Everybody loves a good mystery. That's especially true of inquisitive
young Laura Ingalls (Melissa Gilbert) and her buddy Andy Garvey (Patrick
Labyorteaux) in The Creeper of Walnut Grove, which comes in during the fourth season of Little House on the Prairie.
There's a thief afoot in Walnut Grove. Chickens and hams and
fresh-baked pies have been vanishing left and right. It's enough to make
even the generally trusting souls of this little prairie town want to
lock up their doors. Everyone is on edge - well, except Harriet Oleson
(Scottie MacGregor), who's tickled pink that the mercantile is making a
pretty penny on locks, and she changes her tune once the crook pilfers
some of her stock. In fact, she's so incensed that she offers a five
dollar reward for his capture, which spurs Laura and Andy, already
wide-eyed with investigative schemes from reading one too many detective
novels, into a flurry of action.
This is a largely comical
episode, at least on the Ingalls end of it. Charles (Michael Landon)
initially finds his daughter's case-cracking enthusiasm amusing, but
once she and Andy ill-advisedly enlist the aid of Nellie (Alison
Arngrim) and Willie Oleson (Jonathan Gilbert), their plans go hay-wire
in a big way. After Harriet falls victim to their sure-fire trap for
"the Creeper," as they've dubbed the mysterious pie pincher, Charles
comes down pretty hard on Laura, forbidding any further sleuthing. But
Laura is not so easily deterred, and her next scheme puts her in even
hotter water with her father, though it leads to laughs aplenty for us
and most of the town.
Laura and Andy are giddy with the
thought of being hailed as hometown heroes. But we know long before they
do who the thief really is, and when they finally find out - quite by
accident, though they get props for putting two and two together -
suddenly this game doesn't seem so fun anymore. This side of the story
is serious, and it provokes thought as to the proper response to crimes
committed out of a desperate sense of preservation, not only of one's
self but one's family. Something tells me than if Jean Valjean had
stolen bread in Walnut Grove, he wouldn't have spent much time rotting
in prison.
The culprit, an aspiring doctor named Timothy
Farrell (Johnny Doran), is guilty of too much pride, a trait he gets
from his hardscrabble Irish father, Bailey (Bernard Behrens). Unable to
get work, though not from lack of trying, this bright young man sees
nicking a bit of food here and there preferable to begging for charity.
Both Doran and Behrens are good in their roles, though I especially
enjoyed the latter, with his rich, warbling accent and the twinkle in
his eye that persists despite his convalescence. He seems an especially
devoted father, which is one thing Walnut Grove seems to have in
abundance. It strikes me as rather odd that these two characters, who
have evidently lived in this sparsely populated area for quite some
time, make their first and only appearance in this episode, but such is
the way of television, I suppose. We can just say they've always been
around but we never noticed them.
The Creeper of Walnut Grove
has plenty of homespun hilarity thanks to Laura, Andy and the Olesons,
but it also has important lessons to impart about pride and forgiveness.
When I watched the episode, it was coupled on a video with The Collection,
which strikes me as a logical pairing given their sensitive handling of
such notions as repentance and redemption. The world would be a better
place if we could all follow the example of the citizens of Walnut
Grove. Well, except maybe Harriet Oleson.
No comments:
Post a Comment