How do they look like now? – Jenny Wilder

We all know who she grew up to be- fierce bitch, Shannen Doherty.

She’ll never drown herself in the lake with those flotation devices!

I was totally on Team Brenda. Kelly was a loser.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a reunion movie starring Shannen as Jenny? Since it was thirty years ago, it could be the roaring twenties and Jenny is a socialite in New York. Her and Rose Wilder, played by Lindsay Lohan, could be the bitchy party girls who are always in a feud with Nellie and Percival’s kids. Meanwhile Jenny could be having a scandalous affair with Adam Kendall, the rich lawyer. Cassandra Ingalls is desperate to hang out with them, but is clearly not cool enough. Nellie would be an old rich socialite who is am mentor to Jenny. Meanwhile, Jed Carter is living as a high class gigolo, and Charles and Caroline, despite their old age, run an orphanage because they still have to be holier than thou. There couls also be a crossover with the girls from House of Elliott after they move to New York. The possibilities are endless.

The Ingalls Play Ball

I’ve got to admit, I’ve never actually watched “The Big Inning” before today.  My eyes tend to glaze over a little when it comes to sports-themed episodes.   I don’t really mind when sports are used to move the story along, like when drug-addled Albert collapsed in the middle of a game of stickball, but entire episodes with goofy music (slide whistles? really??) and predictable plotlines (you mean the Underdog actually WINS?!?  Impossible!!), just leave me wishing someone’s orphan would go blind.

This episode has the town getting all excited about the annual(???) baseball game against Sleepy Eye.  Pa carves a baseball bat.  Caroline sews the uniform.  Hansen brings the balls.  Mrs. Oleson covers the wagers.  A minor character causes slight tension, only to be corrected by an Ingalls.  Yup, we’re in Walnut Grove.

The Sleepy Eye Green Stockings always win.  Last time they beat them 36 to nothing, called on a count of darkness in the third inning.  There’s probably a baseball joke in there somewhere, I can just feel it.  However, I choose not to pay attention to Little House in the Prairie attempts at sports humor.  I’m much more interested in quirky characters and easily-resolved conflict.

First stop, quirky characters.  We find one in the star pitcher, who is discovered by Charles throwing stones at a chicken hawk.  Jebediah Mumford didn’t actually HIT the chicken hawk, but it was still an impressive throw, I guess?  Impressive enough to get the whole town betting their day’s wages on his golden arm.  Smart.  There’s NO way that could come back and cause a problem, right?

Turns out the problem is that Jebediah’s wife doesn’t approve of gambling, so she doesn’t want him playing in the game.  Moral high ground aside (“You KNOW I don’t approve of betting, but…”), Caroline decides that by donating everyone’s winnings to the church, God will be okay with Jeb pitching in the game.  God appreciates when you speak for him, C, thanks. Game on!

Just in case you need relief from all the drama of morality, Edwards behaves like a bumbling idiot on the baseball field.  He acts like he’s never had balls thrown at his face before.  I bet a little piece of Doc Baker dies inside.

Also, more conflict.  The guy with the handlebar mustache from Sleepy Eye just can’t seem to believe this Jeb’s arm.  So Handlebars start playing dirty, cheating every chance he gets (as guys with handlebar ’staches are wont to do).  Oh, but that’s not enough to keep the Walnut Grove M’s down.  After all, there’s an Ingalls on the team!  Even wih the Reverend’s horrible excuse for game-calling, Walnut Grove pulls out a win.  And Charles makes the winning score.  Obvs.

Much to Doc Baker’s delight, the game ends with all the men climbing on top of each other, rolling around in the dirt, straddling each other …  Nothing like a good ol’ assertion of your manhood, right Landon?

And yet, this episode was not a total loss, as we got this little piece of unintentional comedy gold:
Mr. Edwards:  “Hurry up Nels!  I’m getting the cramps!!”

Oh Mr. Edwards.  Even the most testerone-driven story has got nothing on you and your cramps.

Laura has Rabies?? OH! GOOD! For a Second There, I thought you said BABIES…

You guys, sometimes I just don’t get the Ingalls.  Are they TRYING to contract every known disease? 

“The Raccoon” starts out pleasant enough.  Laura drops her favorite doll and breaks its face.  She cradles it and sobs, and you really have to feel bad for her, because it’s like, oh Laura, get used to that feeling. It’s really Mary’s fault that the doll is broken, because she pitches a ball way off (time to get those eyes checked Mary…) and she feels pretty bad about it.  Bad enough to bring home a raccoon baby and give it to her sister, because nothing says, “I’m sorry I killed your baby” like a wild animal.  If Doc Baker had only known, he could’ve dodged that whole Town Turns Its Back On Him For Killing Laura’s Baby Who Didn’t Have A Name debacle with just a simple gift of a beaver.  Do you homework, old man.  

I think the raccoon eats some raw eggs, learns tricks, and busts up the kitchen, but the real excitement comes in when Jasper the Raccoon bites Laura and Jack the Dog, and runs away.  For some dumb reason, Mary is sworn to secrecy about it.  I don’t really get why, but it makes for some suspense and drama, and what’s a near-death experience in the Ingalls home without that?  Fast forward to a couple of nights later, and there’s a raccoon raid on the chicken eggs, and Pa goes out to stab the animal to death with a pitchfork.  Bare-chested.  Because he’s a man’s man.

Anyway, they find out the dead raccoon had rabies, and Mary does some ugly crying, and tells Pa all about the bites.  Secret’s out, so they take Laura to Doc Baker, and he tells them to watch the dog, because when Jack starts going all Rabies Nuts on them, is a sure bet that Laura will also start foaming at the mouth.  

I’m a little surprised we didn’t have a scene in which Laura eats some whipped cream and talks with her mouthful, scaring the crap out of Caroline.  Now THAT would have been good television.  Missed opportunity, Little House.  She does get thirsty, though, and I guess that’s just as scary when you think your kid is going to die of Raccoon.  

So, after a couple of nights of thinking Half Pint is going to die (prayer scene is a given, obvs), Jack starts barking like a mad dog, and Pa decides it’s time to fill his powder gun. Just as he’s about to deliver the pity shot (no need to MAKE SURE or anything, right Charles?), Jasper the Raccoon pops out of nowhere, and the whole rabies thing is forgotten and forgiven.  It’s not very scientific.  In fact, there’s no clear way of knowing that Jasper did not in fact have rabies.  Pa just assumes that only one raccoon gets rabies at a time, and he might as well kiss this one square on the mouth.  They even let Laura run into the barn, with a raccoon who has been gone for days, and possibly newly rabid, and a dog that still might be going mad.  

Whatever, Pa.   Why don’t you just let Carrie run around on some rusty nails while you’re at it?  Nothing says We’re Better Than You like cheating death, does it?

Mary takes a math test. And then some paint dries.

I think during the first season they wanted to do the show but had no ideas about plotlines. And then they went to the other extreme and wrote about morphine addictions and rape. But anyway, Mary is smart blah blah smartcakes. And then she gets the best score ever on a math test, and she’s invited to take a math test at some big city. Not Mankato, I forgot. Everyone is all stoked because Mary is going to put Hero Township “on the map”. Or they will put Walnut Creek known in Hero Township. I can’t remember. Which means it doesn’t matter.

So Mary is all stoked and secretly Laura is fuming because Mary gets all the attention. Laura is quite the brat, isn’t she? She’s like Michelle on Full House when she gets old enough to talk. Then they find out that the train and hotel is too expensive because they’s jus’ poor ol’ farmfolk, ya hear? So stoic Saint Mary pretends she doesn’t care. Then guess what, the townfolk contribute money so Mary and Ma can go take the test, because apparently Mary is the pride of Walnut Grove. Why does the whole town continue to feed this family’s ego? So first Mary can’t go. Then she does go. What a non-story. I guess they burned that half hour.

The next 25 minutes is redonculous, and I don’t even know why this was an episode. It consists of Mary and Ma on the train, then their fancy hotel. Mary continues to tell Ma that she’s nervous and Ma tells her just to do her best. This dialogue happens like 10 times. Then they are at the test site, and we watch as Mary registers for the test, sits in the lecture hall taking the test, waiting outside for the results. SERIOUSLY? What the fuck. She still talks about how she’s nervous.  Then they call out the winners, and Mary comes in third. Like among a hundred people. Of course she’s DEVASTATED because secretly she’s an egomaniac. I’m really over her perfectionism and her parents kind of enable it.

On her way home she’s all blah blah, they’ll be disappointed I’m a failure. As she arrives home in the stagecoach, the peeps of Walnut Grove (which include several extras) are giving practically a ticker-tape parade. Mary refuses to come out. I want to slap the hell out of her by now. She is all pleghmy and crying and delivers one of our memorable quote moments: “Pa, make them go way, I didn’t win!” Pa’s all they know, they’re just proud. Because you’re an Ingalls. And when Ingalls take a dump in the outhouse there’s a festival in the town square. Close on the town all circling Mary and congratulating her. Hope they don’t smother her!

Whenever the Ingalls go somewhere to another town where they enter a building that’s like, a real building and not a shack with a loft, I always imagine they’re going to freak out about being in such a modern, fancy place.

How do they look like now? Melissa Sue Anderson

Checking in with out favorite blond-haired four eyes.

Whoa, Melis, would Pa approve of you wearing this to the cotillion? Someone get a supportive bra, stat.

Here’s Melissa in the 80s.

Here’s Melissa…in 2001. Does she think she’s in the 80s? Yikes!

Wigtastica! or, Little Women

LH was all about the bad wigs, but here we have one where wigs were central to the plotline. Oh, heaven!

We start out with Willie threatening the other girls in class by pretending he’s Robin Hood. And he does this by borrowing one of Harriet’s obnoxious feather-plumed hats she wears when she goes off to meet socialites in St. Louis. Willie threatens to rape and pillage, and Miss Beadle, instead of sending Willie to the corner again, enables him and gives the students an assignment of reenacting scenes from theor favorite classic novels. I don’t know what this will do intellectually, but ok Miss Beadle.

Mary and laura suddenly have a new bff Jenny, who we have never seen before. Not to be confused with the later suicidal niece of Beth and manly. And Jenny’s wig- oh my god you have to see it to believe it. It’s like the color of margarine, and super thick and looks like it’s made from a horse’s tail. And it sits about five inches on top of her head. They are sitting around wondering what play can be done with a group of girls and hello- Little Women comes on the table. Nellie prances over and worms her way into the play, saying her mother can write it for them. Uh, isn’t this an assignment for school? Whatever. I kinda feel bad for Nel because she doesn’t exactly have friends that would ask her to do a play with her. OMG! REVELATION! Nellie’s father is named Nels! is she named after her father? Jenny begs the Ingalls gals to let Nellie work with them because she would get to see their house! It has lace curtains! And tea sets! I don’t know why everyone gets all orgasmic about the Olsen’s house. It’s basically a back room with lots of doilies. Although compared to Chez Ingalls, I guess it’s pretty sweet. The gals give in. Hilarity will ensue.

So meanwhile, Jenny walks home and is greeted by an older adult man, let’s call him Mr. Perv because from memory I can’t remember his name. He hugs Jenny, gives her flowers, and it makes me very uncomfortable and hence his name. He asks after Jenny’s mom but Jenny’s all, she’s always working to take care of the place. See, she’s a poor pathetic widow like Grace Snyder. I mean, being a single mother is hard and all, but seriously Caroline had like three kids, like six other orphans AND took care of them all AND worked at the restaurant. Seriously, it’s just Jenny’s mom and Jenny.

Jenny’s mom is a crabby old beotch and told Jenny to stay away from Mr. Perv. Well, maybe she has her reasons.

Back at the Olsen’s the gals are rehearsing, taking director from Harriet. Nellie is playing Meg and has tons of lines, and the other girls do not. Mary plays Marmie (ha!) and Laura and Jenny have lines like “yes” and “what does Meg think?”.

I’m going to segway for a second and ask anyone if they ever saw an animated version of Little Women- it was a VHS tape my mother used to rent the shit out of from our library for me. I swear it may have been made in Japan because the characters looked a little anime-esque. Although it was an extremely truncated version because it ends right after Beth gets better for the first time and their father comes home. I guess they wanted to leave out the whole notion of Beth dying. Um, also? in the middle the tome gets totally dark when they introduce a runaway slave boy who tells them about his torture and they do a flashback. I mean, it’s admirable not to shy away from the horror of salvery, but this was a kid’s cartoon people! so, anyone? I’d love to see it again and now see how craptastic is really is. And I am sure I don’t even NEED to mention the supremely awesome recent movie adaptation with Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon. One of the best movie adaptations of anything and SO AWESOME! And Christian bale as Teddy- le sigh.

Jenny is begging her crabby mom to come see her in the play, but Jenny’s Crabby Mom tells her she doesn’t have anything to wear. What a dumb excuse, no one cares. I’ll bet you ten bucks the Ingalls girls will wear those stupid blue floral “formal” dresses of theirs. Mr. Perv tries to woo Crabby Jenny’s Mom and she is all mean and he then lays into her and basically tells her she’s a bad mother to Jenny because she won’t take five fucking minutes out of scrubbing the same two dishes to see Jenny perform in the play.  Wow, not a way to get into a woman’s bloomers.

Nellie announces that her mother is getting her a wig for the play. Why? Because all professional actresses have one. Oh brother. So is she going to wear that wig over the one she already wears? The wig is pretty sweet though. It’s long and dark. I remember watching this originally and totally wanting that wig! I was lil hair obsessed when I was younger. I could brush my doll’s hair for hours and be in a trance. I still remember when Cabbage patch Kids came out with “Cornsilk kids” which were the dolls with “real” hair [aka Nylon hair, not the yarn hair on the originals]. I just about fucking died when I got one for Hanukkah. Anyhoo, Nellie is of course not satisfied and wants the wig curled. And it’ll cost forty dollars, which back then, translates to $4,875. Harriet balks but of course gives in. Jenny asks the wig maker how much he’ll pay for hair. FORESHADOWING? ART IMITATING LIFE?

Let’s all take note how Jenny’s hair is now up against her head in braids. later, she has a bonnet with her hair under it– or so we think! She presents her mother with a new dress and her mother gets all pissed because she thinks she got the money from Mr. perv and tells her to give it back and she is punished. Mr. Perv stops by later on and tells her she’s a bad mother and to put on the fucking dress and go to the play. I am so over this Crabby mother business. Why are parents so fucking harsh on this show? Except the Ingalls, of course.

So we’re at the school and all 14 townspeople are crammed into the school/church/dancehall. The Little Women production is in full swing. Nellie is pretty hilarious here because her acting in the play is so over the top and bad that she’s have to be good and pull it off- or maybe the director told her to “act really amazingly” and that’s what came out. Oh well. They;re also doing the scene where Jo reveals she sold her hair to get Marmie a train ticket to see their father. Jenny, as Jo, takes off her bonnet to reveal…she has cut her hair. BUT the affect is hilarious because it’s that original horrible wig just shorn off and chopped off so she looks like…I don’t know. An abomination, really?

Jenny breaks the down the fourth wall and speaks directly to her mother in the audience about why she did it to get her mother to see her. There’s not a dry eye in the house as mother and daughter hug. Nellie is all arms-flailing whining that they are not going by the original lines. Miss Beadle tells her to be quiet. It was a poignant moment  Jenny’s formerly-crabby mom suddenly warms up to Mr. Perv and you know they are going to go home and sex it up. Except we never hear from them again.

I’ll also bet that Charles was wicked pissed that he had nothing to do with “healing” this family.

How do they look now? The Missy Francis edition

**With apologies to ihatewheat for once again having this picture at the top of the page!**

It’s a truth universally acknowledged (mad props if you get that reference) that the addition of all the random orpahans toward the end of the series didn’t do a lot for Little House. One in particular….

….was more than a little frightening. With her crazy eyes and sub prime acting ability, she was the last person I’d expect to have post-LHotP success. So imagine my surprise when I found out that she went to Harvard and ultimately became a financial analyst for CNBC.

Now she’s known as Melissa Francis and I’m glad to see (get it, see? I’m here all night, folks) that she’s grown into her eyes:

Episodes You Don’t Want To Do Lunch With

I don’t know about you guys, but the food they make on Little House on the Prairie always makes my mouth water a little.  Chicken and Dumplings?  Yum.  Fresh-baked bread?  Double Yum.  And have you ever seen more pie in your whole life?  I submit that you have not.  

However, it’s not always Caroline’s fried chicken and rainbows on the prairie.  

Below is a list of the Top 5 episodes you should not watch while eating, or thinking about eating, or ever planning on eating again.  Some of these had to be learned the hard way.  I hope, in some small way, this little heads up will have helped you out.  Weak stomachs take note:

1.  Matter of Faith, because infected legs are gross.  Really gross.  We also get a lot of jokes about ham and bacon when Carrie asks for a pet pig at the hog farm.  PETA member, Michael Landon is not.

Especially try not to be eating: cold cuts, pie, pork products, BACON.

2.  Home Again part 2, because Morphine is not cute on its way back up, especially when coming back up through a very sweaty Albert.  I’m pretty sure nobody expected Albert to need his own A&E Intervention, but I bet even less people expected him to blow chunks all over Pa when he goes through Little House Detox.  

Especially try not to be eating: cereal, eggs, milk…  really anything.  Oh yeah, and Morphine.  

3.  A Child With No Name, because dead babies are gut-wrenching, but smallpox blisters are even MORE gut-wrenching… and vomit-inducing.

Especially try not to be eating: pepperoni pizza, tomato sauce, strawberries

4.  Castoffs, because ML with his shirt off is gross enough, but SUNBURNT ML with his shirt off?  Sometimes I envy Adam and Mary…

Especially try not to be eating: beef jerky, dehydrated fruit, Christmas ham

5.  Anything in which Harriet licks her lips or smacks her lips or puts her tongue out or somehow calls attention to her mouth in any way, because ewwwwww.  

Especially try not to be eating: food.

I’m sure there are many more.  Feel free to add to the list.

Carrie pulls a baby Jessica

Wow, this show was kind of one big cock tease. You think we’ve finally gotten rid of Carrie, but as you can probably deduce, she makes it.

Miss Beadle gives the ever-changing-lineup-of-students-class an assignment to collect butterflies. Way to promote killing animals, Miss B. Nellie is all put out and is all “why the fuck do we have to do that? What do butterflies do for me?” and Laura is all “they make the world more beautiful” and her overbite kind of takes over that scene.

Mary and Laura want to head out to murder the innocent butterflies, and Ma forces them to take Carrie with them, probably because she has to make ten punds of dumplings and apple pies and doesn’t want to have to deal with Carrie either. Would you?

While out in the fields, Mary and Laura clearly hate Carrie as well, so they let her run off by herself, and Carrie falls down a hole. It was really the Greenbush twins best performance yet, which isn’t saying much.

Meanwhile, at the mill, some old drunk guy comes up and begs Mr. Hansen for a job. Hansen won’t give it to him because Mr. Drunk is a drunk and way back in the day stole his girlfriend. So he sends him on his way. Charles observes this and creams himself thinking that there is a poor pathetic person in Walnut Grove that he can save. Charles invites Mr. Drunk to dinner at his house and you can tell Mr. Drunk is creeped out, but eventually Charles wears him down and throws him on the back of his rig while Charles and Caroline get to ride up front.

On their way home, Laura catches them and tell them about Carrie and boy, when an Ingalls is in danger, the town charges into action! They ring the alarm bells, which is the school/church bell and the whole town (at least the town actors who have SAG cards) comes to help.

There’s a lot of confusion/etc. how to dig her out, but hey, Mr. Drunk used to be an engineer and can help out! How convenient! There’s lots of worried looks and digging and sweating for a good middle portion of the show, and Caroline is all self-distraught and you can tell because a lock of hair is out of place from her bun. She snarls at Miss Beadle that it was her fault this happened, because she made the kids collect butterflies. This is such a Walnut Grove thing to but unecceasy blame on others, Ms.Olsen likes to do that a lot. Then someone, I think it’s Doc Baker tells Caroline to stop it. I wish he would slap her, because that’s apparently how you get people to act normal again.

But wait, Mr. Drunk has an intuition! This isn’t a regular mine, it’s a coal mine! There must be another entrance! If they keep digging it will collapse on Carrie! Everyone is all, no, you’re a drunk we don’t believe you, when secretly they are probably wishing it would cave in. Meanwhile Carrie is being a pain in the ass as always and not responding when they call to her and slipping further down the hole. Mr. Hansen doesn’t want to believe Mr.Drunk because he’s drunk right now, but Charles will always bet on the underdog, and I guess wants the attention as the hero, so they run off to find the other entrance. As they enter, it appears the whole thing collapses and we all think Carrie is dead!

No such luck. Charles and Mr. Drunk appear in the distance, holding a Greenbush twin where some makeup artist smeared dirt on her cheek and teased her hair to make her look like she’s been through an ordeal. She runs and the whole town hugs her, which can be more dangerous for suffocation that other things, right?

So Mr. Drunk is the hero and Mr.Hansen tells him he’s alright after all, and they are now besties. Except that Mr. Drunk will be placed in the dungeon underneath the Mercantile with Little Lou, Olga, Elmer, and Johnny Johnson.

So where are the Greenbush twins now?

Kind of looking exactly the same. Although I think that Carrie totally loves being recignized and Lindsay is all pissed because it’s her claim to fame.

No parents? No problem!

One of the aspects of Little House that one can’t help noticing is the abundance of orphans.  These orphans exist to make the Ingalls look better, provide them with mates and antagonists, and demonstrate the evils of drug use and cowardice.  Here is my list of the best Little House orphans:

1.  John Jr.:  John Jr. is special in the LH Orphan Club because he and his brother and sister are one of the earliest victims of the Ingalls hypocrisy.  Pa laments that he can’t afford to take in these loveable urchins, and then later he adopts three orphans and has another biological child.  Did he not like the looks of these kids?  Was he put off by their mother seeking parents for them before she was even dead?  Whatever the reason, John Jr.’s eventual adoption by the Edwards family paved the way for such classic moments as his engagement to 13-year-old Mary, his fear of guns resulting in Mr. Edwards being mauled by a bear, and his immoral dalliance with a Big City Girl.  John Jr. set the bar high for Little House orphans.

2.  Albert:  Albert was the first of the Ingalls adoptees.  He’s noteworthy for flirting with Laura during their initial introduction and then later sharing the loft bedroom with her—though of course no shenanigans went on with these two unrelated, attracted teenagers sharing a room.  He demonstrated for us the danger of morphine addiction and went on to a heroic death-by-nosebleed during the New Beginning years. He came a long way from portraying Pa during flashback episodes.

3.  James and Cassandra:  We’ll lump these two together, as they had little personality between the two of them.  Young Jason Bateman and Big-Eyed Cassandra were another object lesson in the horror of cowardice; since their mother refused to jump from a runaway wagon, they were left to be orphans 2 and 3 in the Ingalls brood.  James’ big moment in the sun was when he was shot during a robbery and healed by God at Pa’s altar, one of many events that showcased that the Ingalls were beloved by God in a way that other ordinary mortals were not.  Like many in the LH universe, James and Cassandra disappeared after the Ingalls family moved out of their house, never to be seen or heard from again.

4.  Nancy:  Ah, Nellie 2.  Some would argue that she is the better Nellie, as she faced down Shannen Doherty, something that few people can claim to have achieved.  Nancy had better curls than Nellie, a tragic backstory, a catchphrase (“You hate me!”), and the distinction of making fun of Shannen Doherty when she was recovering from a brain-damaging near-drowning.  We can only wonder if there was a third Nellie when Nancy grew up, ran away, or otherwise exited the scene.

5.  Jenny:  Shannen Doherty got to act her way through two near drownings on Little House, one intentional and one not.  She gave Laura and Almanzo a child to parent without forcing the producers to advance Rose’s age, something the audience is forever grateful for.  She also gave Jeb Carter, a young Ingalls in training, an opportunity to show off how much he cares about others, as he rescued her from drowning on both occasions.  She rarely changed her clothes or took her hair out of braids, yet she still managed to be regarded as prettier and more popular than Nancy.  Sadly, the New Beginning time period was too short to allow Jenny to reach her full potential, especially with regard to the Nancy fights.

Honorable mention goes to almost-orphan The Wild Boy, who was saved by Laura and Mr. Edwards from life as a carnival attraction.  He’s not quite as beloved without full orphan status, but he did have to crawl around like an angry dog, so we’ll give credit where it’s due.

Who were your favorite orphans?

Do you suppose Jason Bateman has this on his resume next to Arrested Development and Juno?