailor out to sea, or something.

Meanwhile, Adam seems little comforted by the news about the ferry.

DAGNY: Is he going to throw up in her lap?

He doesn’t, but he shudders so hard he wakes Mary up. 

When she asks what’s wrong he just yells at her and says he was cold.

You can tell that Mary, who hasn’t lost all her Brainiac powers, doesn’t believe that for a second.

But she just takes his hand, and we see that hers is once again immaculately manicured.

WILL: Maybe Adam has rabies. That causes a fear of water, they say. 

DAGNY: That’s true.

ROMAN: Yeah. And there probably are raccoons around.

AMELIA: So Adam’s never mentioned this to Mary?

DAGNY: Well, we don’t see them talking too often.

WILL: Sure we do, they’re always making out in the hall at school.

AMELIA: Yeah, or under the porch in front of children and Mary’s own father.

In another part of this tent – again, it’s really hard to see what kind of complex they’ve erected, but it seems pretty elaborate – Joe starts loudly soliloquizing, and not too subtly suggests that he and Hester-Sue should have sex!

He also says it’s “raining more than Jehoshaphat’s daughter!” I have no idea what this is supposed to mean or if it’s even a real saying.

I don’t even think Jehoshaphat is depicted as having a daughter in the Old Testament, though his daughter-in-law Athaliah sounds like a piece of work.

(And her mother might have been the original Jezebel!)

Then we see Joe trying to get up on one of the wagons, which turns out to be where she actually is.

But Hester-Sue puts a halt to that by sticking a rifle in his face.

I doubt it’s her own; in late Nineteenth-Century America, it was actually illegal for Black people to own weapons in many places. Plus I can’t really picture them letting her on the train with it.

Presumably it’s Charles’s own that he left for her safekeeping. I’m not sure he would approve of this, though.

Anyways, Joe assumes she’s frightened of Native people, but she says that’s not the type of “savage” she’s worried about and tells him to get away.

Joe walks away cracking jokes to himself, but it’s actually kind of an unpleasant scene, with its suggestions of casual racism, sexual assault and gun violence. (I know, what a snowflake I am, right?)

Then Joe notices the little kid who was talking to Mrs. Oleson, sitting by himself under a blanket.

Joe sits down to talk to him, and the kid says he’s bothered by “Miss Oleson’s” attitude.

As other Grovesters have in the past, Joe tells the kid Mrs. Oleson’s awful but has her good points too, like giving money to establish blind schools.

But the kid says quietly, “She don’t like me. She don’t like you, neither.”

I’ll give the rest of the scene verbatim:

JOE: You’re right about that.

KID: Why? What’d we do to her?

JOE: Nuttin’. To her we just ain’t the right color.

KID: What’s the right color?

JOE: Her color – accordin’ to her. White. We just happen to be Black.

It’s great to have Moses Gunn back. I find him a really fine actor.

KID: Well, what’s the difference between black and white?

JOE: You’ve never seen either one, have you?

The kid shakes his head. I’m not sure he would know how to do that. Why would a person who’s been blind since birth answer a question with a gesture?

JOE: Well, Samson, they’re just two different colors, that’s all. But some folks get it in their head it’s all the difference in the world.

DAGNY: Was he a regular on Bonanza?

WILL: No, but he was on Father Murphy. He was Merlin Olsen’s sidekick, kind of his Mr. Edwards, I guess.

I never watched Father Murphy, so feel free to let me know if that’s a mischaracterization.

SAMSON: They don’t like what’s different from them?

JOE: That’s about it.

SAMSON: Maybe folks would be nicer to folks if they never saw anything.

JOE: You know, Samson . . . you got more vision than some folks with two good eyes.

I find it a little hard to believe Samson never encountered racism in Missouri, but never mind that, it’s a kids’ show.

Then Joe says he’ll put Samson to bed. This scene is a little obvious, but the actors nail it and it has a good impact overall. 

Sitting nearby, listening to this conversation worshipfully, Charles Ingalls turns his glistening eyes . . . 

. . . and looks directly at Harriet Oleson, who’s standing silently next to him under her parasol.

DAGNY: She heard it all. 

AMELIA: Well, she was pooping right there.

Saying nothing, Harriet returns to the (unarmed) wagon.

Back at the Little House, it isn’t raining, so the travelers can’t be too close to home yet.

Laura is putting Carrie to bed. The latter is saying her prayers.

DAGNY: Laura loves being the boss.

WILL: Yeah, and she’s more balanced than Mary, who was like a German commandant.

“God bless Bandit,” slurps Carrie. “God bless Wings, God bless the chickens -”

Laura cuts her off and tells her to go the fuck to sleep.

ROMAN: Who is “Wings”?

AMELIA: It’s the bird on Mrs. Oleson’s hat.

Carrie stalls, but eventually she shuts up as David gives us interesting “tiptoeing” music that sounds a bit like Bach’s “Air on a G String.” There’s even a harpsichord.

Laura stomps out to the table to tackle some sewing.

DAGNY: Laura’s getting tall.

Meanwhile, Albert sits at the table reading the newspaper and drinking coffee (!).

And – smoking Pa’s pipe.

ALL: Oh my God!

DAGNY: Where on earth is Ma?

Laura actually said earlier Ma’s at the Garveys and “won’t be home till late” (no reason is given), but you’d be forgiven for missing it.

It’s a shock seeing a child actually smoking on television. We have already seen it on this show once, though.

And we’ll see it again: in fact, someday Albert will kill people by doing it.

Clearly, Landon hadn’t dreamed that up yet, though.

Instead, the scene is played for laughs, with David giving us Albert’s Theme on the marimba.

DAGNY: Is he going to play his fake fiddle too?

Albert asks Laura how he looks.

WILL [as LAURA]: “Like you’re going to kill a baby and Alice Garvey, now go to bed.”

Then suddenly, as from nowhere, controversy. Albert says, “I think it makes me look older.” 

Laura says, “Yeah, you look at least ten,” and Albert replies, “I am ten.”

AMELIA: No way Albert is ten years old.

Well, unless Albert is lying about his age here, and even I can’t think why he’d do that, we must accept this as canon. Matthew Labyorteaux was actually about to turn twelve when this one aired; but Albert the character must be about two years younger than he looks.

Anyways, Laura then makes an anti-smoking speech, and Albert quickly proves her right by getting sick from the smoke.

Backing up a little, we can make out a lot of the headlines on Albert’s paper: “Nominate Ely” and “Gaylord Quits” (no idea who these two are) . . . 

. . . “Trust in Courts Feared Imperiled” (is this paper from 2024?) . . .

. . . “Food to Cost Less” (I guess not, haw haw) . . .

. . . “Hit [?] Legislation Aimed at Women” (not sure what that means) . . .  

. . . and “Modern Portia Amazes Court.” (Portia is the female lead in The Merchant of Venice, who saves the day by dressing up like a man and pretending to be a lawyer in a trial.)

This is neither here nor there, but I was lucky enough to see Maggie Smith in a one-person play many years ago in Britain. Probably the best acting I’ve ever seen live with my own eyes.

And of course, there’s the ubiquitous “Crop Failure” we’ve seen a few times. The newspaper, of course, is a prop, and I was interested to learn the exact same sheet has been observed in other things, notably “Phony Express,” a Three Stooges short from 1943 (!) that’s set in the 1860s.

Well, Albert runs outside to throw up. We’ll see this again too, as I don’t have to tell you.

Needless to say, his smoking and vomiting this time are all in good fun, and Ol’ Gopher Fangs throws her head back and laughs.

David Rose gives us a sort of comedy cadence in case we couldn’t tell this was supposed to be funny, and we go to a commercial.

DAGNY: My dad started smoking at about the same age. His dad caught him and made him smoke a whole pack.

WILL: Didn’t work, huh?

DAGNY: No. In fact, he always said that was what addicted him.

My late father-in-law, of whom I was quite fond, was a hard-drinking, hard-smoking Winnipegian who made it to 77 in relatively good health – not bad for somebody who lived the way he did.

I used to smoke when I was a young man, though I find that hard to believe now. It was a different time. 

In fact, in college I had a long Gandalf pipe that I used to run around and try to impress people with. Never really got the hang of smoking it, though.

Back in the woods the next morning, the rain has stopped and everybody’s getting ready to start again. Joe Kagan invites Samson to sit with him in the driver’s seat . . . only Mrs. Oleson’s already there.

She greets Kagan politely, and says she’d like to ride with him as well. 

With sudden emotion, she says, “Mr. Kagan, I want you to know that I don’t think that there is any such thing as a right color, or a wrong color, for that matter, and I’ve always been the kind of person who thought that it’s what’s inside a person that counts.”

As Samson smiles, Kagan looks up at Mrs. O in disbelief, and says he agrees with her.

They climb up, and while Harriet squirms a bit at what’s surely the closest proximity she’s ever had to people of a different race, she puts on a smile and scootches over for them.

AMELIA: Is he going to let her drive, like Charles did?

DAGNY: They’d die instantly.

David gives us his classic “Death March” arrangement of the Little House theme as the wagons take off again.

Back in the Grove, Nels and Jonathan Garvey are loading up a wagon with supplies for the renovation as Nellie reads a comically huge book behind them.

Nels complains that his back hurts since he’s been sleeping on the couch, which is too short for him. Why doesn’t he make Willie sleep there, I wonder? Kids don’t mind such things. When Alexander was little, he once slept a whole weekend in an AirBnB closet by choice.

Nellie, who’s apparently interning at the store now, consults her ledger and says giving away so much stuff is bad for their bottom line.

Nels shakes his head and says hilariously, “It’s for charity, Harriet – er, Nellie.”

ROMAN: Nellie’s gone from fourteen to being, like, twenty.

DAGNY: So have you.

Then Nels turns to Garvey and starts complaining about what a bad cook Nellie is.

Nellie is outraged, but Nels says it’s true.

WILL: Truth is just truth, Nellie.

Nellie makes a funny face (Arngrim looks like she’s about to burst out laughing) and marches off.

Another wagon appears, and in a reappearance as surprising as Nurse Chambers’s in Halloween II, we see it’s driven by the Bill Clinton-looking guy from “The Aftermath.”

In that story, he got both a proper name (Ned Watkins) and a credit (Troy Melton), but this week he gets neither.

He shouts that he has a delivery for Harriet Oleson “from the Curry Bronzeworks.”

It’s the plaque for the school – a gigantic thing the size of a kitchen table.

Not-Bill Clinton, who was kind of a prick in “The Aftermath” (he ratted out the James brothers to a posse – depicted in that story as a negative thing), refuses to bring the box up to the Old Jenkins/Baker/Hanson Place, or to help Nels unload it from the wagon.

But when it proves too heavy for Nels and Garvey to handle alone, Not-Bill does get down and help – for $2 ($65 in today’s money).

Nels hurts his back worse, and he looks into the camera and says seriously he wishes Harriet was back so he could kill her.

AMELIA: A little dark, Nels.

Back in the forest, the wagons approach the river, which is fast-moving and rocky.

DAGNY: Is this the one where Adam drowns?

This is apparently where the ferry’s supposed to be, and we see there is a gate or catapult or some such evidence of human activity at the spot. 

But the ferry itself is nowhere to be seen.

Charles says he’s going to try to drive across the river with the Chonkies, but they’ll probably have to send everybody over by “tow line,” saying to Joe, “Why don’t you see if we have the makings for a sling chair?”

WILL: Some people call it a sling chair, I call it a Kaiser chair.

The Chonkies are hesitant, but through a combination of yelling at and whipping them, Pa gets them across the river.

At one point he addresses Chonky David by name, which is always nice, though I guess not so much this time since he’s also whipping him.

You don’t really see them doing anything that difficult, but the sequence is well-staged and looks believably dangerous.

Well, they make it across, and we notice there’s a rope stretching across the river, quite high. I’m not sure why this would be there.

[Writer bdav1939 says the rope is most likely a guide rope the ferryman would use to pull a small raft-type ferry back and forth. I’m sure that’s right, though it does seem a little high-placed if so.]

[There was no guide rope either at Bucklebury Ferry or at the Arkansas River crossing in True Grit, though those were probably both faster-flowing waterways whatever the weather.]

[I grew up on Lake Michigan, where a ferry is a huge thing you drive your car onto.]

[I guess in this story I was picturing more of a Charon-crossing-the-River-Styx-type ferry.]

[Thanks for the help, bdav1939!]

Charles shouts to Joe that the current’s too fast and they’ll have to make a sort of zipline “rig” to get the kids across.

All the kids cheer at the chance to do something so fun.

But Adam looks like he’s going to throw up again.

DAGNY: This is a complex episode. There’s a lot going on – the blind children, the journey, the racism, the flirtation, Adam going crazy.

WILL: Yeah. Missing Mr. Ames.

Well, they don’t show us any of the kids going over, but it’s implied they all made it safely.

Next comes Mrs. Oleson, who screams and gets dunked yet again.

The blind kids, all holding hands for some reason, can’t see it, but they find her screams hilarious all the same.

As she gets close to the shore, Charles deliberately dumps her out and the kids laugh harder, though surely they wouldn’t know that had happened.

ROMAN: Poor Wings.

Together on the other side, Joe and Hester-Sue watch, smiling and laughing.

That means there’s only Adam left to cross on the zipline . . . only he’s had a meltdown and is refusing to move or respond to stimuli.

WILL: I went ziplining in the rainforest in Costa Rica once. This is exactly what I was like.

DAGNY: Why don’t they just let him ride on the wagon if he’s so upset?

WILL: I feel like the writers didn’t know what to do with him, so they gave him this.

AMELIA: Well, they didn’t know what to do with Mary either, and they gave her nothing.

Joe and Hester-Sue try to get through to Adam, who’s drooling and shuddering, but he’s too far gone. 

In fact, he shoves Hester-Sue when she tries to get him to let go of the wagon’s tow-rope.

Joe Kagan solves this problem by knocking Adam unconscious. 

Joe looks grave and frightened – a Black person assaulting a white one was not taken lightly in those days – but fortunately they’re in friendly company and this doesn’t turn out to be an issue.

We don’t see them sending Adam across, instead just cutting to the party sitting around the camp again at night. 

At first I thought Adam was still comatose from Joe’s punch, but Mary tells Pa he was awake earlier, so he must just be sleeping now.

Pa suggests Mary just let the whole water thing drop.

Elsewhere in the camp, Hester-Sue tells Samson to stop bothering the other kids with his “dumb jokes.” (We don’t get to hear any, unfortunately.)

She looks where Harriet has hung Wings and her wig up to dry, then reaches out and pets it, saying, “Goodnight, Mrs. Oleson.”

“Oh, shut up!” Mrs. Oleson snaps from inside the wagon.

Then Hester-Sue seeks out Joe to tell him she thinks he did the right thing with Adam today.

Joe says, “We sure made a good team.”

They chuckle a bit, then Hester-Sue stops and says, “Just for the record . . . I have been married once. And I don’t plan to be married again, not to anyone. Not if he was the last man on Earth.”

Then she invites him to call her Hester-Sue from now on.

Joe smiles and laughs, then says in Walnut Grove, they might as well be the last Black adults on Earth.

WILL: What about Dr. Tane?

Hester-Sue doesn’t like this last comment, and she leaves.

But Joe, who seems to take pleasure in pissing people off (a skill I wish I had), just laughs his Yoda laugh again in the dark.

Back to Mary and Adam. Adam is sweating and convulsing in his sleep.

WILL [as ADAM, screaming]: “The water, THE WATER!!!”

Mary wakes him up, and he says, “Oh, Mary . . .”

AMELIA [as ADAM]: “I’m sorry your part is so shitty in this one.”

“ . . . I am so ashamed,” he goes on. “This afternoon, I was so afraid I couldn’t even move.”

AMELIA [as MARY]: “I know, I was there.”

The two have a fairly stupid conversation where Mary says being afraid of something doesn’t make him less of a man. I mean, I agree, but it’s kind of stupid they don’t just shrug the whole river crossing thing off at this point. It’s not like she’s asking him to live on a ship with her, or something.

Then Adam shares the origin story of his blindness. One day, he and his dad went fishing, and he slipped and hit his head on a rock.

“And then I was drowning in the dark,” he says, “and fighting the dark, and fighting the cold. . . .”

AMELIA: That’s how you kids were when I saved you from the Boiling River in Yellowstone.

ROMAN: Oh, whatever, Amelia.

Weeping and going on (Linwood Boomer slices the ham a little too thick in this one), Adam says the stupid doctor told him he’d be fine, but he was permanently blind.

WILL [as MARY]: “Hm. My pa said I’d be fine too, you don’t see me making a big song and dance about it.”

“Adam,” Mary says, “after what you’ve been through, you have every right to be afraid. Every right to cry.”

WILL [as MARY]: “Every right to be a sissy.”

David Rose now repurposes his epic traveling music as Mary and Adam’s love theme, and thankfully that’s the end of this scene.

DAGNY: They just leave the fire unattended? There’s a lot of foreshadowing the Blind School disaster in this one.

Well, they make it back to Walnut Grove.

They pass the Old Hobson/Beadle/Simms Place. Joe tells Hester-Sue it’s cozy inside, and she replies, “That I’ll never know.” 

WILL: Hester-Sue is a piece of work, isn’t she.

DAGNY: I always liked her, though.

At the new Harriet Oleson Institute, Laura and Albert see the wagons approaching, to slappin’ Merry-Old-England-type music from the orchestra.

WILL: We haven’t seen this many Grovesters together since Founder’s Day.

In no particular order, there’s the Midsommar Kid, Miniature Art Garfunkel, the Gelfling Boy, Mustache Man, Doc, Alice Garvey, Andrew Garvey, Willie, Caroline, the Kid with Very Red Hair (Mean One), the Sharp-Faced Paranoid-Looking Brother, the non-blind AEK, Carl the Flunky, Reverend Alden, Jonathan Garvey, Nels, Nellie, Carrie, Johnny Cash Fusspot, the Misbehaving Girl, the Smallest Nondescript Helen of Them All, Mr. Penguin Man, the Medieval Peasant Woman, the Generic-Looking Older Man (I think), and a bunch of other people. 

I don’t know who has the baby. Mrs. Foster might be watching her inside, since I don’t see her either.

The Grovesters have set out a big picnic lunch to welcome them back. Now how on earth would they be able to time their return so precisely? Especially since they took a side trip to the ferry station . . . Maybe Nels stuck a tracker inside Wings before they left, I suppose.

Even the Olesons laugh and hug joyously, then Harriet shocks Nels by pulling him over to meet Hester-Sue.

Nobody seems to care or even really notice that half the kids are Black.

Only then Jud Lar[r]abee appears on the steps.

He plows into the group and shouts, “Harriet Oleson! Are you out of your mind? . . . One n─── living in Walnut Grove maybe we can accept. But now you’re bringing a whole wagonload of n───s here?”

But Harriet Oleson rounds on him furiously and says, “Mr. Lar[r]abee! If there’s one thing I can’t tolerate it’s a bigot – and you are precisely just that! A narrow-minded bigot!”

Everyone is astonished. Lar[r]abee tries pointing out her previous views, but she goes on, “Never mind what I said – it’s what I say now that matters. Black and white are just two different colors, that’s all – just two different colors.”

Then, coming full circle to the language she used in the scene where she argued against allowing Joe Kagan into the church, she says, “It’s people like you who have it fixed in your thick heads that it makes all the difference!”

Lar[r]abee storms away, and Alden, a veteran master of ceremonies, redirects the crowd’s attention. 

Hester-Sue and Joe look thoughtful and uncertain . . . but Samson reaches out and takes Mrs. Oleson’s hand. 

Harriet smiles, gives his hand a squeeze, and says, “Come along, Samson.”

WILL: Aw. We never see this kid again, though.

Nels looks at his wife as if she’s been replaced by a Pascagoula alien; but since he’d prefer a Pascagoula alien to the old Harriet, he smiles with wonder.

Aldi offers a heartfelt (if long) prayer.

He calls for everyone to hug and shake hands.

And they do. Pa hugs Ma, Nels hugs Harriet with real affection, Nellie (looking only a little surprised) hugs Samson, Hester-Sue hugs Joe, and Mrs. Oleson shakes Joe’s hand with respect.

An unseen woman with a Southern accent yells “Friends and neighbors, let’s eat!”

DAGNY: Was that Dolly Parton?

And we close with a shot of the giant bronze plaque, which actually has Mrs. Oleson’s profile on it.

ROMAN: It looks like a Ghirardelli square.

Indeed it does. Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

STYLE WATCH: The watermelon dress.

A woman gets off the train wearing the same red bonnet that Dags commented on in “The Wedding.” Either identical red bonnets were just given away to women on trains in those days, or this particular woman is just a St. Paul Minneapolis Manitoba “frequent flyer.”

Charles appears to go commando again.

THE VERDICT: A satisfying tale, though Adam’s aquaphobia is never really convincing. Moses Gunn is terrific again, and Ketty Lester has an immediate huge presence as Hester-Sue. The “double eavesdropping” scene in the rain is particularly well done. 

I think those of us who love Mrs. Oleson rather than hate her have a soft spot for this story, one of the only ones in which she really develops as a character. 

And Marcus Chong is arguably the cutest little kid we’ve had on the show so far. And he has no problem whatsoever keeping up with the sternflammende Katherine MacGregor.

UP NEXT: The Godsister (!!!)