“Author! Author!”

I Call Cash On the Bullshit; or

“Awful! Awful!”

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: “Author! Author!” [sic]

Airdate: November 26, 1979

Written by Carole and Michael Raschella

Directed by William F. Claxton

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: In a shocking twist, Grandma Holbrook suddenly dies! Then, in a boring twist, Charles helps her husband publish a fake book.

RECAP: Sad news to begin with today: Paula Shaw, who stole the show as Angela, the prostitute who wanted to jump Pa’s bones in “Times of Change,” passed away this month at the age of 84.

R.I.P. and a big thank-you to Ms. Shaw. (And thanks to Friend of Groovy Kris H. for the tip.)

We begin this episode with a literal drumroll, arranged by the Rosemonster into a musical introduction. 

Places-places-the-curtain’s-about-to-rise! is the flavor of the day. 

When the curtain does, though – rise, that is – all we get is Laura and Albert hanging laundry. (Not exactly “Willkommen” as far as opening sequences go.)

This one is rated 13+ for “sexual content.”  No, I’m not joking. Buckle up, Groovesters.

Our title appears in random quotation marks – the first such title in nine stories, a good long while for this show.

“Author! Author!”, the phrase, supposedly was once yelled by audiences to get the playwright to take a bow. 

I’ve never heard it yelled myself, but most new plays I’ve been to in my life have been terrible, which probably explains that.

There’s also a movie called Author! Author!, but that was made in 1982. 

Starring Al Pacino as the single parent of a gaggle of irascible kids, it’s also supposed to be terrible.

This “’Author! Author!’” was written by Carole and Michael Raschella – their first story this season.

And after a lengthy-ish hiatus, Clax is back as director.

Anyways, Pa arrives home with a new plow he’s purchased . . . and a telegram for Ma.

Ma is delighted to learn her parents, Charlotte and Frederick Holbrook, are coming to visit from Wisconsin.

We’ve met these two before. 

They were present, but did not speak, when the family departed the Big Woods in The Pilot.

We also met a younger version of Charlotte in the flashback episode “‘I Remember, I Remember.’” 

Frederick H wasn’t around in that story, the production team concluding that it had too many damn characters already. (And concluding rightly.)

In that episode, Charlotte, while not deeply characterized, was a lively, gracious lady who warmly welcomed her new neighbors, Lansford Ingalls and family. 

(I described her in our recap as “an amiable Dolly-Parton-type,” and I’ll stick with that.)

I wonder which of these actresses will be back to play her, don’t you?

The bigger news for us in the audience is that the Holbrooks “are coming to see their first great-grandchild!”

Great-grandchild! What!

Laura takes off running at top speed to bring the news to the Oleson Institute. So I think we can assume she’s not the one having the baby.

“What about the laundry?” Albert yells, to which Laura replies, “It goes in the basket!”

WILL [as JAME GUMB]: “Put the fucking laundry in the basket!”

And speaking of Alb, he hasn’t even met Sylvia yet, so we can rule him out as the expectant parent too. (Oh, I’m just joking, calm down, everybody.)

Obviously we can cross Carrie and Grace off the list of suspects, so that leaves us with Mary. 

We haven’t heard anything about family planning by the Kendalls since Mary miscarried in “The Sound of Children,” and that was nine years ago in Little House Universal Time (LHUT).

But sure enough, we cut to the HOIftAoBC and there’s MSA in a fake belly.

DAGNY: That isn’t very convincing. She looks like the guy with the codpiece in The Wicker Man.

(You’ll recall Mary, Adam, Hester-Sue and the blind kids were inexplicably absent from last week’s story – about a man who claims he can cure blindness.)

(Having no other choice, we deduced that story occurred in a standalone timeline where Mary and Adam never moved the Blind School to Minnesota – Timeline K.) 

(Since our beloved blindies are now back, we can assume we’re beginning a brand-new t-line – “L” – though the year has yet to be determined.)

In addition to Mary being pregnant, we notice that the browning of her hair continues.

Her eyebrows are also a little shaggy, but more along the lines of a Brooke Shields than, say, a Mr. Hanson or Nels Oleson. 

In fact, she looks quite beautiful, perhaps even more so than usual, though of course that is a high bar.

DAGNY: It’s because she’s not wearing much makeup in this one. It makes her look younger.

Mary is complaining about the burdens of pregnancy, saying the baby’s so huge, she’s considering the names “Titan” and “Goliath.”

(In Greek mythology, Titans were powerful gods of the old school.)

(The Titans were the forerunners – or forebears? – of Greek gods you might know better, like Zeus.)

(To put it in terms we can all understand, if you imagine Nellie and Willie being Hera and Poseidon, for instance, that would make Harriet, Nels, Annabelle, Aunt Vickie and all the rest Titans.)

(I grew up in the days when Prometheus and Atlas were considered Titans, but I guess that’s debated now. More evidence of our societal decay.)

(The Titans aren’t the most famous Greek gods, but they sure acted like them, having sex with everybody, marrying their aunts, sisters, nieces or whatever, swallowing their children, castrating their fathers, and the like.)

(They were known for clashing with each other, though Clash of the Titans the movie doesn’t actually feature any Titans doing so.)

(Goliath, of course, you may remember from a Bible story often told to children.) 

(A Philistine giant and military champion, Goliath challenged a boy named David – later known by his professional name, “King” David – to hand-to-hand combat.) 

(By “Philistine” I mean the nationality, not people who don’t like Little House on the Prairie.)

(Goliath was defeated when David broke his arm in a “freak accident” and chose Milo Stavroupolis to fight in his place.)

(I’m just kidding, of course. As you probably know, David used a slingshot to launch a small stone into Goliath’s face, which killed him instantly.)

(I hesitate to suggest it, but if Mary wants to go with an Old-Testamentish baby name, surely Shadrach, Mesach or Abednego would be a better choice, heh heh heh.)

Adam helpfully mentions that his “Uncle Theodore” sired twins, and that “an aunt on my mother’s side” had triplets.

In my experience, very pregnant women don’t enjoy jokes of that type. 

But as we know, Mary suffers from a serious irony deficiency, and indeed, here she doesn’t really seem to get it.

With Mary still puzzling, Laura enters and asks them to guess who’ll be visiting soon.

“The stork!” Adam guesses annoyingly.

WILL: Is this a time for airy persiflage, Adam?

Airy persiflage though it may be, in my opinion Adam does have a good sense of humor, which is more than can be said for some people on this show.

Just fyi, Dagny and Amelia both had a lot of issues with my rankings. Feel free to discuss in the comments. Humor of course is very subjective.

And storks, of course, are traditionally thought to bring babies to expectant parents – an old legend of obscure origin, but well-known in America by this time thanks to Hans Christian Andersen.

Laura reveals the answer, and Mary seems happy. She mentions that they “haven’t seen [the Holbrooks] since we left the Big Woods.” As I mentioned, the Holbrooks were depicted saying goodbye to the family in the Big Woods in The Pilot; but in reality they lived in Concord, Wisconsin, closer to Milwaukee and hundreds of miles from the BWs.

We assumed “‘I Remember, I Remember,’” in which Ma meets Pa for the first time, was set in Concord, though no place name was actually given in that story. (Well, except the Oconomowoc River, which does flow through Concord.)

Of course, here Mary says the Big Woods was (were?) the last place she saw her grandparents, not that it was their permanent residence.

The historical record tells us the Holbrooks were real people. Charlotte and Frederick were married in 1849, four years after Charlotte’s first husband, Henry Newton Quiner, drowned in a shipwreck. 

Cult TV fans may be interested to learn Thomas Quiner’s outfit here was the inspiration for that of the Fourth Doctor Who, Tom Baker!

By all accounts, Frederick Holbrook was a loving stepfather, and the only grandfather Laura Ingalls Wilder ever knew on Caroline’s side. 

In fact, Charles Frederick “Baby Freddie” Ingalls, who was born and died in “The Lord is My Shepherd,” was named after him.

Who knows, maybe Fred the goat was too.

Now we get a fairly racy scene.

Caroline and Charles lie in bed, Charles reading The Home Mechanic again.

Caroline describes her mom as a ball of energy, and her stepdad as a big sweetie-pie. “He just sits back and enjoys her,” she says.

DAGNY: Do you think Charles just sits back and enjoys Caroline?

WILL: [laughs]

DAGNY: Neither do I.

WILL: I do sit back and enjoy you, though!

“I’ve never seen two people more in love,” Caroline says, and Charles starts pouting with fake petulance. 

Then he offers her sex, but she starts talking about her mom’s favorite dessert, walnut cake. What the fuck’s with all the walnut cake this season? There must have been another bet in the writers room to see how many times they could work it into stories.

Charles pretends to be offended Caroline isn’t focusing on being seduced. 

So then Caroline offers him sex, and he says he can’t stop thinking about pot roast.

Can this be the 13+ “sexual content”? Seems tame if so, even for Little House. (There’s not even popcorn!) 

But it is a funny, sexy scene, and of course, there’s no question that Ma and Pa do actually do it once the camera cuts away.

We cut to the Sierra Number Three train arriving at a station, presumably in Springfield.

A handful of people are waiting on the platform, including Mrs. Foster, I think.

A bunch of passengers get off – all strangers, or I’m a fool!

DAGNY: That lady is stacked.

Charles walks up the platform looking for his in-laws. He notices some men carrying a coffin out of a freight car. (Not as nice as a Singerman.)

He then approaches a man with a familiar face – it’s Horace, the xenophobic Silver-Haired Train Ticket (SHTT) Guy whom we’ve met twice before!

He’s Dan Priest of (the Ancel Cook/Richard Lockmiller vehicle) Rattlers fame.

Sadly for him, the SHTT Guy has been demoted from stationmaster to mere brakeman.

Last time Charles encountered a brakeman, it didn’t go so great.

It doesn’t go so great this time either, since when he asks about the Holbrooks, SHTT Guy gently tells him Caroline’s mother passed away on the train.

Stunned, Charles looks around at the coffin. 

WILL: Do they always bring coffins on trains just in case somebody dies?

DAGNY: I don’t know. They might have sent somebody to get one when they stopped in a town.

WILL: That seems odd to me, but maybe. Why don’t they just put her in the freezer car?

DAGNY: I don’t think there is a “freezer car.” You’re thinking of cruise ships. If you die on one of those, they do put you in the freezer.

WILL: Oh. I thought on a cruise ship they dragged you in the water to keep you fresh.

As for her stepdad, SHTT Guy says they gave him a first-class compartment, which is nice.

Charles walks away in a daze, telling SHTT Guy they’ll take Grandma Holbrook home with them.

WILL: Serious question here. Is Pa’s shirt gray or green here? 

DAGNY: It’s green.

I’ve always thought of this shirt – it’s the one Mary made him for Christmas – as gray; in fact, I probably described it as such somewhere. My eyes have trouble with those two colors. Sorry, just had to check.

Then we see the Chonkywagon in that sunrise/sunset shot they’re always using.

(If you look closely, you can also see Jack following behind. (!))

And now comes one of the greatest Little House on the Prairie moments of all time, so quiet down and pay attention.

The Chonkywagon, with Pa driving and a mustached man in a stripey jacket sitting in the passenger seat, pulls up to the Little House.

Boobilicious Ma appears and says, “Pa! Oh, Pa!”

She runs and hugs the mustached, stripey-jacketed guy – Frederick Holbrook, as you’ve probably deduced by now, even though he isn’t John Steadman, the actor who played him in The Pilot.

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” Ma cries; and then . . . 

WILL: Here we go. . . .

. . . she quickly walks around the side of the wagon . . . 

DAGNY: Oh my God . . .

. . . saying “Ma, Ma, Ma!” as she rounds the corner . . . 

WILL: I know. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

. . . and before anyone can stop her . . .

DAGNY: Stop her. STOP HER!

. . . she finds her mother’s casket in the back!

“Oh, Mama!” Caroline screams. “Oh, no!”

Grassle’s great here – shaking her head and gritting her teeth.

Pa gives her a little backrub as she screams and sobs.

David Rose goes crazy, of course.

DAGNY: WHY WOULD THEY LET HER GO BACK THERE? Charles would NEVER let this happen. He would have jumped off the second they stopped to catch her!

Agreed. Well, we immediately cut then to Charlotte’s funeral. Ma is still crying. It seems a reasonable guess she hasn’t stopped since she started.

Perhaps now is the time to mention that the real Charlotte Quiner Holbrook died in 1884 – which I think establishes our date for the new timeline.

However, perhaps now is also the time to mention that in the real world, Frederick Holbrook died in 1874 – ten years before Charlotte.

Anyways, with Pa, J.C. Fusspot, Carl the Flunky, and another guy acting as pallbearers, the coffin gets lowered into the grave.

Frederick Holbrook holds Ma’s hand, and Reverend Alden gives her a little there-there-now pat on the back.

Apart from the Ingallses, Kendalls, J.C., Carl, and the Mystery Grovester, there are no other Grovesters present.

WILL: Are you fucking kidding? Nobody showed up for Caroline Ingalls’s mother’s funeral? Everybody in town would be there.

DAGNY: Yeah. The Garveys aren’t even there.

(Baby Grace is also missing.)

As for where they’re burying Charlotte, it isn’t the playground again, but rather a patch of ground adjoined by a wheatfield and guarded by a large tree.

WILL: That tree looks like a vagina to me. Birth to death.

DAGNY: Maybe that’s the sexual content.

The funeral concludes awkwardly with a repeat of the ah-men/ay-men fiasco from “The Preacher Takes a Wife.”

Voiceover Laura, making an uncharacteristically early appearance, says Gramps Holbrook stayed in the soddy for a while, developing a black depression as well as an eating disorder.

One day, Ma goes out to check on him, but when she says she wants him to eat he just makes weary Livia Soprano-type comments about how ready he is to die already.

Like Livia, Holbrook speaks with a rather harsh Eastern urban accent. The real Frederick Holbrook was originally from Connecticut, but I don’t think it’s a Connecticut accent. (At least, he doesn’t sound like Angela Bower to me.)

Another one of those Bonanza/The Virginian/High Chaparral/Ironside/Cannon/Barnaby Jones–type actors, Holbrook is Barry Sullivan, who also was in a lot of 1940s movies as well as Oh, God! and the Dabbs Greer/Leo Gordon vehicle China Venture. 

Plus, he was on both Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

Kung Fu, too.

He was the father-in-law of Jimmy Webb, who wrote “Wichita Lineman” and the Last Unicorn soundtrack.

Caroline loves her pa, but clearly he is another head-up-his-ass man of fairly high degree.

Because instead of remembering his wife, all he does is complain how nobody’ll remember him when he dies.

Nothing, Gramps says, has any meaning.

“I’m the last Holbrook!” he bellyaches. (Frederick and Charlotte only had one child together, a girl named Charlotte Elizabeth.) 

(In the TV Little House Universe, though, Caroline’s brother Henry Odin – yes, Odin – also uses the name Holbrook. Not in real life, though.)

The real Henry Odin Quiner was apparently never photographed, so here’s Gregg Forrest playing him on this show:

Today, even the British Crown recognizes daughters as truly being of the family bloodline (firstborn ones, anyways). But of course back in the old days, only legitimate males who carried the family name counted. 

My dad likes genealogy, but it’s amazing to me how little is remembered about the women of my own bloodline who married. Their names might be there, as daughters of so-and-so; but their descendants are lost to time.

For instance, my great-great grandfather Florian Kaiser (who lived in Dakota Territory btw, and would have been 23 in 1884) had one daughter, but what happened to her branch of the family isn’t recorded, even though her kids would be every bit as much his grandchildren as his son’s were. I know it’s the way things were done, but I think it’s strange. 

Anyways, Ma is very upset (but probably not on feminist grounds).

Holbrook bites her head off. Doesn’t seem like that big of a sweetie-pie to me.

Holbrook blabs on nihilistically for a while.

DAGNY: Wow, Alexander Kaiser much?

Then he kicks Ma out. (Nice.)

One day (again), Albert finishes muckin’ the auld byre and asks Ma if he can accompany her to town.

Ma asks if he’s done his homework reading, and Albert describes the assigned book as a “sleeping potion.” Ha!

Ma laughs and says not every book is going to be as fun as Tom Sawyer. (Published in 1876, and already dramatized on this show once.)

Ma says she taught the same book he was assigned when she was in school (she doesn’t say what it is), and Albert asks if she can just give him a capsule review.

WILL: That scientist kid should appear and say [as ERIC SHEA:] “Gee whiz, Albert, someday they’ll invent A.I., and no kid will ever have to study again!”

Ma won’t help him, so Albert tromps sadly to the house. 

Ma and Pa take off in the Chonkywagon, Pa mentioning that Gramps Holbrook is still on his hunger strike.

Ma also informs us it’s been three weeks since Grandma Charlotte died.

Albert’s Theme brings us back to the hayloft, where Alb is reading. The book’s title looks long and squiggly, but I can’t make it out.

Then he sees Gramps H sitting on the porch of the soddy (which really looks like it’s on the verge of falling apart).

Taking a leaf from Jordan Harrison’s book, Albert shimmies (or shinnies?) down a rope.

He goes up and asks if Gramps knows anything about the book he’s reading, which he finally names as Silas Marner, by George Eliot.

(George Eliot was a Nineteenth-Century English novelist, a woman who wrote under a male name to avoid being thought of as a “women’s writer.”) 

(Eliot let the cat out of the bag pretty early in her career, but people kept buying her books anyway.)

I’ve never read Silas Marner. In fact, all I know about it is that Ralphie’s class is forced to read it in A Christmas Story.

I have read Eliot’s Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, though. (Also sleeping potions.)

Silas Marner is the story of a miser who’s really not such a bad guy, and who learns to love when he raises a baby girl he rescues from the snow. 

If it has any thematic significance for “‘Author! Author!’”, I’m not sure what it is.

Silas Marner is pretty short for a Victorian novel – only the equivalent of about nine Walnut Groovy recaps. 

(Middlemarch, on the other hand, is 45 recaps long.)

Silas Marner was apparently once a dreaded piece of required reading for students. I don’t know when it was first taught in American schools, but since it was published in 1861, when the real Caroline Ingalls was 22, it’s very doubtful she would have studied it herself, as she claims. I actually doubt they were even teaching it in 1884.

Anyways, Gramps says he never read it.

Albert says he wishes he had gone to school in the old days, when they didn’t have to read such things. I don’t know why he thinks it would have been any better then.

Gramps H doesn’t know why either.

He goes on to tell Albert that he and his friends routinely cheated in school by paying a hyper-nerd named “Cornelius T. Sherwood” read the books for them.

WILL [as ALBERT]: “Wow . . . Nellie Oleson much?”

As an example, he says “Corny” helped them all pass a test on Plato’s Republic. (I have read that. Also a sleeping potion, but it did inspire a good They Might Be Giants song.)

The Republic was written in 375 B.C./B.C.E., so there’s nothing anachronistic about that reference. 

Albert posits that, with his superior brain, Corny must have made a huge success of himself.

Gramps says unfortunately Corny was a pussy fiend (paraphrase).

“He spent all his money on candy and flowers,” he says.

DAGNY: Could be worse. Albert will spend all his money on drugs.

Ultimately, an encounter with a red-haired girl named Samantha was Corny’s undoing.

(I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but once, as a joke, Dagny convinced me she thought of her phone as a literal person named Samantha. She had me going for days.)

Well, Gramps cuts his own story off and suggests Albert get back to reading, but Albert begs, rather unbelievably, to hear the rest of Holbrook’s wildly entertaining anecdote.

But this is always a difficulty for the dramatist. I don’t blame the Raschellas for it. It’s one thing if you’re writing a novel to say “Gramps Holbrook told the most entertaining stories Albert had ever heard!” and let readers’ minds fill in the rest. But on TV, you’ve got to give the audience something.

A similar thing happened with “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories.

The villain in that one has the utterly fantastic name of “Jephro Rucastle,” but at the beginning he seems to be a jolly if eccentric old man. The governess of the house reports to Holmes that: 

Mr. Rucastle, walking up and down, on the other side of the room, began to tell me a series of the funniest stories that I have ever listened to. You cannot imagine how comical he was, and I laughed until I was quite weary. . . .

Two days later this same performance was gone through under exactly similar circumstances.

. . . Again I laughed very heartily at the funny stories of which my employer had an immense repertoire, and which he told inimitably.

Of course, the governess gives no indication what these hilarious fucking stories are about, and when the story was adapted (otherwise excellently) into an episode of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes TV series, you can sense the difficulty the screenwriter had imagining them in a brief dialogue scene. You can judge his success for yourself at 27:39:

Again, I don’t blame the writer. It’s an impossible task. It’s interesting how something so simple becomes a completely different challenge when you have to depict it in a script.

So we cut away to a commercial in the midst of Holbrook’s amazing fucking story.

When we return, so do Ma and Pa.

Laura rat-tattles on Albert not reading, and Ma goes, “Chaaaaaaarles.”

But Ma and Pa decide they won’t need to cut a switch after all when Laura says he took Grandpa H for a walk.

“He was tellin’ him all kinds of stories about when you were little,” Laura says, then adds, oh by the way, the hunger strike’s over too.

That night after supper, we join the family in the middle of another supposedly entertaining story. This one involves Young Caroline going berrypicking with some kid named Marcie Dayton.

Blowhard Fred of course corrects Ma’s memory, saying she was actually six years old rather than seven when the incident occurred. (In reality, they didn’t meet until Caroline was nine.)

The uproarious conclusion of this “story” is that Marcie collected enough blackberries for six jars of preserves, and Young Caroline didn’t have enough for a single pie!

Ma and Gramps do a painful back-and-forth banter sort of reminiscent of vaudeville, Gramps saying he could tell Caroline had eaten all her berries because of her purple tongue.

DAGNY: He should have said it was because she had purple diarrhea.

WILL: If he had, I’d understand why they’re laughing this hard.

Laura says Gramps’s stories are so good, she wants to write them down!

WILL: Oh my God. . . .

Ma says well you’ll have to get more paper, he’s got so many hilarious ones!

WILL: Come on. . . .

The consensus they come to is that hey, Gramps actually SHOULD write a book!

WILL: I wonder if Gilbert and Labyorteaux didn’t like this actor. They seem forced in this one. 

Laura says his memoir will be Gramps’s own remembrance book . . . only Barry Sullivan ruins it by talking over her signature line!

Then Holbrook laughs and says “Let’s eat!” and Ma brings in a roast.

WILL: We haven’t had a scene that content-lite in a while.

Time passes, and we see smoke billowing out of the Little House chimney. (We’ll deal with what time of year it is later.)

We see Gramps in his jammies, scribbling away whilst surrounded by sweet potatoes and apples in the soddy.

(Quite notably, this is the first time we’ve seen sweet potatoes on this show since Mr. Edwards gave some to the family as a present in The Pilot.)

Next he’s out a-sittin’ by the creek, and when Laura appears with sandwiches, he shows her the dailies of what he’s working on.

She bursts out laughing. (All I get is rolled eyes when I show my family my ideas for Walnut Groovy.)

WILL: I don’t understand. This guy’s a humorist? He doesn’t even seem funny in his dialogue.

DAGNY: Well, neither do you.

(You see what I mean.)

Then we get Ma and Pa giggling in bed as they read his stuff, just like Melissa Gilbert and Thirtysomething Guy do when they read mine in my dreams.

This wonderful story involves a (presumably long-dead) cow named Bessie.

Pa suggests they have Gramps’s stories published in book form. (How much would that cost?)

Ma is delighted and starts going over the particulars, but Pa has become engrossed in the story he’s reading again.

Suddenly Pa becomes jealous of a boyfriend Caroline had when she was ten, “Herman Otis.”

They have a goofy lil argument about it.

Pa shrugs it off and says he’ll take the ms. to the printer’s the next day. (What printer?)

Then he starts huffing and pouting about Herman O again, and that’s it for the scene.

The next thing we see is Ma, looking boobilicious indeed, flailing her way across the yard coming back from somewhere. 

Ma bears a letter for Gramps H.

It’s from a publishing house saying they want to publish Holbrook’s, um, Hol-book. (. . . That prick! – I’m always resentful of successful writers.)

WILL: Do they turn his stories into commercials for Rollings Reliable Baking Powder?

“Procedural details and contracts to follow in further correspondence,” Gramps reads.

DAGNY: He talks like the Cowardly Lion.

WILL [as BERT LAHR]: “Pud’m up, pud’m up!”

(Again apropos of nothing, it’s rare that we get both Laura and Albert baring their fangs in a single image.)

“Oh, Papa, Papa!” cries Caroline.

Gramps starts hugging everybody and screaming “I’m an author, I’m an author!” (No exaggeration.)

I’m curious how Charles managed to borrow Holbrook’s entire collection of handwritten stories without the author himself noticing, but never mind that for now.

Because now it’s Party Time. 

Pa is playing some lively reels on the fake fiddle whilst everybody else dances in the Common Room. (Well, not Grace.)

WILL: This is vapid, but it looks like fun.

The camera backs away from the Little House exterior and into the night.

WILL: I’m not sure I like this technique. It feels like a serial killer’s watching them.

DAGNY: I don’t know about that, but they look huge through that window, don’t they?

Meanwhile, Mary and Adam are lying in bed. (Why weren’t they invited to the party? I sure hate to think of them missing out on any of Gramps Holbrook’s hilarious stories!)

In a sort of Love Boat-type acting style, Melissa Sue Anderson and Linwood Boomer play a scene involving Preggo Mary craving a picnic in the middle of the night.

(Speaking of the Boat, MSA was a veteran of the show herself by this point, and soon Boomer would be too.) 

Mary goes on and on about how she wants to get up and eat fried chicken right now. (The script implies this is an odd desire to have at midnight, but I can assure you, it is not.)

Eventually Adam gets up and fetches some chicken. 

DAGNY: It’s interesting that, for him, this wouldn’t be any different from going down in the day.

WILL: Yeah, except now he’s half-asleep.

Adam grabs some (unrefrigerated) fried chicken, but when he gets back, Preggo Mare is asleep. Haw haw! Haw haw haw!

DAGNY: Do you have a tag called “Bitches Be Crazy”?

By this point, we’re over halfway through the episode, and nothing has really happened since Grandma Holbrook died. 

If you’re like me, you’re getting concerned. 

Well, all I can say is this: Even if the story doesn’t get better, there’s a chance Landon will blow something up at the end. 

So let’s soldier on, reader, and find out.

We cut to some older footage, then, of Hans “Rubberface” Dorfler leading a horse across the bridge in town. (The footage – ominously – is from “The Sound of Children.”)

Inside the Post Office, Mrs. Foster flips through a handful of envelopes.

Behind her on the wall is a wanted poster for a bank robber named “Leo Courey.” (There’s a $500 reward – about $17,000 today – so if you’ve seen him, call it in.) 

She hands a letter over to Charles, who rips it open.

As usual, she has no discretion whatsoever with people’s private correspondence, saying, “Mr. Holbrook’s contracts! The whole town’s buzzin’ knowin’ there’s an author right here – and Mrs. Oleson is so jealous she could spit!”

But even as she’s quacking on, the smile runs away from Charles’s face.

Mrs. Foster notices this too. She is a sharp cookie.

Then we see a group of kids playing O’Cat on the playground/graveyard.

They include Laura, Albert, Willie, the Ambiguously Ethnic Kid, the Midsommar Kid and his little doppelganger, Not-Linda Hunt, Gelfing Boy and Not-Gelfing Boy, Not-Art Garfunkel, Holly the Smallest Nondescript Helen of Them All, and, strangely, Nellie Oleson.

That’s because the shot is ALSO reused from “The Sound of Children.” These choices seem pretty sinister, given where the Mary’s-Havin’-a-BABY! arc is going.

Since Groveland has no law, and therefore no lawyer, Chuck must take his contract questions to one of the region’s few intellectual powerhouses, Eliza Jane Wilder.

Charles says he can’t believe the publisher is asking them for money to publish the Hol-book. ($32, over a thousand today.)

This is actually what I thought Chuck was suggesting in the first place when he said “just send it to the printer’s!”

“I wish you’d come to me before you sent it,” Eliza Jane says. She explains that this publisher is a vanity press for self-publishing, and basically a scam.

“They probably never even read the manuscript,” she finishes up tartly. She would never rub Chuck’s face in the mistake, but you can tell there’s something in her that enjoys the drama of it all.

Eliza Jane does reassure Charles there’s nothing legally binding about this “offer,” and says he should simply refuse.

“I wish it was that easy,” Charles says.

That night, Pa talks over the facts of the case with Ma as Laura and Alb listen from the loft apartment.

All agree that the only reason they thought Holbrook’s stupid stories were any good is because they know him. (Paraphrase.)

Pa brings up a theoretical “storekeeper in Wyoming” who would sneer at them. (Sounds personal. Perhaps Charles encountered a Wyoming shopkeeper in an untelevised adventure who told him how much he hates humorous anecdotes from other states.)

It’s never hard to get Ma to poop on somebody’s fun, and she immediately starts saying it’s all their fault.

Ma says she’ll talk to Gramps, but Pa says it was his stupid idea in the first place, so he wants to deal with it.

DAGNY: Just throw the contract into the fire.

WILL: Yeah, oops.

Laura and Alb look at each other glumly as our old friend the bagpipe-thing makes a surprise return to the orchestra.

After a break, the French horns accompany Charles as he pro-cesses up to the soddy the next day.

There he finds the literary titan at work in the room of the sweet potatoes.

The old man jumps up and starts going on about how he’s mailing all his friends, including one named “Wendell” and some others in the Big Woods. (Where, again, the Holbrooks did not live.)

He says he’s promised them all presentation copies of this first opus; then he asks, what brings you out here to talk to me, Charles?

And gritting his teeth – Pa weasels out of the entire enterprise.

DAGNY: You can tell Charles is stressed because his chest veins are popping out.

Holbrook says he’s now going to walk to town to see if the publisher’s contract has come yet, but Charles gets him off that topic fast.

Then Gramps makes a big shmoopy speech about how he owes his success all to Charles.

Charles takes the letters and slouches homeward.

WILL: Does he throw them down Carrie’s well?

He admits his failure to the Ing-Gals and Albert and says they’ll have to raise the money somehow.

WILL: Is this the one where they do a bikini carwash?

DAGNY: Charles would never do this in a million years. I call Cash on the Bullshit.

She’s right, of course. I no more believe Charles Ingalls would throw $32 away on this nonsense than I believe the moon is the Black Rabbit of Inlé. 

He is something of a softie, though. (Pa, not the Black Rabbit.)

Pa says he’ll simply return his new plow, which he bought for $25 ($825), and then they’ll only have to raise $7.

Next we see him driving into some ragtime-infested city.

DAGNY: Oh, is Charles going to beat the shit out of the publisher?

Albert and Laura are sitting on the back of the wagon.

Other than the children, all that’s in the wagon is the plow.

Pa drives up to the site of Jonathan Garvey’s first confrontation with Milo Stavroupolis, Mankato Freight.

WILL: Mankato! With no provisions! It’s a three-day trip! 

DAGNY: And did Albert and Laura just sit in the back kicking their legs the whole way?

Albert and Laura wander off whilst Pa is returning the plow. 

We notice Buster Scruggs, Not-Clint Howard, Not-Stanley Tucci, Not-Axl Rose, and William Tell crossing the street in the background. So yup, Mankato.

William Tell actually crosses twice.

At the store, Pa is arguing with some hardware cocksucker. 

Presumably this specific hardware cocksucker is Mr. Mooney, who was mentioned by Charles and Garvey in “The King is Dead.”

(The only other credited male actor in this episode is Ron Chapman playing someone called “Bates.” I’m not sure if that’s this guy or not, but Chapman was also on Father Murphy and in a Troma sexploitation picture called Lust for Freedom.)

Anyways, Mr. Mooney, who talks a bit like my brother-in-law Bruce, says he’ll only buy back the plow for half-price, despite it being unused. Too bad for Chuck, but a reasonable business decision.

Chuck says that’s ridiculous, snorting that Mooney’s not the only hardware cocksucker in Mankato! (Paraphrase.)

As he stomps out, we see a wanted poster for another criminal, this time the horse thief “Lucky Ortman,” or possibly “Lucky Catman.” (Reward $1,000!)

Back in the street, we see a severe-looking woman with a parasol advancing through town.

She’s credited as “Dowager.” We’ve already met a couple Dowagers on this show.

First there was the one in Chicago who was walking Rodney, her little dog in the tartan jacket.

Then there was the class-obsessed Grandmama Caldwell, Olaf Lundstrom’s mother-in-law in “The Stranger.”

Anyways, this Dowager is played by Babs Bram, who was also also on Father Murphy.

Albert and Laura approach the lady, pretending to be orphans. (Well, Laura is pretending.)

Albert gives her a sob story about how their parents died in a fire. 

Albert adds that the fire also turned Laura deaf. (You know, Landon is beginning to foreshadow “May We Make Them Proud” in some twisted ways.)

Well, the Dowager gives them some money, and Matthew Labyorteaux gets another laugh when he kisses her hand in gratitude.

After the lady leaves, the kids smirk at their own cleverness, which is also funny.

Then we get another repurposed shot – have we ever had so many in a single episode before?

This one depicts Nellie’s restaurant with smoke billowing from its chimney, last seen in “Back to School.”

You can even see the Help Wanted: Cook sign on the porch. (Though we haven’t seen Caroline at work there for a while, so maybe they really are hiring again.)

In the kitchen, Nellie is struggling to cut up a chicken, with Nels helping her. I don’t see any cinnamon.

There’s a little party of other chickens on the counter waiting for the same treatment, as well as a heaping bowl of chicken innards. (I’m all for offal, but I don’t know that we need to see it so prominently displayed. This isn’t Iron Chef.)

Caroline appears, saying she’s hoping to pick up some extra hours, and Nellie greets her with hostility.

But Nels exclaims, “Why, that would be wonderful!”

About five years (LHUT) have gone by since “Back to School,” and in the interim Nellie must have lost her aversion to cooking, because now she brags that people are coming from miles around to enjoy her food.

“My cuisine has made a name for itself as far away as Mankato!” she says, and Nels instantly replies, “Yes, it’s a name I can’t repeat in front of Mrs. Ingalls.”

“My customers swear by my cooking!” Nellie snaps.

“That’s what I just said,” Nels says. (Richard Bull is hilarious in this one.)

Nellie storms out as Nels welcomes Caroline aboard full-time.

Back in Mankato, the Giddy Idiot wanders the street with a bunch of other people.

Having had no luck with the other hardware cocksuckers, Charles returns to Mooney’s.

Mooney says because the plow’s in such good condition, he’ll throw in an extra 50 cents.

All these little fundraising bits are amusing, but they hardly compensate for the lack of a real plot.

David Rose gives us some way over-the-top funny music – sort of like they’d have on M*A*S*H sometimes before the commercial breaks.

Back at the Little House, the Ingallses count up their savings, which, when you add in Albert and Laura’s unethical collection, amount to more than they need.

Quite unbelievably, Albert hasn’t prepared an explanation for when Pa asks him where the extra money came from.

Laura says to look at it as a miracle, and Ma and Pa say that’s good enough for them.

Some time passes again, because next we see Pa driving down the driveway announcing the Hol-books have arrived.

Gramps comes out and is awed at his own, um, awesomeness.

The title of the Hol-book is My Book of Memories, which I suppose is a better title than The Stupidest Stories on Earth.

(I should mention this whole idea of Frederick Holbrook being an aspiring writer is invention.)

There are a whole lot of books, all leatherbound – more than I expect you’d have gotten for $32. 

Then we get another completely unnecessary scene where jealous Mrs. Oleson doesn’t want to sell the Hol-books at the Mercantile, even though the Mercantile’s “the only store that sells books.”

DAGNY: “That sells books”? How about the only store period?

Charles departs in defeat, but Albert feeds Harriet a line of bull about Caroline having a nude scene in the book and she changes her mind. (Is this the “sexual content”? Who knows?)

Pa and Nels are baffled by her change of heart. 

WILL: They’re giving it their all, but they just don’t have much to work with here.

As for Albert, he just makes a sexist quip.

DAGNY: Bitches Be Crazy.

That night, in bed, Mrs. Oleson discovers that Caroline’s “nude scene” actually occurred when she was a baby. Haw haw.

It’s not the funniest, but MacG does what she can to save it, enunciating the word diaper (pronounced with three syllables) several times with increasing decibel-age.

DAGNY: That’s how my mom used to say “diaper.”

WILL: Wow, first Reverend Alden, now this?

DAGNY: Yeah. It’s like my mom’s embedded in this show.

Well, you may have noticed by now that while Melissa Sue Anderson has essentially moved into “Special Guest Star” territory this season, she is still technically in this episode.

So, late one night, Mary goes into labor. (The historical Mary Ingalls never had children.)

Hester-Sue rides out to the Little House, where Doom-Hag Ma runs out crying “What’s wrong!”

Hester-Sue says it’s just baby time, and the next thing you know ol’ Doc is announcing the birth of a healthy baby boy.

I find the baby a little ugly, not that it matters what I think. Everybody is entitled to their own view on that subject.

David Rose, no doubt at the piano himself, gives us some Liberace-type “crashing waves” music.

Hairy-eyebrowed Mary and hairy-chested Adam share the baby’s name: Adam Charles Holbrook “Mary’s Baby” Kendall.

Gramps is honored, and immediately starts lecturing the baby about how his great-grandfather is a famous author. That’s it, I’ve tried to like him, but he pretty much sucks.

Then we get more secondhand footage – this time of the Number Three train waiting at the station in “‘I’ll Ride the Wind.’” (Already this has been reused once, in “The Wedding.”)

As strange as it is to have so many repurposed clips in a single story, there’s always something new to notice. 

For instance, this time, I observed that Mustache Man is telling some anecdote to the woman next to him on the platform . . . complete with a “crotch-exposing” gesture and a pelvic thrust!

DAGNY: Oh my God, back that up.

We watched it a few times.

DAGNY: That’s so funny. He must not have known the camera was rolling. 

WILL: Yeah, and like I said, this is the third time they’ve used this same clip, and I’ve never noticed it before. I wonder if we’re the first people ever to notice it.

DAGNY: Maybe THAT’S the sexual content!

(Thanks to Kris for the gifs.)

Dull goodbyes, then the train departs, with Voiceover Laura telling us Gramps died two years later. (I don’t remember if he comes for Adam Junior’s funeral or not . . . but we’ll find out soon enough!)

Okay, one final thought. I’m no doctor, not even a veterinarian in fact, but at the beginning of this episode Mary is really showing – I’d say she’s probably four months along or more, yes?

I know we’re at the end of the recap and you’re all dying for the bell to ring, but I want to take a moment to answer one question:

Could all the events of this story take place in the remaining five months of Mary’s pregnancy?

It’s been bothering me the entire episode. Let’s consider the facts of the case, in the form of a recap within a recap.

The story starts with the arrival of the Holbrooks’ telegram, then they arrive in in the flesh (and bones) at least a week later. (That’s the approximate time it would take to come from Milwaukee by train.)

Frederick Holbrook then falls into a depression which we’re told lasts three weeks.

Next, Gramps H writes a whole (Hol-)book. Now, I write pretty fast, as you no doubt can tell from all my mistakes. (I comfort myself with the idea, which got into my head at some point along my life’s journey and which may even be true, that the great poet William Butler Yeats‘s manuscripts were riddled with errors too.)

I do try to correct my old errors when I notice ’em, but never mind that now. To write nine recaps – the approximate length, you’ll remember, of Silas Marner (that is, shortish) – would take me, judging from my output this year, somewhere in the neighborhood of eighteen weeks.

Of course, I have a day job, whereas Frederick H is retired. So let’s say for the sake of argument that he writes twice as fast as I do, meaning he could finish a book-length manuscript in just nine weeks. Doubtful for a first-time writer, but not impossible.

Charles then sends the manuscript to a publisher – let’s assume in Minneapolis, the closest truly large city – who quickly expresses interest, say, within a week. That would be very fast in the 1880s; but no doubt the fake publisher had the congrats letter ready to go and sent it immediately without reviewing the book, as Eliza Jane suggests, so maybe it wouldn’t take all that long.

A contract follows in the mail shortly therafter, let’s say three or four days later.

The day after he receives the contract, Charles has decided they’ll pay for the book. No doubt he writes or wires the publishing house immediately; however, the publisher surely would require payment up front.

So the Ingallses launch their fundraising drive, which includes a trip to Mankato and back (six days round trip).

Let’s say they do it fast, and mail the payment one week after the contract arrives. (Again, I can’t believe the mail would travel very fast in those days, but we’ll set that aside.)

The books are printed and delivered to Walnut Grove. I can’t accept that this phase of things alone would take anything less than three months, but let’s be generous and say the books arrive in two.

At which point, Baby Adam is born.

If you add all this up, you get about 24 weeks, or five-and-a-half months. So I suppose if Mary were just three-and-a-half months along at the start rather than four, it could just work out, with Adam Junior likely being born in October!

Yeah, I know, this would require the kids to be in school the first week of August, but it’s not like that hasn’t happened before.

Well, as I mentioned, the entire scenario is VERY DOUBTFUL. Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum! Class dismissed.

STYLE WATCH: Adam wears a crisp shirt of brilliant white.

DAGNY: See, the green in Pa’s shirt matches the green in Ma’s bonnet.

WILL: Everything looks gray to me.

I used to have a jacket just like Holbrook’s. Well, more or less.

Charles appears to go commando again.

THE VERDICT: 

WILL: I really dislike that one.

DAGNY: Yeah. But the “Ma, Ma!” scene would make my list of Top Ten Little House moments.

The “Ma, Ma!” scene notwithstanding, this is the worst episode in some considerable time. (Yes, I would even include “The Halloween Dream.”) 

Grassle is terrific, and yet once again, a tragedy affecting one of our principal women is used to launch a story that’s really about the pride of some ridiculous old man.

Holbrook himself is unlikeable, and apart from her very generic narration, Laura the actual future Great Author shows little interest in her grandfather’s literary journey – a missed opportunity. 

On the plus side, it also features some unexpected comedy bits (thanks Landon) from MacGregor, Labyorteaux, Gilbert, Bull and Arngrim.

And of course it also sets things up nicely for “May We Make Them Proud.” . . . 

See you again soon.

UP NEXT: Crossed Connections