Crazy Wife, Crazy Life; or
Why Don’t You Just Move to Fucking Chicago, Nels
(a recap by Will Kaiser)
Title: Second Spring
Airdate: February 18, 1980
Written by John T. Dugan
Directed by William F. Claxton
SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Nels has an honest-to-God affair with the fake-Irish lass to end all fake-Irish lasses. (He cocks it up, though.)
RECAP: I originally began this recap with a rant about the antisemitic comments recently made to Pamela Bob of the Little House 50 podcast and Livin’ on a Prairie.
The gang at LH50 put out a statement in which they condemned hatred of all kinds. They took the high road, keeping things positive and generous of spirit.
Of course, given the wholesomeness fans seem to demand of people associated with this show, they had to.
I feel no such obligation. One thing I didn’t expect when I began The Project was how many fans seem to have learned nothing from a series they supposedly love. It makes me FURIOUS to think of someone attacking PAMELA BOB in that way – she who has probably contributed more sparkle and fun to LH fandom than anybody who wasn’t actually on the show.
Well, we’re not unknown to the Little House 50 folks, so I’ll just say, Pamela, we’ve never met, but we adore you. Livin’ on a Prairie in particular is a work of genius, and has been an inspiration to me as I continue on my own Little House quest (even if all I do is bore people with the plots of episodes they’ve already seen!). Thank you for being an essential person and artist in our kooky fandom.
The nice thing about controversy is it can direct attention to better things. So please, if you haven’t already, check out the delightful conversations Pamela has with La Arngrim and Mr. Butler on the Little House 50 podcast. They are a treat.
And now that I’ve put you in a jolly mood, we come to (spoilers) one of my least favorite Little House stories, “Second Spring.” But the episode draws a surprising range of reactions from fans, so your narrator will keep his own views out of things – well, as always. (I am but your guide.)
Last week gave us some delightfully composed tableaux of our individual Grovester characters . . .
. . . and this time we again begin with a village scene that’s like details from Breughel’s great picture The Kermess, or something.
A covered wagon piloted by a woman and followed by a shaggy dog glides past the Feed & Seed and Mr. Edwards’s old cabin (which is a little closer to the road than I thought).
The wagon is guided by a man riding a horse (J.C. Fusspot?) carrying a boy (the Midsommar Kid?) as passenger. (Yes, yes, I still need new glasses.)
DAGNY: Look, that dog’s prancing just like Nyssa! You don’t often see that with TV dogs.
Mustache Man and still another, chubbier fellow (the Unknown Grovester?) watch from the tree bench before turning back to their phones.
The wagon stops in front of Nellie’s and a bunch of kids jump out as a dark-haired, younger man drives by in a buckboard.
We never find out who these newcomers are, though – at least not right away, since we then cut to the interior of the Mercantile, where Willie Oleson is literally stuffing his face with jellybeans.
Nels starts yelling at and shaking him, but Harriet O appears and makes excuses for poor Wills (whose cheeks, it must be noted, are hilariously overfilled).
DAGNY: That was me after Canada lost the Olympic hockey final. I ate a whole bag of Starbursts.
Harriet protests Willie was just having “a little after-school snack,” and Nels snaps, “Looks more like an after-school orgy to me!”
WILL: I remember being shocked as a kid when they said “orgy” on TV, despite not really knowing what I thought it meant. It came up on Love Boat from time to time.
DAGNY: I knew it was pretty extreme, and a kind of party I would not be invited to.
Harriet and Nels begin bickering about who owns the store, despite her having ceded control of operations to him back in “Crossed Connections” so she could focus on her operator job.
DAGNY: This dialogue has an improvised feel.
WILL: It is a little loose.
DAGNY: It’s the closest Little House gets to All in the Family.
Nels and Harriet continue arguing about their disparate approaches to parenting. (Such differences are at the root of many a behavioral problem, if you ask me, but nobody did, so pbbbbltt.)
(Also if you ask me, Jonathan Gilbert steals this scene.)
The Olesons start to argue about who is more properly Willie’s parent, with Nels objecting when Harriet declares that it’s her.
DAGNY: I can see the argument that Nels is equally the parent. He does a lot of actual parenting.
WILL: Yes. To the point of beating the kids, sometimes.
Harriet says she has more claim to Willie because “I bore him!”
Nels responds to this gimme by quipping, “Well, you bore me too, but that doesn’t make you my mother.”
DAGNY: Actually, most of the regular Grovesters are engaged fathers.
WILL: Yes. Mr. Edwards drove Carl away, though.
DAGNY: Yes, and he didn’t stop John from becoming a serial philanderer.
WILL: Yeah. He should have thrown that Lord Byron book in the creek.
Threatening violence against Willie’s “candy-crammed head” (ha! this one’s scripted by Dugan again), Nels chases him out of the store.
DAGNY: I can tell already this one’s about consumerism. Willy’s an overconsumer, and so will Nels be before we’re through.
WILL: You don’t remember this one?
DAGNY: No.
WILL: Hm. Well, you may be right.
Charles appears, and when Mrs. Oleson leaves, he tells Nels that he’s shopping for a present for Caroline in the $3 range (about a hundred bucks).
Chaz says he’s “in the doghouse” (anachronistic) because he forgot their anniversary, which was yesterday.
(In real life, Charles and Caroline Ingalls married in February, but the last time their anniversary was depicted, in “‘I Remember, I Remember,’” it was springtime, so we’ll assume that today we’re picking up where we left off, in spring of 1883-M.)
Nels suggests some perfume, and Charles reads “fragrance d’amour” off the bottle.
Harriet calls from the doorway that Nels has a “tongue in the oven.” (Some people are grossed out by tongue, but we’ve used it for tacos and it’s wonderful for that, once you’ve gotten past actually handling a severed tongue, of course.)
At Nellie’s, the crazy family with the dog is fooling around on the porch, and Nellie crosses to the Mercantile just as Charles is leaving.
Nellie says a family of eight just checked in, so Nels will have to make some food for them. (Many viewers have questioned this story’s depiction of Nels as the sole cook of the Oleson family, which is indeed new, though we did see him do a nice braciola once when Harriet was out of town.)
Nels refuses the request, so Harriet, who’s leafing through Mrs. West’s catalogue, screams at him.
Nels gives in, saying he’ll go cook in the restaurant if Harriet finishes the tongue for him.
That night at the Little House, one of the Chonkies makes cute faces into the camera.
The camera sneaks through the window (nice), where we see Baby Grace falling asleep at the dinner table.
WILL: Has Grace aged about two years since we last saw her?
DAGNY: Yes.
Pa compliments the dinner, which he notes was veal. (My God – Cowlet!)
Ma is pissed off, presumably due to Pa a-forgettin’ their anniversary.
The kids know the score: Albert whispers “good luck” when Pa asks to talk to Ma after supper.
Ma huffs at Pa, but you can tell she’s not too upset.
Pa gives her the perfume, which simmers her down. (Anger-wise-speaking, I mean, not sexually-wise-speaking.)
Speaking in a strange accent (Canadian?), Ma jokes that Pa should have gotten himself a calendar. (Ma has spoken Canadianish at least once before.)
Meanwhile, we see Nels working in the kitchen at Nellie’s.
We hear a voice from the dining room (sounds like Carl the Flunky) saying, “Ma’am, it’s been over two hours! Isn’t supper ready yet?” (Why Nels would choose something that takes “over two hours” to prepare is not explained.)
But before Nels can produce the food, Harriet bursts in screaming that “the tongue is on fire!”
Nels runs out, and we catch a closer glimpse of the “new family,” consisting of J.C. Fusspot, Mrs. Caulder (Miles must have died), Not-Linda Hunt and Not-Art Garfunkel of Not-“Bright Eyes” fame.
Meanwhile, the prancing dog we saw at the beginning sneaks into Nellie’s kitchen and steals whatever it is Nels has made.
Well, back at the Oleson residence, the tongue is burned after cooking two hours longer than it should have.
Nellie appears, whining, “Someone stole my ham!” (Your enjoyment of this one may depend on your taste/tolerance for Oleson family silliness/stupidity.)
Nellie also reports the cake has fallen – but not because she slammed the door, which Nels warned her not to do. (We always have trouble with our Yorkshire puddings on Christmas Eve.)
Rather, Nellie dropped the whole cake on the floor. (That’s happened here too. In fact, our friend Douglas is a talented artistic baker, and he once made a perfect cake model of a historic home for said home’s 150th birthday, or something, only to have the whole thing collapse like Atlantis en route to the event. He brought the ruins over to our house and cried as we ate it.)
Well, Willie appears asking for supper, and Nels starts screaming, “No supper for any of us! God deliver me from my family and other fools!” (Rather nasty, that. Nels’s famous “town sweetie-pie” image belies an occasional meanness that is quite unattractive. Olive has commented on this several times. (She writes from college: “I’m glad I’m not there for this one.”))
(And remember his fat-shaming!)
Screaming “A man’s place is not in the kitchen!” (something I don’t believe he actually believes) Nels storms out, adding he needs to “get out of Walnut Grove.”
Next we see him loading up a mini-wagon painted to read Mobile Emporium – Nels Oleson, Owner & Prop.
DAGNY: He put this together fast.
WILL: Maybe he always had it. Maybe he was an itinerant peddler when they met.
Harriet and Willie are sulking on the steps.
DAGNY: Have I said how much she reminds me of Toni Collette?
WILL: Yes, you have.
DAGNY: Well, she still does.
(I had pegged Tina Fey to play Mrs. O in the Netflix reboot, but Toni Collette would be good too. And scarier.)
Nels complains that his only value to the others is as a chef, which is ridiculous.
With a brusque farewell, he drives off.
DAGNY: Did he say “sure as shit”?
Soon we see him on the road, grinning at his newfound independence.
DAGNY: This is like in “Bluer Than Blue” when the guy runs through the house screaming because he’s so happy she broke up with him.
WILL: Yeah. [singing:] I don’t have to miss no TV shows. . . .
(I love that song.)
Then we see Nels peddling rings by the roadside to a young dark-haired man. (Possibly the same Younger Darker-Haired Man who was driving the buckboard in the opening scene.)
Then we see Nels navigating potholes in a glorious mirrorlike shot of him passing a lake. (Cinematography by Ted.)
WILL: Jeez, he almost tipped over there. They would have had to reshoot the whole thing.
DAGNY: Well, unless he fell in the water, then Landon would have just worked it into the story.
And then we see Nels driving through an unknown town.
He parks by a house as an aloof-looking wagon driver passes by.
The home is a boarding house called “Molly’s.”
With little warning, we get a swift and devastating blast of fake Irishness as we hear a woman’s voice singing “The Wearin’ o’ the Green” – a famous Irish tune indeed, and one which was around by the 1880s. (I like it on Scottish pipes best.)
This house, we see, is expensively furnished and has some fairly unpleasant wallpaper. (I was just reading one of those Buzzfeed lists that quotes all the redditors. This one was called “Stupid Reasons People Hate Movies,” or something, and somebody said their mom wouldn’t sit through a movie if any of the sets had wallpaper she didn’t like. Ha! I can understand that.)
The song, we eventually see, is emanating from a pretty and pretty youngish woman who’s shelling peas in the kitchen. (Harvest time for peas in Minnesota begins in mid-June, supporting a spring/early summer setting for this story.)
The woman rises quickly from her chair and says “Top o’ the evenin’ to ye, sir!” (an opening volley of paddywhackery that will become a full-on barrage as we get further in.)
Nels says he’d like to rent a room, and the woman says, “Well, begorrah, ye’ve come to the right place ye have!”
Apart from the odd stationmaster or big-city policeman, it’s been a while since we’ve had a fake Irish performer of any substance on this show.
(We did have a real Irish performer in “The Godsister,” but more about him in a bit.)
As we’ve commented before, the fake or “stage” Irishman was a common character type on this show and in American pop culture generally during the Twentieth Century.
Some characters, like Cass McCray in “‘Meet Me at the Fair’” or Red Buttons in the execrable “Circus Man,” themselves are fake-Irish.
“Begorrah” is a minced oath for “by God,” but whether it was ever commonly used in Ireland is debated.
I can’t find the quote now, but I remember reading an interview with Joe Dowling, the Irish director who ran the Guthrie Theater here in Minneapolis when Melissa Gilbert played Caroline in the Little House musical in 2008.
Dowling, as I remember, compared the “stage Irishman” to blackface and said people don’t realize how offensive the trope is to Irish people. (He might have had a twinkle in his oye when he said it, but somehow I doubt it.)
I’m not sure how or why the fake Irishperson became such a staple of American pop culture, but it does seem the tradition goes back a long way in European drama, probably to the Renaissance.
And of course, Irish people both in Ireland and abroad have been subject to extreme bigotry across the centuries.
Certainly this was true in Nineteenth-Century North America, where refugees fleeing famine in their home country were demonized and scapegoated by politicians, the media and the public. (Some things never change, huh?)
We don’t see any anti-Irish prejudice from Nels or anybody else in this story, though.
Anyways, this fake Irishperson is Suzanne Rogers, today’s guest star.
Dags and I were both fans of Days of Our Lives – I know we have some fellow Days people out there reading as well – and of course Rogers is best known then and now as Maggie Horton on the show.
(My late friend Billy so loved Days that he bought a “TV radio” in the 1990s so he could listen to the show at work. Today everybody has a magic TV in their pocket at all times, so this seems strange, but hey, it’s how we got by.)
Having played Maggie Horton since 1973, Suzanne Rogers holds the honor of being the longest-running actor playing a single role in American soap opera history – 3,219 episodes as of March 3, 2026.
My sister Peggy and I watched Days in high school and college, but by the 1990s Maggie had already been relegated to “old-person” storylines. (Rogers was 48 in 1990.)
Apart from Days and Little House, Rogers didn’t do much film and TV acting. (With those two behemoths on your resume, who would need to?)
She was never on Love Boat – somewhat surprisingly.
But she was on Knight Rider and Quincy. (One time each.)
There’s also a Little House Urban Legend that she played Amy Hearn’s daughter or granddaughter or something in “If I Should Wake Before I Die,” that crazy story about the old lady faking her death as revenge on her selfish family. But she didn’t.
Anyways, the woman introduces herself to Nels as “Molly Reardon herself, sure as Patrick is a saint!” (All I can say is I hope Joe Dowling has never seen this episode.)
Delighted at meeting an Irishwoman – Americans are easily impressed by foreign accents, from Europe – Nels laughs, “I’m Nels Oleson – himself!”
I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that Molly is drop-dead gorgeous, and that it’s easy to interpret lines such as “If it’s a room ye’re after-wantin’, it’s a room ye got” as innuendo.
She also says she can satisfy him “if ye haven’t already supped, and have a cravin’ for some nourishment.”
DAGNY: Wow. She might as well bend over and flip her petticoats up.
She spews some more stock-Irish gibberish and the two check each other out.
DAGNY: A Lutheran and a Catholic. So it begins.
For dinner, Molly makes a nice chicken . . . or roast . . . or ham . . . or something.
DAGNY: Is it perfectly cooked beef tongue?
WILL: What’s on the other burner, a science experiment?
DAGNY: Nah, she’s making whiskey of course.
Nels comes in to chit-chat, whilst David Rose gives us more paddywhackery in twinkly musical form.
Continuing to speak entirely in colloquialisms, Molly explains there are no other guests.
“During the week,” she adds, “me business is slower than Paddy’s pig farm in the Mountains of Mourne.”
WILL: What the fuck does that mean?
(The Mountains of Mourne are real, though today they’re on the Northern Irish side of the border.)
(But the saying, my research reveals, is not. I think this is a John T. Dugan original – a Doogie Doozie.)
Nels mentions he’s from Walnut Grove.
DAGNY: Where are they now, in Saint Paul? Pig’s Eye, I mean?
As we discussed somewhere, St. Paul was the hub of Irish immigration in Minnesota in the late Nineteenth Century, and it’s still pretty Irish today.
Nels offers to help with the cooking, but Molly says men should sit around with their feet up whilst women do the kitchen work. (My grandma had the same philosophy, actually. My sister Peggy disliked this, but I didn’t think it was so bad.)
Nels asks if she’s sure he can’t help, and she says, “Sure as the Pope’s Catholic.” (A saying not popularized until the mid-Twentieth Century.)
Then Molly starts singing, “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” – actually a Scottish song by John Junior’s old literary idol Robert Burns.
After supper, Stupid Nels fails to recognize there’s booze in his coffee. (“Irish coffee” is an anachronistic name for this period, as we discussed when we dealt with that sad, bitter alcoholic Bret Harper.)
It’s odd Nels doesn’t recognize the taste; we know he enjoys a tipple.
Then again, he didn’t even recognize the taste of whiskey in water.
Nels compliments the dinner, which was leg of lamb like a proper foodie, though his claim that “a lot of people go overboard on garlic” can scarcely be credited in Ninteenth-Century Minnesota. It can scarcely be credited today!
Molly shares the recipe for her secret sauce: steep mint leaves in hot water, mix with vinegar and honey, and simmer for one hour.
(We like lamb, so maybe we’ll maybe try that the next time we have a Little House party. You can’t always trust onscreen recipes, though. I shudder to recall the night we made “Cuppa Cuppa Cuppa.”)
Nels cries out wouldn’t you know it, he makes the exact same darn sauce, except with sugar instead of honey!
WILL: [sighs theatrically]
DAGNY: This is the story of Christopher Kimball’s third wife. Start by sharing recipes, one thing leads to another . . .
Then Molly asks Nels if he’s married . . . and he lies to her.
(Remember, married men typically didn’t wear wedding rings until the Twentieth-Century World Wars.)
Suddenly agitated, Nels says, “Well, I better be getting up to my bedroom.”
WILL [as MOLLY]: “There is only one bedroom in this house, sair.”
DAGNY: Ha! Yeah, and then he wakes up and it turns out he dreamed the whole thing.
Nels then asks if the room is available for another night. “Ye have it! Hap’ I’d be t’ have ye,” Molly says. (Seriously, Dugan.)
Then Molly says breathily, “Ye’re fine company ye are, Nels Oleson.”
“Thanks, Molly!” Nels says dopily. “So are you!”
He says goodnight, and Molly says, “May the angels in Heaven watch over yer sleepin’ head through the night.”
DAGNY: This is totally The Wicker Man! “Sweet dreams, me pretty sergeant.”
WILL: Yeah. It’s even Celtic.
(Please note, the above edit of the scene strips out the nudity of the original, as it were. Still pretty spicy, though. Utterly unique, wonderful movie.)
DAGNY: Nels is a Sergeant Howie-type, too. He’s even done security a couple times. Not that there’s much crime in Groveland.
WILL: Well, the barn-burning.
DAGNY: Oh yeah. And those guys trying to rape Ma in the street.
Etc., etc. It’s a longer list than that, but it’s easy to get carried away by such things.
As Nels readies for bed, David gives us (correct me if I’m wrong) a slow version of “Full O’Shit,” the jig tune he used for Amy Hearn in “IISDBIW” and Red Buttons in “Circus Man.” (On the bassoon this time.)
Nels looks in the mirror and has a crisis of conscience, or a twinge of one. (He even talks to himself, Gollum-style.)
When we return from the commercial, Mustache Man sails past the Mercantile.
Inside, Boobilicious Caroline and Harriet are shooting the shit and laughing. (Hey, stranger things have happened on this show.)
DAGNY: That’s quite the red outfit, Miss Scarlett. Is she ordering popcorn?
Harriet characterizes Nels’s absence as a public service for “shut-ins.”
She also claims it was her idea.
It’s a surprisingly nice little conversation. In fact, I would says Harriet is uncharacteristically nice throughout this one.
I always like that, though. And MacGregor’s performance is probably the best in the episode.
We cut back to Nels laughing uproariously at some of Molly’s stories, which apparently rival Frederick “I’m an Author!” Holbrook’s for insane hilarity. (See my previous comments on “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.”)
Molly then tells a “Pat and Mike” joke. (Seriously, do not watch this one, Joe Dowling.)
There’s not much online about the history of “Pat and Mike” jokes, but apparently they were originally American jokes at the expense of Irish immigrants.
But as time went by, they were adopted by Irish Americans themselves and today are seen as benign and fun by most everybody here. (Of course, nothing is seen as benign and fun by absolutely everybody, but that’s probably a good thing too.)
Nels says his sides are aching from laughing so hard, but I’m not sure they are. (No doubt Richard Bull was glad to get a leading role in this one, but I’m not sure his heart is really in it.)
Then Molly invites Nels to “trip the light fantastic” with her. (A lovely expression that dates back to Mary’s literary idol, John Milton.)
Nels agrees, and we do know he likes dancing.
Molly puts on a record of Irish jigs. (Having experienced sound-recording technology in “The Talking Machine,” Nels is no longer baffled by recorded sound; however,it’s worth mentioning that the gramophone record we see here wasn’t invented yet. You’ll recall Nellie recorded Laura’s gushing confessional with a metal cylinder.)
Richard Bull seems to be doing a nice job dancing, though Clax (who’s back as director) disagrees, hiding Nels’s feet behind a big strawberry lampshade.
The dance goes on for a while.
DAGNY: Good heavens, Molly. This is Love Boat–caliber boob-bouncing.
When the song ends, Nels says his back hurts and he’s too old for dancing (Bull was 55), but Molly waves this away.
DAGNY: It’s you and me.
WILL: Oh, now.
Molly lets loose another stream of incomprehensible blather, and Nels impulsively kisses her. On the cheek, but still.
Suddenly embarrassed, Nels says he’s going to have a bath and go to bed.
“I like that in man – cleanliness,” Molly says.
“Next to godliness, they say!” Nels replies.
DAGNY: This dialogue is getting me hot, Will.
Nels heads upstairs. Molly stares after him, and it’s clear we’ve got one of those “Doctor’s Lady” situations on our hands again, where sexy lasses fall for old Grovester men for reasons incomprehensible to the audience.
Back in Walnut Grove, smoke rises from Nellie’s chimney as a weird keyboard thing plays a jazz riff on the main theme (waltz version).
WILL: This is the third time we’ve seen this shot.
DAGNY: Oh, with the blonde-haired Madonna horse?
Then, in what’s one of my favorite mini-scenes of the season, Mustache Man appears on the porch, wiping his mouth in what appears to be disgust.
Nellie follows him out, calling, “Come again sometime!” and he turns and looks at her in disbelief.
WILL [as MUSTACHE MAN]: “I’d quit the damn show first!”
But never mind that, because Nellie suddenly sees Nels driving back into town!
The family runs out to greet him, Harriet throwing her arms around him and crying, “I’m so glad to see you!” I know I seem like a hypocrite, since I usually say I like the “Nice Harriet” stories, but her decency in this one is too much to be believed.
Also unbelievably, the three start begging him to make him one of his delicious suppers immediately.
Well, Nels doesn’t look thrilled to be back.
That night, Harriet tries seducing her husband. (She and Caroline did dance around the topic of sex earlier.)
But Nels won’t be seducted. Instead, he tells Harriet he’s going to be leaving again almost immediately, and says goodnight.
Harriet for a moment looks like she’s going to figure it out.
WILL [as MRS. OLESON, viciously]: “WHO IS SHE???”
But after looking at Nels a moment, she just makes a face like Charles does whenever he and Ma travel and she doesn’t want to have sex.
Nels, of course, isn’t really sleepy, and both of them stay up brooding.
The next morning, Nels tries out a new outfit.
DAGNY: Whoa, tight pants!
WILL: Yeah, skinny jeans.
Close up, GQ Nels’s outfit is certainly odd: pink shirt, skinny jeans, black grandma sweater and a stovepipe hat?
Harriet also thinks it looks ridiculous. She presses him till he tells her he’s staying in Tracy, which you’ll recall is not far from Walnut Grove (unlike Springfield, Sleepy Eye and Mankato, which you’ll also recall are also depicted as also being also not far from Walnut Grove).
But Nels leaves out the name of the boardinghouse.
A gloomy albeit wistful French horn gives us “The Wearin’ o’ the Green” again as he climbs onto his peddlin’ buggy and, well, bugs off.
Then we see Nels stopped at the roadside, selling longjohns to a couple.
DAGNY: That’s a nice touch, her turning away from the underwear.
Then we see him driving the road, where he passes what looks like a poor family traveling on foot – surely a common sight in those days, sadly.
WILL: Are these people Irish? Does he now care about their plight?
Back in the Grove, Pa is driving through town, where it appears the dark-haired young man who bought the ring from Nels has gotten a job working with Carl at the Mill.
In the store, Pa and Mrs. Oleson have an amiable conversation. (Again, uncharacteristically so.)
DAGNY: That’s a new combo for her. That bow.
WILL: I think it’s the same one she had in her hair in bed.
Pa tells her he’s “takin’ a grain shipment to Balaton” – a real place, never before mentioned on this show.
It’s about ten miles beyond Tracy to the west of Walnut Grove. And, since Charles is headed that way anyways, he says he’ll stop there and say hello.
DAGNY: Oh no, it’s gonna be John Junior all over again.
Seriously, the tone of this scene is bizarrely friendly. Now, I know these two are civil to each other much of the time.
But for Charles to say “Bet [Nels] misses the family!” when he knows said family is a rogue’s gallery of terror is hard to swallow.
And don’t tell me he says it because he cares about Mrs. O’s feelings. Do you even watch this show?
I’m not sure John T. Dugan does, because then he has Mrs. Oleson smile warmly and ask Charles to tell Nels she loves him.
DAGNY: Maybe this IS a dream.
With that, Charles have-a-nice-days his way out of there.
Next we see Nels returning to the boardinghouse.
Oddly, Molly Reardon seems to possess a statue of Dagny!
Only Nels catches Molly with a man, whom she calls “love,” and who calls her “me darlin’” in a gruff old Irish voice. (We can’t see them – we just hear them round the corner.)
The man is talking about some recent plans he’s made for “me spuds.” (Potatoes.)
Nels peeks around the corner to watch them exchanging kisses.
WILL: I don’t like this side of Nels. It’s like Peeping Tom.
We don’t get a good look at the man, but he appears to be a bit spudlike himself.
Pouting with jealousy, Nels stamps right up to his room.
Once inside, he opens his chest of treasures and produces a cameo brooch. (I think there’s some argument to be made that this show feels Nels has good taste in jewelry.)
DAGNY: I hope it’s gold. The Irish love gold.
WILL: Racist.
Well, who do you think comes rollin’ into Tracy but ol’ Butt-In Chuck.
He spots the Olesmobile instantly.
Meanwhile, Nels creeps in on Molly amongst her broccoli. (June.)
He produces the cameo, which makes Molly exclaim “By the beard of Moses and the prophet!” (The Doozies keep a-flowin’.)
(Some have suggested this cameo is identical to the one the Bead gave to Mary when she went blind; but there are some differences.)
(It isn’t the one Toby Noe bought for Amanda Cooper, either.)
(However, it was worn by Kate Thorvald in “Doctor’s Lady“!)
(She must have borrowed that from Mercantile, with Nels’s blessing of course.)
Anyways, the next thing Molly does is seize Nels in her arms and kiss him.
She initiates the kiss, but he responds passionately.
And then Chuck walks in.
DAGNY: OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!
WILL: It’s like Far From Heaven, where Julianne Moore catches Dennis Quaid kissing a man.
DAGNY: Of all the people to catch him!
WILL: Reverend Alden would also be bad.
DAGNY: Laura would tell Pa immediately.
WILL: Yeah. Zaldamo wouldn’t notice.
DAGNY: Garvey would disapprove, but he wouldn’t talk. Bro code.
WILL: What about Hester-Sue?
DAGNY: Oh, she wouldn’t say a word, but everyone in town would be like, “What the fuck is the matter with Hester-Sue?”
DAGNY: What about Joe Kagan?
WILL: Don’t ask, don’t tell.
DAGNY: Doc wouldn’t really care, but he’d gossip the shit out of it.
DAGNY: Mustache Man would not care.
WILL: Carl either.
WILL: Andy would be so upset, he’d accidentally knock over a lantern and burn the place down.
DAGNY: Adam?
WILL: Well, he wouldn’t see it.
DAGNY: No, but he might hear the slurping.
DAGNY: Mr. Edwards would not care.
WILL: No, but he’d make the funniest face.
DAGNY: Albert wouldn’t tell, but he’d be tortured by the secret.
WILL: You don’t think Albert would blackmail Nels?
DAGNY: No. His ethics are different, but he wouldn’t do that.
WILL: Perley Day might.
DAGNY: And Mary wouldn’t have a clue.
Anyways, Nels turns around and screams “OH MY GOD!!!!!”
Just kidding – but wouldn’t you?
Though he’s visibly upset, Charles handles his shock well.
He says to Molly he was thinking about staying over, but thinks he’ll head home instead. (I suppose this would be an extremely shocking scene to walk in on in those days, etiquette-wise-speaking, and Pa might be excused in leaving even if he didn’t know Nels. Of course, Pa doesn’t have etiquette.)
Charles does not look at his friend, though.
DAGNY [as CHARLES]: “Well, why don’t you just move to fucking CHICAGO, Nels.”
Molly is eager to plunge back into snogging; but Nels’s proverbial boner has been killed.
And, with his proverbial tail between his proverbial legs, Nels returns to Groveland.
He approaches Charles at the Mill. Chuck seems unhappy, but not judgmental. (Another uncharacteristic thing!)
Nels wants to talk about it, but Charles says it’s none of his business.
Then Nels asks Charles not to tell Harriet.
DAGNY: Oh, Nels.
Nels starts talking about what a “lovely girl” Molly is. (Suzanne Rogers was thirty-six here, though she is undeniably lovely.)
He says he’s feeling terribly “mixed up,” but all Charles will say is “I don’t think it’s really up to me to understand.” (So much for Therapist Chuck.)
(It’s possible to read Charles’s lack of judginess as a reflection to what was happening in Michael Landon’s personal life around this time, as his involvement with Little House crew member – and third wife – Cindy Clerico led to his divorce from his second wife, Lynn Noe.)
That night, Nels and Harriet are going over the jewelry inventory, and Nels casually mentions he’s thinking of spending even more time on the road.
DAGNY: So he’s just going to keep up this double life?
WILL: Yeah. Remember Charles Kuralt?
Then Harriet says there’s a cameo missing from the stock.
DAGNY: Oh my God, HE DIDN’T EVEN PAY FOR IT? This is really not like Nels.
“Maybe I lost it,” Nels mumbles.
Harriet stares at him suspiciously as David brings in his fake bagpipe. (It was only a matter of time.)
The next day, Harriet catches him trying on a wig.
DAGNY: That looks stupid on him.
WILL: I don’t know. I wish wigs for men were acceptable. I think it would be fun to have a whole range of them.
Anyways, Harriet laughs genially and tells him it looks like a dead squirrel.
“Leave it to you to say the cruel and cutting thing,” Nels says in a stone-cold voice, but I think the lady doth protest too much. Truth is just truth, people, and Harriet Oleson just points it out.
But Nels suddenly says he might never be coming back! – and leaves.
Back in Tracy, which is a surprisingly bustling town (it’s three times the size of Walnut Grove in our boring old real world), Nels arrives back at Molly’s to find the spudlike man there again.
Rudely and childishly, he marches upstairs, not even saying hello.
Spud wants to know what’s the matter with that fella? By now, close watchers will have recognized that this is again Tom Clancy, a folksinger and real Irishman whom we previously met in the (slightly) less loony of “The Godsister’s” two plots.
Here is Tom Clancy himself, as it were, doing his stuff as a younger man in 1963.
Molly follows Nels up, and he behaves like an idiot.
Molly dryly points out what everyone has already guessed, that Spud is her “da,” Dan Reardon.
Molly is more amused than angry at Nels’s jealousy, and some people are like that. My first wife would get angry at me for not getting jealous, but of course, we had our issues, and well, that’s another story.
Anyways, David ends the scene with a strangely triumphant blast from the orchestra.
DAGNY: David seems to want him to leave Harriet.
WILL: So do a lot of people!
DAGNY: Really?
WILL: Yeah, fans really argue about this one.
DAGNY: So much for this being a show for women. Harriet is such a caricature, I can’t help but sympathize with her and wonder what she was really like.
WILL: Yeah. Like, Star Wars would be a totally different story from Bib Fortuna’s point of view.
I admit to being on Team Harriet myself in this one. Then again, if she didn’t act so out of character in this one, and behaved as badly as she does sometimes, maybe I wouldn’t be.
Meanwhile, back in Winoka, Miles Standish’s saloon seems returned to its former glory.
And after dinner back in Tracy, Molly puts on her Folkways record again.
Well, the Reardons dance very cutely and nicely. I wonder if Tom Clancy helped choreograph the dances? Maybe that’s overspeculation.
Dan sits down next to Nels and laughs, “Buckoes our age can’t keep up with the young lassies.”
Dan Reardon says a pleasant goodbye – I’m relieved they didn’t have him get drunk – adding, “I suppose you’ll soon be in the arms of Morpheus too!”
DAGNY [as DAN REARDON]: “Molly tells me ye’re on the laudanum.”
(Actually, “The Arms of Morpheus” would be a great title for a Doctor Who story.)
Molly then sits down and essentially orders Nels to propose.
“Cat got yer tongue?” Molly says. (I estimate two thirds of her dialogue is idioms. At least.)
DAGNY: Tongue! Wow, we’ve come full circle.
But instead of proposing, Nels confesses the whole thing.
WILL: He should just do a Jane Eyre and say my wife’s in an insane asylum.
DAGNY: Yeah. It’s sort of true.
Actually, before Nels confesses, he gives Molly a lecture about her daddy issues.
DAGNY: Oh, God, it IS “Doctor’s Lady” again.
WILL [reading]: Huh, Richard Bull and Tom Clancy actually were the same age. I wouldn’t have guessed that.
DAGNY: And how old is she?
WILL: Suzanne Rogers was thirty-six. So they were eighteen when she was born.
DAGNY: Yeah, but not now! Thirty-six is hardly cradle-robbing age. That changes things. This isn’t a Kate Thorvald situation at all. She’s a washed-up old spinster like the Bead.
WILL: I wonder why she isn’t married, actually. A widow? If she’s throwing herself at Nels Oleson, it’s not because she’s choosy.
DAGNY: Watch, her husband will show up too.
Nels also tells Molly she doesn’t know what love is. (I really hate Nels in this one.)
She tells him she loves him, but he basically says well, I know better, and dumps her.
WILL: Does this make her a fallen woman now? Because she’s been kissed by a married man?
And only then does he drop the bomb.
Then he says, “I’ll be leaving the first thing in the morning.”
DAGNY: He’s still STAYING there? What a prick.
WILL: Well, at least she’ll get the money.
DAGNY: Yeah, and feel like a prostitute afterward. That’s rotten.
As for what Molly thinks or feels about this development, we never find that out, because that’s the last we see of her.
And back at the Oleson residence, Harriet is putting together a little romantic dinner for two, since Nels is to be home by seven.
First she scares Willie away.
Nels arrives and is struck by how nice everything looks, including Harriet.
WILL: He seems untroubled by guilt, doesn’t he.
DAGNY: Yes.
Harriet, whose eyes are shining (I told you MacGregor could pull off anything), has put out candles. She even got Nels a bottle of sherry – significant, since she’s criticized him for drinking in the past.
But Harriet burned the roast. Haw haw!
WILL: Look – peas.
DAGNY: So?
WILL: Continuity. It’s pea season.
Harriet starts wailing because she can’t cut the roast. It’s not really that funny. Whilst I was working on this recap, I burned the toast that was the last of our bread, and it turned out to be National Toast Day!
Well, Nels starts laughing crazily and yells, “My place is in the kitchen!”
DAGNY: Crazy wife, crazy life.
Then he suggests they go for a stroll, like in the old days.
Willie comes in and says he’d be delighted to eat that burned roast, Father!
WILL: Have they all been replaced by aliens or something?
Nels and Harriet head out, and soon are laughing their heads off at what a bad cook Nellie is.
In a final gesture, which you might miss if you immediately turn to talk to your neighbor, Nels removes his jacket and drapes it over Harriet’s shoulders. Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum!
STYLE WATCH: Everybody’s wearing vests in this one for some reason.
Though on closer examination, Albert’s may just be very thick suspenders.
Charles appears to go commando again.
THE VERDICT: The principals throw themselves into this one, and both of them do a nice job for the most part. But the story is a strange one, with out-of-character attitudes from several of our Grovesters. Rather than proving the strength of Nels and Harriet’s love, the script leaves us feeling Nels is a weaker and wormier guy than we realized, which is awful.
And Molly Reardon as a character has all the depth of a St. Patrick’s Day card.
But John T. Dugan was actually nominated for an award from the Writers Guild of America for this one, so what the hell do I know?
Have a happy Saint Pat’s, AND this month also marks the fifth anniversary of Walnut Groovy. Whichever you choose to celebrate, sláinte!
UP NEXT: Sweet Sixteen
Walnut Groovy 
I hate this one.
Miscellaneous comments: there are so many vegetables in this one, I thought Nels had wandered over to The Valley of the Jolly Green Giant (ho ho ho)…. 😜, is Harriet wearing the same choaker in the last scene that she wore as a Winoka barmaid? Is she trying to woo him back with that? I always felt that this episode was Landon’s excuse to say, “hey sometime’s your wife’s a shrew and a man’s gotta do… ” to excuse his own pecadillos… If Laura had seen Nels kissing Molly, certainly she would have thought he’d chopped off Harriet’s head first. That’s why she does not peep in windows anymore… So much Irishness… I expected there to be a box of Lucky Charms on Molly’s breakfast table… OK. Enough silliness…
I think that we have to get a feel of a kinder Harriet here and assume that it’s not completely out of character for her (we just don’t see it that often). We have to root for a happy ending for the Olesons and if Harriet has NO redeeming qualities, that makes it harder to believe he’d come back.
This episode surely does point out that the Ingallses are better people though… Harriet tormented Caroline about the Widow Thurman and told Nellie there was Monkey Business going on when Uncle Whatshisname was doing handyman work. And yet Charles keeps his mouth shut here (and either he never tells Caroline or she too keeps her mouth shut)… Harriet tortured the Garveys, too… and just when you think she’s going to get her comeuppance, she doesn’t. The Olesons work it out.
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1. It is a vegetable-centric story – first appearance of broccoli (brought to the States from Italy in the Nineteenth Century), and another entry in the “Spud Saga,” along with Carrie’s potato-picking (“The Richest Man in Walnut Grove”), Mary’s incompetent potato-peeling (“The Wolves”) and gobbling a baked potato out of her hands and then throwing it at Adam (“‘I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away’”), Ma and Laura peeling potatoes (“Fagin” – offscreen, but it still counts), Tom Clancy literally singing their praises and then processing them into moonshine (“The Godsister”), and finally and most spectacularly Albert’s exploding potato recipe (“Darkness is My Friend”).
2. I think it’s probably the same choker – hard for my color-blind and myopic eyes to tell if they’re both black or if one is midnight blue, but my money’s on the former.
3. Charles does stop short of endorsing Nels’s dalliance – the impression I get is that he doesn’t know what to say about it, which is what makes it so unbelievable. Then again, his past takes on such situations have been eclectic. He took a “let bygones be bygones” stance with the Garveys, telling Jonathan it didn’t matter that Alice was married (and deflowered) by another man before they met, a pretty liberal stance for the time. He’s gentle when Leslie Harper says she wants to run away with him, but doesn’t hide his contempt when Amy Phillips Sawyer makes a similar pass. And of course, he’s embarrassed rather than morally indignant when Angela the Chicago prostitute offers her services to him at the Grange Convention. You have to wonder what he would have made of Unky Chris insinuating himself in the bosom of his family like the proverbial serpent while he was out of town; he might have been jealous, but he certainly isn’t a hotheaded fool like Zaldamo. (He did attack the Galenders when they assaulted Ma, but that was a very different situation. Am I missing any other examples of jealousy? I mean, not counting his rammin’ and thumpin’ Boss Hogg’s son in “‘I Remember, I Remember.’”)
4. As you point out, Harriet Oleson’s views on extramarital relationships are much less ambiguous. In addition to your examples, remember how she gets so angry at Reverend Alden for falling in love that she tries to destroy his life!
5. I agree that Nice Harriet is a real part of Mrs. Oleson just as much as Vicious Harriet and Screaming Comedy Harriet are. I actually don’t have a problem with the premise of this story, I just think the script doesn’t do it justice. Vicious Harriet is nowhere to be seen, and yet Nels accuses her of being “cruel and cutting” when really it’s just Nice Harriet making an affectionate joke. He knows her well enough to know the difference, and if he couldn’t stand Screaming Comedy Harriet, he’d have left a long time before this. And it doesn’t help that Molly Reardon is such a zero – we never understand what her history is or what she sees in her polite and kindly but not particularly exciting boarder. Is she really looking for a father figure after all? She seems to have no other menfolk in her life but her da. But really, how can we hope to know her when her dialogue is nothing but fake-Irish colloquialisms. I hate “Circus Man,” but at least it made sense that Red Buttons turned out not to be Irish at the end!
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I remember stumbling upon pieces of trivia about this episode claiming that this story was made because Landon had only just been caught cheating on his then wife with a woman from the production crew. It’s a bit contestable if that really was his idea, given that he neither wrote nor directed this one. The same thing is said about an episode of Landon’s newxt show, “Highway to Heaven”, in which a woman with a terminal illness tries to reconcile with her father, a minister, who cut ties with her after she had an affair with a married man, had a child from him and never showed to repent, and Jonathan, a literal angel character) is sympathetic and assures her there was no sin at all on her part (I’m not sure that’s how sleeping with someone you know is married works as far as Christianity is concerned); though this one was written and directed by Landon, and added to that he also plays an angel who rrelieves her of guilt, it’s more plausible that he was canalyzing his own transgressions into that story.
I think where this episode becomes muddled is that it requires us to hold sympathy for the Olesons, whose dynamic often borders on being dysfunctional. It’s not that hard to feel for Nels, and the beginning really shows him at the short end of the stick, being treated like a silent partner and undermined as a parent then treated like he’s overreacting. But even within that context, it wants us to root for him to go back to his family after he’s on the verge of having an affair, and maybe that’s why Harriet is uncharacteristically nice in the rest of the episode (and because she might be feeling that Nels was growing apart), to make her and the kids more sympathetic it more plausible that they’d reconcile at the end. The problem is that after making Nels reach the breaking point and need a break from his mess of a family, their portrayal later on makes his actions even worse. It’s not just that he’s trying to start an affair with an unsuspecting woman, but then when he undoes things and goes back, his actions leading Molly on and then breaking things up all of a sudden and explaining things in such a condescending way (“you don’t know anything about love”, “You already have a father”), instead of just owing up to his mistakes and saying “This is wrong, I lide to you, I can’t be using you like this”, really sour his character. And it’s a bit harder to see this as the happy ending they wanted us to see, especially since, as we know, the Olesons are just going back to their dysfunctional dynamic, with Nels as the glorified silent partner and now with an atempted affair and how he played with Molly’s feelings on his conscience, and soon enough, Harriet will revert back to her nastier ways and make the audience wonder why these two are still together. I know there are times the Olesons really show to love each other and be happy together, but in moments like at the beginning of the episode, it gives off the feeling that the taboo and hindrances of divorce are the only thing keeping them together.
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I never watched Highway to Heaven, but it doesn’t surprise me that its version of Christianity would be filtered through Landon’s lens rather than based in doctrine. Then again, a fantasy like that has the luxury of presenting how God and the angels “really operate” (It’s a Wonderful Life is similar example) in contrast to official teachings. Historical fiction, on the other hand, really ought to be bound in the specific beliefs and practices of the time and place. However, as we see today, real Christians are all over the map in their understanding. Today, a Charles Ingalls would easily find religious communities that share his freethinking yet devout orientation (in a city, anyways). In those days, it probably would have been harder, but the Grove is lucky to be ministered by a similarly bighearted (I would even say Christlike) reverend.
Our daughter Olive, you may recall, has a lot of the same objections to the Olesons as you do, but I tend to be more sympathetic. For one, Olive was pretty little when her mother and I split up and so may not remember, but we often had a Nels-and-Harriet dynamic (we’d switch off who played the Harriet and who the Nels!), and while I make jokes, our marriage really did have a lot of great things about it. It could be explosive and “overly frank,” and yes, it didn’t last, but really, the way we let off steam with one another was not altogether unhealthy. And we’ve remained good friends, are often seen at each other’s houses, and sometimes go out on double dates with our current spouses, which wouldn’t be the case if explosiveness truly equaled a terrible match. I view the Olesons in this light, even if some of Vicious Harriet’s behaviors are beyond the pale and I think would have caused a worse rift between us than our friendly bickering ever did. Her husband Ted and their son Ernie have joined us for Walnut Groovy sessions, and I hope she will someday too! Hopefully that wouldn’t be too weird for any of the readers. It wouldn’t be for us!
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