“May We Make Them Proud” (Part One)

“She’ll Be Fine”; or

Mary’s Baby Was Ugly . . . But Not Too Ugly to Live!

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: “May We Make Them Proud” [sic]

Airdate: February 4, 1980

Written and directed by Michael Landon

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: [screams uncontrollably]

RECAP: We live in bad times, everybody. We’re down in our rumpus room/bunker in the Twin Cities, trying to muffle the gunfire, whistles, sirens and helicopters with Little House on the Prairie. (This is not really a joke. Hope you’re all safe out there.)

All right, obviously we have a big story today. Our younger kids have returned to college, but we did assemble a different gang of Groovesters for a viewing party: Raja, Daisy, Ruthie, Dags and me. (All of us were at the Fiftieth celebration in the real Walnut Grove together.)

Additionally, Amelia just happened to stop by that night with her friend Allie, an old softball teammate from high school. When we said we were blogging the entire series, Allie said, “Oh, yeah? What season are you on?”

I started paying attention when I heard that. What season are you on? NO ONE asks this question except fellow travelers of the Little House road! Yes, Allie was already in the cult! Amelia had no idea.

Before the viewing we had a nice dinner of chili (in honor of tonight’s story – see below).

Amelia and Allie are vegetarians, so they were given nothing.

DAISY: I’ve been excited about this. I love the infanticide ones. 

DAGNY: I’m not sure this counts as infanticide. 

RAJA: Smashing a baby’s head through a window isn’t infanticide?

RUTHIE: Well, some people say she just smashes her arm through it.

WILL: Yeah. We can Zapruder-film it tonight.

One note: This episode was broadcast as a two-hour special, but in syndication it was broken into two parts. In order to keep the read time as manageable as possible, I’m going recap each half separately.

First, the credits.

ALLIE: You know, I’ve heard one twin hid in the grass and got up when the other fell.

WILL [laughing]: What? Oh, you did not!

ALLIE: No, I have heard that.

DAGNY: I TOLD YOU! Everybody knows that’s how they filmed it.

We open with our best look so far at the plaque on the Harriet Oleson Institute for the Advancement of Blind Children.

You’ll notice it features a silhouette of Mrs. Oleson herself, though I wouldn’t say the likeness is very good. (Looks more like a Windsor, if you ask me. Which would probably please Mrs. O.)

The camera pulls back to reveal some event in progress at the Institute.

We see some blind kids, including the Sharp-Dressed Blind Kid and Freckles, racing around – that seems unlikely, doesn’t it?

RUTHIE: Oh my God, who’s hanging there?

No one – it’s just Willie goofing off in a tree.

Merlin Olsen gets a guest star credit for this one, as do Hersha Parady and Kevin Hagen.

A banner on the building indicates this is the “first annual charity picnic,” even though by my count it’s been fifteen years in Little House Universal Time (LHUT) since the school came to Walnut Grove.

A lot of people are about, including Eliza Jane and The Founder Herself. “Why, my school’s just growing by leaps and bounds!” Mrs. Oleson exclaims.

She mentions they’re about to expand the building, then calls for Adam, making a joke about how he can always recognize her voice (which we all liked).

She then asks for an update on the building project in his capacity as Superintendent. 

You know, in the time we’ve known her, Mrs. Oleson’s volunteer “leadership” has made life a living hell for the Groveland school board, the church board of elders, the Walnut Grove Women’s League, the Walnut Grove Women’s Temperance League – practically every community initiative in this burg, in fact.

And yet, Harriet doesn’t seem to meddle much in the running of the Institute which bears her name. The closest thing we’ve seen is her pulling rank on Hester-Sue for suggesting she not dress expensively whilst grant-grubbing. 

Well, in fairness the place has been pretty well run. I mean, their emergency preparedness might leave something to be desired, but you know, otherwise.

Adam says construction will begin over the next couple weeks, though he notes that “a lot will depend on how we do today.” 

WILL: Yeah, I’m sure the twelve dollars they scrounge up here will make or break the project.

Mrs. Oleson says the addition will double the size of the school, so the size of her plaque must be adjusted accordingly. Seems reasonable.

Over at the food table, Jonathan Garvey encourages Charles to try some chili. “Alice made it extra hot!” he says.

RUTHIE: “Alice made it extra hot”? Is that a joke?

WILL: Probably. Landon wrote this one.

(As we previously discussed, the presence of chili in Minnesota at this time is probably anachronistic.)

Alice, looking fairly extra-hot herself, is keeping an eye on things.

It kind of looks like Charles is checking her out, but we know he wouldn’t do that. (I’m glad we never had a story where everyone thinks Charles and Alice are having an affair. On the other hand, it might have made a good two-parter.)

Meanwhile, at a picnic table, a curious foursome comprising Doc Baker, Nellie, Carl the Flunky, and an unknown oldster is lunching.

The old man, who’s smoking a pipe, is haranguing Doc about folk remedies, saying “garlic and vinegar” is “the only medicine worth a hoot.”

He leans close to show he still has all his teeth, but his breath is so disgusting Doc recoils. 

(The smell of vinegar isn’t really that funny. As I’ve mentioned, Dagny is from Canada, where they use plain white vinegar as a condiment on practically every foodstuff. Not to stereotype an entire people, but Canadians adore vinegar in ways I’ve never gotten used to. They splash it on food, drink it, eat it in gummy form, clean with it, use it to kill bugs, you name it, and of course also spill it everywhere, including in the car.)

(Dags says I should “put in that it’s also good on mosquito bites!”)

Doc addresses the man as “Harlan,” and the credits give him a last name, “Potts.” He’s played by Gil Lamb, who got to be both Clarabell and Bozo the clown on TV, and who appeared on the The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke and My Three Sons and in the movies Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Bye Bye Birdie, and The Love Bug.

He also was in the Richard Jaeckel vehicle Day of the Animals. (My dad, Alexander and I watched that together once and laughed our asses off.)

Anyways, as Old Man Potts is talking, we see a small hand reach from behind him to swipe his pipe, but he notices too late.

The thief is a small boy who reminds me of my first cousin Charity. (I know I already described Timothy Dodds in “The Faith Healer” as resembling Charity, but believe me, if there ever was a fiftysomething Wisconsin woman who suggested an 1880s pioneer boy, it’s her. If she liked me, I’d share her picture and prove it. Ha!)

The kid brings the pipe straight to Albert. Boy, they aren’t wasting any time with this one, are they?

ALLIE: I really only know the later seasons of the show, because I was in love with Albert when I started watching it as a kid. I like his are-they-siblings-or-are-they-dating relationship with Laura. And he has beautiful hair.

DAGNY: Adam’s hair is bad, though. 

DAISY: It’s probably because Mary’s always running her fingers through it.

WILL: No, it’s just because he can’t see. Hester-Sue would have to do his hair every morning, and she doesn’t have time for that. She’s already got to do Mary’s.

DAGNY: I dunno. Mary just pulls her hair back in clips, you don’t have to see to be able to do that.

Albert recaps the events of “Blind Journey,” or at least the part where he smoked Pa’s pipe and threw up.

WILL [as ALBERT]: “Plus I smoked Indigenous tobacco once in a dream.”

The kid, whose name it turns out is Clay, says only a clay pipe produces a proper smoke. (I find the Clay/clay pipe thing too confusing to keep track of, so I’m just going to call him “Cousin Charity.”)

Cousin Charity says the pipe has gone out and needs to be relit. He suggests getting some matches and smoking in the school basement, since everybody’s out at the picnic.

So, the kids head down there and smoke up.

DAGNY: This episode is incredibly traumatic. I don’t blame Albert for turning to opioids.

WILL: The descent begins.

DAISY: It’s a great anti-smoking commercial too.

RUTHIE: Yeah. Eat your heart out, QUITPLAN.

Cousin Charity, who has this sort of overstimulated-child way of talking, explains, “Women like a man that smokes a pipe!”

Clay/Cousin Charity is played by Bill Calvert, who had a long career in show business. He appeared on The Jeffersons, Highway to Heaven, Beauty and the Beast and many other TV shows, and in the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies as well as in the Tod Keller vehicle C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud.

Hester-Sue opens the door up above and asks who’s fooling around down there.

They toss the pipe, and Albert says they’re in the basement because they can’t stand Carrie. (Ha! An explanation no one in this town would question.)

Hester-Sue tells them dessert is served, “and you’d better get up there and dig in before it’s all gone.”

WILL: Wow, Ketty Lester is good. If she opened a lobster-roll shack and talked like that in the commercial, I’d be first in line.

So the kids abandon their unhealthy plans and follow Hester-Sue up. 

AMELIA: There’s no chance Hester-Sue wouldn’t smell that tobacco.

DAGNY: Zero.

But she doesn’t smell it.

As for David Rose, well, he’s been giving us a joyous rhythmic arrangement of “The Artful Albert”; but we sense something’s wrong when the music changes.

Actually, I already sensed something was wrong when Hester-Sue closed the door and the camera kept us down in this scary basement.

And now we see that the clay pipe, tossed carelessly amongst some tablecloths and what appears to be one of Laura’s old bonnets, is still smoldering.

The camera, a key player in this story, creeps closer and closer.

Then suddenly we cut away to the Institute at night. Hester-Sue and Alice have been cleaning up right after the party (a practice we don’t always observe in our house).

Hester-Sue says since our work’s finished, let’s sit and have a cup of tea. (I think that’s nice.)

Upstairs, Adam is putting the boys to bed. Two of them – one we’ve never seen before and one who is identical to the Roscue we met in “Annabelle” – are bickering.

The one boy, whose hair looks like a haystack, addresses him as “James,” but I prefer Roscue and am going to stick with that.

The kids keep picking at each other.

AMELIA: God, these two are like an old married couple.

The haystack-haired kid is identified in the credits as “Tim.” I guess this must be Tim Caper, who was one of the blind kids poor Mr. Ames searched for in the dust storm.

Tim Caper is played by an actor with the unfortunate name of “Dago Dimster,” who also did voice work for Scooby Doo. (We’ll meet Mr. Dimster a few more times on our show too.)

Roscue is again played by the great De’voreaux White, whose bio I did up for “Annabelle.”

Roscue leads the kids in a prayer where he asks for God’s vengeance against anyone who didn’t donate to the fundraiser, and Adam reproves him.

Hester-Sue asks Adam if he’d like to have a cup of tea with them, and he says he’ll get Mary from their bedroom.

He finds her playing with Baby Adam.

ALLIE: That baby is ugly.

DAISY: Yes . . . but not too ugly to live!

Mary says once she changes the baby she’ll join them in the kitchen.

ALLIE: Her hair is full brown here. Does hair color really change after you go blind?

DAGNY: No, but it can change when you have a baby.

Mary opens a music box, which plays the famous “Brahms’ Lullaby,” composed in 1868.

(Brahms isn’t one of my favorites, though I do like some of the Liebeslieder Waltzes.)

Meanwhile, back in the basement, the smoldering continues, accompanied by a restless scurrying flute.

Suddenly David scares the shit out of us with terror music on the slide whistle and marimba, as the bonnet bursts into flame!

ALL: [screaming uncontrollably]

RUTHIE: Would it really take that long to ignite?

We debated this a bit. It’s hard to tell how much time has passed. Hester-Sue was calling the kids for dessert when the pipe was tossed, recall. A buffet supper, late in the day?

Evidence inconclusive, but I’m sure a fire expert would say some flames smolder a very long time. You know, like Amy Phillips Sawyer’s passion for Charles.

Upstairs, Roscue is snoring, which we know from the earlier scene is something Tim Caper despises him for.

He’s not being all that loud, but Tim C shakes him awake, insisting he go blow his nose to reduce the amplification. I don’t think that’s how snoring works, but whatever.

This scene is accompanied by cute music on tinkly toy-sounding instruments including marimba, glockenspiel and/or celeste. 

AMELIA: What kind of music is this? We already know the house is on fire!

WILL: David is trying to throw us off the scent.

RAJA: Yeah. What an asshole.

Roscue heads to the water closet, where he pulls a piece of paper from a dispenser and blows his nose.

WILL: That looks like my parents’ Jeopardy day calendar.

Actually, according to one source, the most popular toilet paper in the U.S. in the late Nineteenth Century was pages torn from the Sears catalogue or the Farmer’s Almanac!

Down in the basement, the slide whistle is still screaming as the fire grows larger and larger.

Up in the dining hall, Adam is saying if the expansion succeeds, “pretty soon we can give every blind child in the township proper schooling!” Wait, there are blind kids in Hero Township who don’t go to this school? How many can there be? And why don’t they?

Well, never mind. Adam and Hester-Sue start goofing on Mrs. Oleson’s concerns about her plaque, Hester-Sue saying it’ll probably wind up being “about as big as the Statue of Liberty.” (The Statue wasn’t built until 1886, though the project had been formally announced over ten years earlier, and Liberty’s arm was already on display in a New York City park as a sort of preview. I’ll allow the reference.)

Alice Garvey is starting to fall asleep in her chair.

DAISY [as ALICE GARVEY]: “I’m so tired, I could sleep like the dead!”

DAGNY: Yeah! [as ALICE GARVEY:] “I might never wake up!”

Then Adam notices a smoke smell; but Hester-Sue says it’s just a kettle she left on the burner that’s boiled out. 

(My ex-mother-in-law, a dear if slightly daffy person, once boiled two dozen eggs for Easter and forgot them on the stove. The house didn’t burn, but it smelled like sulphur well past the Feast of the Ascension.)

In the basement, the fire has now burned up the support beams, and the ceiling has caught. 

(I think I also told the story how my high-school friend Greg forgot mozzarella sticks boiling in oil on the stove whilst a group of us watched Fiddler on the Roof upstairs. We were a pretty tough crew, as you might have guessed.) 

(By the time we heard the smoke detector, the kitchen looked pretty much like this. We managed to put the fire out and save the house, but man, just barely.)

When Hester-Sue returns, the smoke smell hasn’t gone.

And. Here. We. Go.

Hester-Sue crosses to the front hall, where smoke is pouring from the cellar door.

She opens it.

ALL: You’re not supposed to do that.

You’re not supposed to do that . . . because it lets out a blast of flames! (And slide whistle!)

“Adam! Adam!” Hester-Sue screams.

ALLIE: Would she really call for Adam and not Alice?

RAJA: They probably should have invested in more sighted staff in case of emergencies like this.

DAGNY: Yeah. At least a Safety Officer.

Recognizing they’re too late to save the house, Hester-Sue shouts that they must get the children out.

Hester-Sue, Adam and Alice run upstairs and separate. (We again notice how wobbly the bannister is. It must have been hard for the actors not to grab it!)

And now we get this famous story’s most controversial moment.

Mary is still Brahmsin’ at Baby Adam’s cradle. Big Adam bursts in, saying, “Mary, come on! There’s a fire! We have to get the kids out!”

The room immediately fills with smoke, and Adam takes Mary by the arm and leads her out into the hall – without taking the baby.

We had a fairly extended conversation about how unthinkable it would be for Mary and Adam to abandon the baby in this situation. If you’re a Little House fan, you’ve probably had similar conversations yourself. 

Mothers in particular seem to be hard on Mary (as mothers so often are on one another). Certainly that was true of the four moms at our gathering.

Well, believable or not, it’s what happens. The adults quickly usher the blind kids downstairs.

But in the water closet, Roscue has fallen asleep on the toilet.

Smelling the smoke, he wakes up and finds himself locked in. 

Now, in what I think is a testament to the sick, long-game-playing mind of Michael Landon, the show actually seeded the idea that there’s something wrong with the bathroom lock in this house twenty-three stories ago.

Twenty-three stories! I make that thirteen years in LHUT. That is a long time for such a simple maintenance issue to be neglected, especially on a property frequented by Charles Ingalls.

The blind kids go by very quickly in this story, and it’s hard to say who is or isn’t there. I think I can make out the Kid with Very Red Hair (Blind One).

There’s also a kid who looks like Willie Oleson.

Baby Adam wakes up and starts crying, which causes Mary to remember his existence.

But Alice tells her not to worry about it, SO SHE DOESN’T.

ALL: [grunts and clucks of disbelief/disapproval]

Now, to be fair, Mary is blind, so to an extent it would make sense for Alice to carry the baby. Whether it makes as much sense for Mary to leave before she does so is another question, of course, but she does.

Alice runs into Mary’s bedroom and kneels by the cradle.

But then she hears Roscue yelling for help, so she goes back into the hall, leaving the baby behind again.

ALL: [caws and squawks of disbelief/disapproval increase in volume] 

At the water closet, Alice, sweet Alice, breaks the fucking door down. 

Her questionable teaching abilities and occasional meanness aside, I am an unapologetic Alice G fan, and while certain of her decisions in this story are also worth scrutinizing, she is badass to the end. 

It’s hard to imagine any of the other female regulars breaking down a door, except Hester-Sue, Laura of course, and probably Kezia.

Well, Alice directs Roscue down the stairs and rushes back to Baby Adam.

But it’s too late, for the flames have trapped them inside.

The fire consumes the curtains and billows around the bed whilst Alice and the baby scream and scream again.

RUTHIE: Do you think they gave the cast free therapy after this episode?

WILL: Oh, I bet they all had a good laugh about it.

RAJA: Will, you’re heartless.

WILL: It’s all make-believe, Raja.

(I’d actually love to know how they designed, set up and shot a sequence like this. My understanding is TV studios did not enjoy working with fire on soundstages in those days. It’s very convincing!)

Outside, the little group of children is coughing. (And it is a little group. I count no more than six.)

Roscue/James emerges, and heroic Hester-Sue rushes back into the burning house to rescue Alice. 

(When the mozzie stick accident almost burned down my friend’s house, my girlfriend at the time ordered heroic me to rush back in to get her trig homework, which I did. Like Alice G herself, I was also pretty badass in those days.)

Hester-Sue runs up the stairs, but she can’t get further than the landing.

“Alice! Alice!” she screams.

EVERYONE OLDER THAN 45 [chanting]: Who the fuck is Alice???

Hester-Sue runs back outside, where, impossibly, Mary and Adam are just sitting silently with the kids.

And now comes the big finish.

Hester-Sue hears glass breaking, and looks up to see Alice smashing the window in the upper room.

“Oh my God, the baby!” Hester-Sue screams.

“Hester-Sue,” Adam says after a moment, as if realizing he’s forgotten something. “Where’s Alice and the baby?” He asks this pretty conversationally, in a tone he might use to ask which Saturday in June is Founder’s Day again?

“Hester-Sue, where are they?” Mary shouts. (At least she seems upset.)

Hester-Sue can only stare in mute horror.

The baby and Alice are still screaming and smashing.

DAISY: Her behavior follows the Six Fs – freeze, flee, fight, feign stupidity, fuck it up, fry.

And as for the “Baby Battering Ram” question, well, while it’s clear Alice is trying to break the glass with her elbow, our panel concluded Adam Junior is absorbing some of the impact as well. Evidence mixed.

The entire house is an inferno now, and we can see and hear pieces of it collapsing.

AMELIA [singing joyously]: “Summer is icumen in! Loudly sing cuckoo!”

WILL: Mr. Ames is rolling in his grave.

By this point, the episode has taken on a kind of slow-motion nightmare quality, and Mary turns her head and says, “Where’s my baby?”

She keeps repeating it over and over, and Adam jumps up and staggers towards the burning school.

But Hester-Sue tackles him to the ground.

This is, of course, not the first time we’ve seen these two opponents pitted against one another.

With a crash of drum and cymbal, and probably timbrel and psaltery as well, David Rose brings in tragic music of epic intensity, or perhaps epic music of tragic intensity, intense music of tragic epic-ness, or whatever!

Tears stream down Mary’s face.

Kimmy and a little blind girl we’ve never met hug each other. They look on the verge of catatonia.

DAISY: Would you agree that if Charles had been there, none of this would have happened?

ALL: Yes.

DAISY: So, does that make it actually his fault?

ALL: Yes.

Sue Goodspeed, whom we’ve not seen in a while, has apparently gone mad from terror.

WILL: Is she gonna start screaming “I’M HERE, I’M HERE”?

The Institute burns and burns, and the curtain falls for a commercial.

Wow. Whew! If ever Little House needed an intermission, it’s here.

It’s fair to say this is the most horrific Little House moment so far, though to an extent that’s a matter of sensitivity and taste. (For me, the death of Thomas the Blond Blind Freckle-Faced Moppet comes close.)

I’m often surprised when I hear that fans “don’t like the horror ones.” I suppose many of those fans are equally surprised that a long-time horror buff like myself loves Little House.  

But by my estimation, 43 percent of the stories so far (arguably more) have had horror elements:

Et cetera, et cetera. Horror is an enormous piece of this show’s pie, to put it in baker’s terms.

I do know a number of other “horror people” who are closet Little House fans. Some of them are quite tough and scary themselves (unlike me!).

Now back to our story. When we return, it’s the next morning, and we see the entire house is gone. 

And I do mean gone, MacReady, if I may be excused a Donald Moffat reference. 

The gigantic mansion seems to have disappeared entirely, leaving only the chimney and ashes covering an area of, perhaps, forty feet by ten?

Two vehicles are parked by the fence. (Wouldn’t more neighbors than that have come to help? The Institute is/was quite close to town, after all.)

Pa walks gingerly through the ruin, which by forced perspective makes the fire zone look larger. (Nice job, Ted!)

Pa stops then and bends down, but the camera decides instead to follow J.C. Fusspot over to where Mary is sitting on the ground.

Ma is kneeling next to her. 

“Mary,” she says, “let me drive you home now.” (Presumably she means the Little House.)

Mary says nothing, and Ma says, “Mary . . . please.”

DAGNY: Come on, Mary, it happened yesterday.

RUTHIE: Yeah, get over it. It’s pioneer times.

“No, not without my baby,” Mary says finally.

Eventually Ma gives up . . . and then we see Charles carrying a small bundle.

“I have the baby,” Pa says quietly to Ma.

RUTHIE: What do you think they used for the body?

DAISY: Probably not real baby bones, if that’s what you mean.

WILL: What I wonder is where Charles got that sheet. Did they have a lead-lined linen closet?

Mary says she wants to hold the baby. We see (Big) Adam is also sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree nearby.

RAJA: Adam should start banging his head against that tree.

DAISY: Yeah, and then get his sight back!

Laura and Albert are also lurking in the background.

Pa brings the baby over and passes him to Mary.

Adding to the horror of things, Mary appears to be holding him upside-down.

Just when you think things couldn’t get more nightmarish, she starts humming Brahms’ Lullaby over the little bundle.

(I’m not sure if it’s really Melissa Sue Anderson humming, but it sounds like her. If it is, she’s come a long way since the days of “There’s No Place Like Home,” in which she couldn’t find the melody of “Keep the Horseshoe Over Your Door” to save her life. No offense, MSA.)

Pa rises sorrowfully.

DAGNY: He’s really good in this one. Michael Landon can communicate a lot in just frowns and blinks.

Pa tells Ma he’s going to ask Doc for some sleep aids for Mary.

Speaking of Doc, Groveland’s resident coroner, forensic examiner, and health commissioner is currently poking around in the smoldering pit that was once the Institute’s basement.

WILL: He should just declare them leftist terrorists who deserved what they got. Case closed!

WILL: Actually, I don’t know if he’ll figure it out. He bungled the inquiry into what was causing the typhus.

ALLIE: Maybe he’s taken online classes since then.

But within seconds, Doc finds the clay pipe and picks it up.

WILL: That would still be hot. He’d burn himself.

DAGNY: Amelia, your dad knows that because we took that glassblowing class.

Charles climbs down, and Doc says, “This is it, I think.”

AMELIA: He figured that out pretty quick.

“Somebody, for some reason, just threw it away,” Doc says, which seems a strange conjecture. How does he know it wasn’t an heirloom from Adam or Hester-Sue’s family or something? Or maybe Hester-Sue smokes one herself!

Charles doesn’t know what to say, so he just asks Doc about the sleep aids for Mary. Doc says Mary’s psychological state is Doc says is normal considering the trauma.

Then Doc tosses the pipe back into the ash heap, which seems an odd thing to do with forensic evidence. (What would Farnsdale Fremont say???)

They climb back up, and Charles says Nice Harriet has offered the bereaved and homeless free rooms at Nellie’s.

DAISY: Don’t you think they should have had Mrs. Oleson crying over her plaque in the ruins?

RAJA: Yeah. [as MRS. OLESON:] “My baby! My baby!”

Doc notes that Grovesters have volunteered to take in the blind children temporarily, and Charles says they’ll have to notify all the parents “tomorrow.” (Not today? Even though they have a telephone and telegraph? How the Institute handles communications with parents is mysterious. Since it’s a hybrid of a school from Missouri and one from Dakota Territory, does that mean the kids are from all over the country, or the Midwest, or at least the west Midwest?) (There is another blind school in Iowa, of course.) 

(Besides Charles and Caroline, the only parents we’ve ever seen visit a blind school on this show were the Herzogs in “Blind Man’s Bluff.”) 

(No, I don’t count Jordan Harrison’s parents.)

“What chance is there to rebuild?” Doc asks, and Charles says, “A school this size? It’ll take years.”

DAGNY: Years? A Manitoba Hutterite community could build one over a weekend.

Viewers have asked what happened to all the Brandywine reward money, but in LHUT it’s probably been about a year since that incident. 

Some fans suggest the money burned up in the fire, but I don’t believe that. Surely Adam, the scion of a moneyed family, would have kept it in the bank. 

The Blind School’s financial fortunes have not been presented consistently. The Institute was founded by a large gift from Mrs. Oleson, but it’s unclear how expenses were managed day by day.

Speaking of banking, I think our best guess is the school’s funding was sustained by strategic investments, likely advised by Banker Bill Anderson. (Himself a canny investor, as we’ve seen. Also a gambling addict.)

Well, it’s a moot point now, or perhaps it would be better to say a soot point.

Anyways, then we get the grisly sight of Alice Garvey’s body, wrapped in canvas and lying on the ground.

RUTHIE: Who wrapped her up?

DAGNY: Mustache Man.

Jonathan and Andrew, heads bowed, are sitting on one of those benches that goes around a tree, which I’ve just learned is called a “tree bench.”

Doc gently suggests the surviving Garveys retire to Nellie’s to begin the recovery process.

Jonathan says he doesn’t want to leave Alice, but Doc says, “She’ll be fine.”

WILL: WHAT! Oh my God! He even says that after people are DEAD?

Voice breaking, Jonathan says he wants a “pretty” casket for Alice rather than a plain one.

ALLIE: So, does Albert make the coffin?

WILL: No, he doesn’t show much interest in coffin-making after that episode.

ALLIE: Even with all the people he kills?

HA! I told you she was good.

He also says the coffin should be “warm-lookin’,” which seems an odd request for a person who burned to death, but whatever.

Jonathan finally asks Doc to promise him she’ll have a beautiful coffin.

RAJA [as DOC]: “Bro, not my jurisdiction.”

Finally Jonathan takes Andy’s hand and they walk towards town.

Perhaps now is a good time to say goodbye to Hersha Parady. We did the first part of her resume when Alice was introduced in “Castoffs.” (Sadly, Parady herself had just passed away at the time the recap was published.)

The received wisdom among fans seems to be she decided to leave the series to concentrate on family, often with the addendum that Michael Landon punished her for this independence by giving Alice a flamboyant death on the show, guaranteeing she could never return. 

Such things were not unknown in the seventies; think of what they did to McLean Stevenson when he decided to leave M*A*S*H. 

(The kids got into M*A*S*H watching it on Netflix when they were little, but they stopped watching after they killed Henry, their favorite character. To this day, they have not forgiven the show.)

But I’m not sure if the story about Parady and Landon is anything more than fan gossip. I don’t think any of our principals tell the story of her departure in their memoirs. (I haven’t read MSA’s.)

Whatever the reason, she didn’t do much more acting after Little House, though she did appear on The ABC After School Special, Unsolved Mysteries, and Kenan & Kel, and acted in a trashy TV movie with Kerri Russell (TV’s Felicity) called The Babysitter’s Seduction. (I guess I’m only assuming it’s trashy. I never saw it.)

Parady was, however, much loved on the fan convention circuit, often bringing along a doll to stand in for poor Baby Adam. Ha! That’s my kind of humor, and I wish I’d gotten to meet her.

Anyways, Carl the Flunky and the Guy Who Looks Like a French Maitre D’ arrive to bear the body away.

That night, Pa, Laura, Albert and Little Bo Peep hang out quietly in the Common Room.

DAGNY: This music is too “normal Little House,” David.

Pa says something’s gotta be done because Carrie’s been driving everyone crazy. (Paraphrase.)

The funeral is apparently the next day at eleven. Seems like a quick turnaround, but in those days maybe not?

Ma is already asleep, and Albert goes to close the shutters so she can sleep in a bit in the morning.

“I keep asking myself why,” Laura says.

RAJA: I don’t like Laura’s lipstick. It’s too prominent, too orange.

WILL: Well, they’re trying to turn her into a woman. A WOMAN!!!

Pa mentions the pipe found in the basement, and Albert stands in horror, realizing.

AMELIA: I’m surprised Albert hasn’t figured this out already.

Albert excuses himself to go to bed, but freezes when Pa stops him.

Pa just wants to remind him to be quiet in the morning; but Albert has been seriously spooked.

WILL [as VOICEOVER ALBERT]: “It was at that moment the madness began. . . .”

DAGNY: He’s changed a lot over the past year. His voice is dropping.

AMELIA: Yeah, and he’s got that teen stash now, yuck.

RAJA: I just want to chop that chunk of hair off.

DAISY: Or give him a headband. What happened to his newsboy hat?

RUTHIE: He’s still the best crier, though. 

After a break, we see J.C. Fusspot and a mysterious bloke in a vest and bowler hat driving past Nellie’s at night.

Inside, Mary tosses and turns in a bed whilst Adam slumps, quite uncomfortably-lookingly, over the bedframe.

Mary suddenly sits upright, screaming. 

She can’t remember anything about the fire incident, including that Baby Adam has perished.

She screams for Adam to get “our baby.”

RUTHIE: It’s weird that they never called the baby by his name.

(Big) Adam tries to give Mary some laudanum, but she knocks the bottle out of his hand.

“Mary, he’s gone,” Adam says. “Our baby’s gone.”

Mary looks at him for a moment, then screams furiously, “That’s a LIE! You’re LYING!”

Mary struggles with Adam for a moment, then punches him hard in the face.

ALL: Oh my God!

Mary runs to the window and rips down the curtains. 

When Adam grabs her again, she shrieks and flails at him, screaming “LIE, LIE, LIE, LIE!!!”

Then she plunges both arms through the windowpane!

“LIE, LIE, LIE!” she screams.

Then, because she and we haven’t suffered enough by this point, Mary rakes her arms through the broken glass. 

ALL: Oh my God!

WILL: This should be, like, twenty-eight plus.

Indeed. After the Baby Battering Ram (and arguably the death of Thomas), this is probably the next most horrific thing we’ve ever seen on the show. It’s been quite the 29 minutes.

Then Nellie appears in the doorway!

ALL: OH MY GOD, NELLIE!

Nellie stares in terror and disbelief, and Adam shouts for her to fetch Doc.

The morning of the funeral, then, we see Laura tending the younger Ing-Gals as Albert sits expressionlessly on one of those crazy logs.

Pa gently approaches Albert, who we now see is not expressionless, but weeping again, or still.

RUTHIE: See? Real tears coming down the face at the right time, trembling lips.

ALLIE: Yeah. Shining eyes.

DAGNY: Not only are the tears real, he uses his whole face. His nose is flaring, his mouth is opening and closing. He’s a full-face crier.

Albert mewls that he can’t handle going to the funeral.

WILL: Hm. Pa won’t go for that. 

[pause] 

WILL: No can do.

Albert begs Pa not to make him go.

RAJA: This is a master class in crying.

DAISY: He is superb. 

He’s so good, in fact, that Pa gives in.

DAISY: Think of it. He’s the best crier on a show where the competition INCLUDES MICHAEL LANDON.

In town, Doc waits grimly on the porch at Nellie’s.

The Mysterious Bloke in the Vest and Bowler Hat we saw earlier rushes across the thoroughfare. No idea who he is or where he’s going.

Doc says he needs to speak with Ma and Pa before the funeral.

They step inside, and Doc sums up the sitch. (Hagen is good in this one.)

Together they all head up. Mary is staring straight ahead in bed, whilst Adam sits on a chair with his cane.

Ma speaks to Mary firmly, but she ignores her and begins humming B’s L again.

RAJA: Are they going to send her to the asylum with Ellen’s mom?

Doc says the rest of the family must go on to the funeral without her.

Pa extends an arm to help Adam to the door. 

WILL: They have always been close.

Once they’re gone, Doc sits down to endure the rest of the Brahms recital.

Next we join the Ingalls service in the cemetery.

RAJA: That’s quite a monument for Walnut Grove.

DAISY: It’s probably Mr. Sprague’s grave.

Reverend Alden of course is there, reading from the Book of Revelation (21:3-4), already used once at Ellen’s funeral.

Time passes, and we see Hester-Sue and Adam helping some blind kids into a stagecoach.

Voiceover Laura tells us they sent all the blind kids “back to their parents,” but doesn’t go into more detail about where they came from. (Laura’s not super-involved in this story.)

“Some of the orphaned blind were taken in by neighbors,” V-Laura goes on, “but only on a temporary basis.”

AMELIA: You mean some of those blind kids were also ORPHANS?

Hester-Sue’s goodbye to Sue Goodspeed is unexpectedly emotional, perhaps to suggest that Sue really is going away for good, which, spoilers, she isn’t.

The stagecoach driver, whom we’ve never seen before and who seems to communicate with the horses mainly by doing odd things with his lips, takes the kids away.

We see the Mysterious Bloke in the Vest again, now lurking near the Mercantile.

Adam says he’s going to head out to the Little House to discuss aspects of Mary’s care.

He hitches a ride from Doc, but when he gets to the Casa he finds Pa’s gone to Mankato with Jonathan Garvey. 

From the shadows, skulking Albert stares at Adam with dread.

Ma makes the obligatory coffee offer. (I don’t know why people complain about her offering coffee all the time. Some of my favorite people on Earth are people who offer coffee all the time.)

Adam informs us that although it’s now been two weeks since the fire, Mary’s still insane.

“I can’t stand seeing her like this anymore,” Adam says, in a richly ironic statement.

“So I telephoned my father yesterday,” Adam goes on, “and asked if I could take her to New York.”

The last time we saw Giles Kendall, Esq., he and Adam parted acrimoniously, and he hasn’t been heard from since. I guess relations have thawed.

Despite having all the money in the world, Giles didn’t even come to visit when Baby Adam was born.

“He said I could,” Adam says, and Ma and Albert consider this.

Ma assumes Adam’s talking about them visiting New York, but I expect she really knows what he means.

DAISY: That would be a good spinoff. Little Asylum on the Prairie.

WILL: It would be more enjoyable than Season Nine.

Adam says he’ll go alone to set things up; and when Ma says she wishes he could take Mary, he snaps, “Caroline, try to understand! I need some -”

Adam trails off, then says he just needs some time to decompress. (Not sure how 1880s that sensibility is, but okay.)

AMELIA: Linwood Boomer is such a good blind actor.

(He is. He does a lot with his voice, since he knows how much an actor’s eyes communicate to an audience but can’t use his own.)

Ma warmly says she does understand what he’s saying. Grassle is great too; it’s a nice little scene between the two of them.

Meanwhile, behind them, Albert’s eyes have begun seeping again.

WILL [as ALBERT, screaming]: TEAR UP THE PLANKS! IT IS THE BEATING OF HIS HIDEOUS HEART! 

Cut to Charles and Jonathan Garvey coming back from Mankato. It looks like fall, which confirms we’re still in 1882 in the M timeline. 

Charles stops the Chonkywagon under a tree.

AMELIA [as CHARLES]: “Poop break!”

But no, Big Jon just sits astraddle on a stump (a nod to “Old Dan Tucker“?), staring at the ground.

DAISY: Is that where the school was?

RUTHIE: I doubt it. Would the grass have regrown already?

WILL: If Dagny lived there, it would. She’s worked wonders with our lawn, even places where the dog pees.

Chuck wanders over to his friend. Unless I’m wrong, you can hear a cowbell clanking faintly on the soundtrack – an odd touch.

Charles says they should all go to church together Sunday. “It helps, believe me,” he says.

DAISY: Oh, that’s right, they lost a baby too. How did that one die?

WILL: Doc Baker prescribed him cow’s milk. He killed him.

RUTHIE: Well, Laura really killed him, by PRAYING for him to die.

RAJA: Yes. It went Laura, God, Doc, dead baby.

WILL: Charles should just build one of his magic altars and bring them back to life like Jason Bateman.

DAISY: Yeah. It could be like “The Monkey’s Paw,” where they just show up at the door one night.

DAGNY: Yeah, or Pet Sematary.

Big Jon makes an Angry-at-God speech of a sort we’ve already heard several times on this show. 

“Jonathan,” Charles says. “You believe and you know it.”

“I don’t want to,” Garvey says simply. (Merlin Olsen’s acting is really good here, and throughout the rest of the story, in fact.)

Garvey and Chuck have a brief discussion of theodicy, a concept we’ve touched on a few times too.

WILL: That cowbell is driving me crazy!

Garvey says he knows miracles are real, but God has denied them to him.

WILL: Presumably he’s not referring to that faith healer.

ALLIE: Oh yeah. That one’s so funny.

“Tell me, Charles,” Garvey says, “why?”

WILL [as CHARLES, shrugging]: “Well, she WAS divorced. . . .”

Charles heads back to the wagon, but whether he’s abandoning Big Jon or simply “waiting in the car” is unknown.

That night at home, Ma and Pa suck down the coffee sadly.

Charles is telling Caroline he doesn’t see the point in sending Mary to a psychologist.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he says. “I mean, just to sit and talk to somebody?”

DAGNY: Oh my fucking God! That’s his whole method as town therapist!

Then, when he immediately says he needs to find out what’s the matter with Albert, Ma calls him on his bullshit, and he laughs at himself.

AMELIA [as CHARLES]: “Remind me to make you some popcorn later tonight.”

The next morning before school, Andrew Garvey comes out of his bedroom and catches his dad drinking whiskey.

RAJA: Take it easy on that sauce, Francine!

Andy offers to make his dad breakfast.

DAISY [as JONATHAN GARVEY]: “Nah, I’ll just eat this giant jar of pickled eggs.”

Poor Andy suggests that going to work might do Jonathan some good, and his pa bites his head off.

WILL: Look on the bright side, Garvey. You can put the moose head back up!

Andy backs away gently, his face a mixture of emotions. (As usual, Patrick L makes the most of the little screen time he’s given.)

Once he’s gone, Jonathan starts a-poundin’ the booze again. I expect it would take quite a bit to get a guy that size drunk.

Next we see Ma doing needlepoint at the hotel (there are letters and numbers on the fabric, but I can’t decipher the code) whilst Mare stares.

DAGNY: Oh, did they get her one of those hospice harpists?

No, it’s just David Rose at his most forlorn and thoughtful, plinking away.

Albert shows up to take a shift with the patient.

Ma breezes through necessary info about supper and the like, noting that “Doctor Baker’s over playing pinochle at the Feed and Seed with Mr. Dawson if you need him.”

Pinochle, eh? Dawson, eh? I guess that explains who the Mysterious Bloke in the Vest and Bowler Hat is. Doc is dating again!

But Albert is just staring agonizedly at his sister. 

He approaches the bed.

WILL [as ALBERT]: “Hi, Mary. My name’s Albert Ingalls. We’ve never really met properly. . . .”

It’s hard to think of them as siblings, isn’t it? Seriously, Albert and Mary haven’t had a single conversation of substance in the nearly two seasons since he was added to the show. Like, zero.

This scene will make up for that oversight, though you can’t really say it contains a conversation of substance either.

Feigning chipperness, Albert says he’s brought a volume of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of Mary’s favorite writers.

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a sickly but brilliant writer who married another great poet –  Robert Browning, already quoted earlier this season by Rev. Alden and his paramour/wife Anna Craig.)

(The latter, you’ll recall, died in an undescribed adventure during or just after the events of “The Faith Healer.”)

(Together they were a celebrity couple, sort of the Stiller and Meara of the Victorian Age, possibly.)

(The Brownings were the Stiller and Meara of the Victorian Age, I mean – not Aldi and Mrs. Craig.)

“I brought you a copy of the Sonnets From the Portuguese,” Albert says. (No doubt you readers in Brazil are terribly excited about this!)

Albert pronounces “sonnets” to rhyme with “donuts,” but that may be a character error. His forte is math, not the humanities.

But I wonder where he got this book? It can’t be Mary’s, since all her belongings were destroyed in the fire.

Probably he checked it out from Doc Baker’s lending library.

Albert launches into the first “sonut,” “I Thought Once How Theocritus Had Sung.”

Maybe not an instant classic, but it’s good, if, like most good poems, quite weird and kind of a way-homer.

(Theocritus was a Greek poet in Classical Antiquity, but knowing anything more than that isn’t essential to understanding the poem. Cards and letters accepted if you disagree.)

(If the poem, narrated by a woman who gets spooked and confuses Love for Death, has any special resonance with this story, I’m not sure what it is.)

Anyways, these days Mary is more into German music than British poetry.

The camera slowly zooms in on Albert staring at her, and the screen goes black. End of Part One.

Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!

STYLE WATCH: I thought Alice was wearing a new polka-dot dress, but looking through my notes I see she also wore it to the circus.

The kids’ loungewear looks comfy.

Adam has a bit of a David Cassidy look in this story.

THE VERDICT:

WILL: Allie, I can’t believe you know so much about Little House.

ALLIE: I used to check the DVDs out from the library when I was little.

Well, goodbye, Alice Garvey, you sexy, stubborn, impatient, fierce, thoughtful, brave, independent pain in the ass. You were a unique creation in the Little House pantheon. I’ll miss ya.

Full verdict coming next time. For the moment, please pray for us here in Minneapolis.

UP NEXT: “May We May Them Proud” (Part Two)