The Mime That Raped Thylvia: Darkest Moments

[Rhondinella]

Per poster suggestion, I've started this thread as a place to discuss the darkest moments on the show, and also to pay homage to the wonderfully witty thread title this show had on TWoP (RIP).

[DoughGirl]

Carrie smiling, chasing little bugs and butterflies, innocent, sweet happy child, who then falls almost to her death in a well.

Little calf, peacefully grazing by Momma cow, killed moments later by a tornado.

Little orphan James gets money for his birthday, and while happily going to put it in the bank is shot by a bank robber.

And of course happy, smiling Thylvia, picking flowers and watching birds, moments later raped by a mime.

I think Michael Landon was one sick f**k, despite being a tv genius. I know his mother was, and that he had a horrible childhood so that's probably why. He certainly had a dark side to say the least.

[PrincessLuceval]

Boy, DoughGirl, you said it.

 

Fire at the mline school.

 

Old dude sets himself on fire.

 

Creepy woman kidnaps Laura. (But it did spawn one of my favorite things to say: "Well, lock me in the cellar and call me Ellen!" along the lines of "Well, I'll be darned.")

 

Ma contemplates cutting off her leg.

[smittykins]

My Ellen.  Full stop.

[DoughGirl]

Kind, gentle fat man helping fix the mline school roof at night and nearly falls to his death.

The worst part is, I can picture ML thinking up these stories and laughing that strange laugh he had.

That contrast of dark and light is through-out this series.

[geekamonggeeks]

Would Nancy's entire existance constitute as a darkest moment? My memory is sort of fuzzy, and I admittedly haven't seen this show in a while (everybody moving over to these forums rekindled my interest), but I remember watching the first episode that she appeared in. Girl was psycho, without a doubt. I know they were trying to replace Nellie with a reincarnation (get it?), but I don't recall Nellie ever trying to outright kill somebody by locking her in a freezer (again, my memory is spotty, so correct me if I'm wrong). My mom had a similar "WTF" reaction to the entire episode. The whole time we were watching it, we snarked about how Nels, Harriet and Willie needed to keep their doors locked at night. Nancy was on the prowl for more potential victims.

Edited June 2, 2014 by geekamonggeeks

[DoughGirl]

I would say so. Even AA commented somewhere (can't remember now) how Nancy was "different" than Nellie, though I don't think she came right out and said she was psycho.

Personally, I think ML got the idea for Nancy from The Bad Seed.

If I were Nils and Willie, I'd have moved out rather than live with that hellion.

That strange scene when Nancy runs away with a doll because Nellie is getting all the attention. Crying with her little dolly. Were we really supposed to feel sorry for her? I don't know, but that scene is just so weird to me.

I really can't tolerate any Nancy episodes.

I will have to admit, I thought it was rediculous for Nils to send a girl Nancy's age to cut down a Christmas tree.

[geekamonggeeks]

See, I really don't remember the details of Nancy's episode. I just remember thinking she needed to pay a visit to the Little Mental Institution on the Prairie. That's how much of an impact she had, lol. I also thought the whole idea of adopting a child specifically to replace your daughter was really weird. Maybe not a darkest moment, but definitely WTF-worthy.

 

Then again, it almost worked for Ellen's mom...

Edited June 2, 2014 by geekamonggeeks

[yooneeque1]

Rats in the cornmeal

 

Bat that appeared while man was going through alcohol withdrawal

 

The pack of wild dogs almost attacking the kids in the loft

 

Carrie (especially when you consider the fact that IRL she was an extremely intelligent independent woman with no known bladder problems)

 

I'm sure there are many many more.  I posted a few times on the TwoP thread, but I couldn't keep up w/the snark, so I mainly lurked.  I had hours of entertainment :)

Edited June 2, 2014 by yooneeque1

[DoughGirl]

See, I really don't remember the details of Nancy's episode. I just remember thinking she needed to pay a visit to the Little Mental Institution on the Prairie. That's how much of an impact she had, lol. I also thought the whole idea of adopting a child specifically to replace your daughter was really weird. Maybe not a darkest moment, but definitely WTF-worthy.

Then again, it almost worked for Ellen's mom...

Yes, adopting one child to replace another would play havoc on the adopted child, and Nancy was already psycho. Harriet was in a deep depression over losing Nellie when she adopted Nancy. They both could have done with a visit to the Little Mental House.

They just couldn't replace Nellie. So they went to the extreme, which IMO just didn't work. The only Nancy episode I watch is the one with Elmer, but that's only because I like Elmer.

The pack of wild dogs almost attacking the kids in the loft

Yes, innocent grazing sheep attacked and killed by wild dogs.

That would have haunted me if I had seen it as a child. I won't even watch it now.

Edited June 2, 2014 by DoughGirl

[DoughGirl]

Grandpa is just feeling happy again after losing Grandma and trying to kill himself when Bunny runs into a barbed wire fence and has to be shot, while Laura lays a guilt trip on Grandpa.

Okay, I think I'm posting too much. I'll be quiet for awhile.

[geekamonggeeks]

Grandpa is just feeling happy again after losing Grandma and trying to kill himself when Bunny runs into a barbed wire fence and has to be shot, while Laura lays a guilt trip on Grandpa.

Okay, I think I'm posting too much. I'll be quiet for awhile.

Haha. That's okay. I felt the same way when I started posting away as soon as I got my account. I hope the community is able to rebuild itself after the mass exodus from TWOP. It seems pretty slow-going now, but it's only been up for a couple months. People need to find their groove.

 

Anyway, I was going to post "May We Bake Them Brown" in this thread, didn't for two reasons;

 

1. It's unintentionally hilarious and probably the second-most iconic moment ever after the infamous mime-rape in "Sylvia".

 

2. I can never enjoy the storyline in an unironic way because Real-Life!Mary never got married nor had children, especially one who died from getting his brains bashed in. Shows and movies based on history always tweak what really happened, but this was beyond the pale. They created a husband and child for a real-life woman who never married or had kids. That's a bit too much for me.

 

Actually, I lied. There was a pretty dark moment in that episode: when Charles gave Mary BBR's burnt-up corpse and she started humming that God-awful tune. That was genuinely creepy.

[Creeper Jen]

My eyes are conditioned, like Pavlov's dog produces saliva, to produce tears whenever the one with Pa's pa is on. 

 

I agree that any episode with Nancy is almost unwatchable.  What a horrid child, and completely devoid of humor - at least Nellie was funny, and she didn't lock Jan Levinson Gould in the ice house so she could freeze to death.  I also hate her in the one where she's so mean to the cute little chubby kid who's in love with her, and just uses him to get a good grade on her "let's stick pins in pretty insects" project for school. 

 

As far as horrible stuff goes, how about "Be My Friend"?  The poor girl who gets preggers and has to hide it from her dad, and gives birth one day out in the woods without him knowing.  (Okay, first of all - I've given birth twice, and the thought of doing it in the woods, by myself, while my dad thinks I'm fetching a bucket of water, and then I just hop in and whip up a batch of stew?  NO EFFING WAY.)  The dad is that guy who plays a corrupt president in one of those Harrison Ford movies - and here he decides that their shame is so great that they must go down, quite literally, in flames. 

Let's not forget the one with Laura and baby Rose and Robert Loggia - he holds them hostage or something.  I don't even know if I've ever watched that one in its entirety; I despise the ones with grown up Laura, Shannen Doherty, and no Pa & Ma.  (The only exception I make is for the one with Myron & Rupert - love that one.)

[geekamonggeeks]

CreeperJen: speaking of "Be My Friend", the guy who plays the dad was also in John Carpenter's The Thing where he---you guessed it---helped burn down the group's Arctic base. Granted, he was using his capabilities of arson for good this time, but it's still a coincidence  I clearly I felt the need to point out.

[yooneeque1]

I probably should have included the "Carrie" example in the "Carrie" thread, but it was still disturbing, in a way, to see her character so dumbed-down.

 

I never saw the mline school fire episode when I was younger.  I think my mom saw the preview on TV and forbade me to watch it. I distinctly remember her saying "Oh no.  Mary's baby dies in a fire". 

 

I didn't even know about Thylvia until I discovered the TwoP thread.  I wonder if my mom also prevented me from watching it.  If I had seen Thylvia as a child, I don't know if I would have known what the mime was really doing - I would have assumed he was beating her up - which would still have been pretty disturbing to a child.

 

Back to the topic:

 

The dead bodies of James and Cassandra's parents after they were pinned under the wagon.

 

Albert and the morphine

[merylinkid]

 

Baby In A Bottle", in which Laura finds an abandoned baby, and then she and her family try to help the baby's mom escape from her crazy religious dad...who tries to burn down the house.

Wait another episide involving fire.   Landon was seriously a little over fascinated with fire.

[DoughGirl]

Albert and the morphine

And Albert and the bloody noses of death.

Albert could be the poster child of LHOTP dark moments:

Orphaned and living alone in the city

Causes mline school fire

Thylvia

Morphine

Fatal disease kills him off

Another dark moment:

Happy families sharing roasts they got a bargain on, end up almost dying of anthrax.

[spidermiss2426]

The dark episodes are the ones I like the most.  I relish in the little house of misery!!

[Snow Apple]

Laura and Mary having a sleepover at the blind school and two psychos show up.

 

The teacher sends the kids home in a snow storm. One guy died not knowing his son made it back to the school safely.

[geekamonggeeks]

Word to whoever said that Albert was really a lightening rod for misery at the Little House. His bio dad doesn't want him, his girlfriend is raped, impregnated and killed, he starts a fire at the mline that kills a couple people including a baby, gets addicted to morphine...he sure is lucky that he was put out of his misery before he came back to Walnut Grove as a successful doctor and whatnot.

 

Speaking of the New Years, wasn't there an episode where one of the other adopted Ingalls kids was being abused by his first adoptive father or something? And they didn't show the abuse outright, just featured the sounds of him getting beaten? It's been a while since I've seen these episodes, so my memory is a bit spotty, but I remember something like that happening. As an adult, it wouldn't bother me if I came across something like that in this show. But if I saw it as a kid, it would have given me nightmares or something. Something about kids and people in general being abused just really made my seven-year-old self really, really anxious.

[DoughGirl]

The dark episodes are the ones I like the most. I relish in the little house of misery!!

I enjoy some of them. Home Again is one of my favs.

Word to whoever said that Albert was really a lightening rod for misery at the Little House. His bio dad doesn't want him, his girlfriend is raped, impregnated and killed, he starts a fire at the mline that kills a couple people including a baby, gets addicted to morphine...he sure is lucky that he was put out of his misery before he came back to Walnut Grove as a successful doctor and whatnot.

Speaking of the New Years, wasn't there an episode where one of the other adopted Ingalls kids was being abused by his first adoptive father or something? And they didn't show the abuse outright, just featured the sounds of him getting beaten? It's been a while since I've seen these episodes, so my memory is a bit spotty, but I remember something like that happening. As an adult, it wouldn't bother me if I came across something like that in this show. But if I saw it as a kid, it would have given me nightmares or something. Something about kids and people in general being abused just really made my seven-year-old self really, really anxious.

Yep. James got a whipping for supposedly stealing money from his temporary adopted dad. Mean temporary brother, appropriately named Seth, had planted the dollar in James' pocket. They didn't show it, just froggy faced Casandra crying over it. Temporary adopted dad also worked them like field hands so they were too tired to keep up their grades at school. Creepy temporary mom kept talking about her dead daughter and using Frog Face as a substitute. They ran away and James got caught in a trap, breaking his leg.

All sunshine and rainbows on that prairie.

[geekamonggeeks]

And then James fell into that coma and Charles tried to revive him with a fake beard and the Schlong of Healing. The idea of a twelve-year-old boy falling unconscious and never waking up is tragic and can be tear-jerking if written well-enough. But when Michael Landon gets the idea, it's pure distilled corniness mixed with some genuine pathos every now and then.

 

God, I miss the old forums.

[Winipo75]

Blind Mary cornered by a criminal in the blind school who clearly had raping on his mind. Man, that girl could shriek!

 

Pa holding the gun on Jack and about to shoot him when he thinks he has rabies. I still scream, "No, Pa, no!" even though I know it turns out alright in the end.

 

Ma cuts her infected leg off. (O.K. She doesn't actually cut it off, but clearly that's what she was thinking with the Bible reading, knife sharpening, and crazy eyes.

 

I know there are many more, but I'll stop there for now.

[Rhondinella]

The only exception I make is for the one with Myron & Rupert - love that one.

 

 

That's one of my favorite eps, too.  But it was in S7, not the dreaded and awful season 9.  

[SinInTheCamp]

Other dark moments I remember:

 

Some happy-go-lucky tertiary character decides to go up on the roof to repair it while wife is like 8 months pregnant. Tertiary character falls off roof and then, later that day, develops horribly painful abdominal pain before dying a few hours later. I always felt so sad watching that as a kid, because they seemed so in love.

 

Also, the death of boring John Jr.'s mother. And to add to the overall depressing atmosphere, it was pouring rain. The scene where the children gather on her deathbed, and little Alicia brings her puppy along...*sniff*  And then the verse they read at her funeral (and, later, ML's funeral)! Still brings a tear to my eye.

 

But the mline school fire really got to me as a kid. I had no idea what was coming in that episode, and I was pretty young. I remember crying and my grandparents being sort of outraged (there were a lot of "What in the Sam-hill are they showing on television these days!" being tossed around), and I couldn't bring myself to watch LHotP for several months afterwards. Major trauma in my house...all thanks to drip-lip Albert!

[dougfir]

One of my Facebook friends just shared a list of the 10 scariest TV eps ever made.  A shiny new penny goes to the first person to guess what made #10.

[camom]

Thylvia, I presume.  May We Bake Them Brown would be a contender, too.

 

My kids were little when LH was on.  After the first couple of seasons, I would watch it without them and decide if it was OK for them to watch in the summer reruns. They never saw Thylvia, the baby battering ram, etc.  Some seasons they didn't get to see much Little House.

[dougfir]

Yes, it's Thylvia.  Now here's a shiny new penny to spend as you wish at Olson's Mercantile. I hear there's a sale on headless mannequins and slightly used mime masks.

[camom]

I'll be able to buy a slate pencil!

[DoughGirl]

Charles was pretty dumb not to realize they also needed a slate pencil and hot shot teacher Caroline didn't say anything either. And if they were so big on education, couldn't they have sprung for a slate and slate pencil for each girl?

[Creeper Jen]

Dark Moments: Someone mentioned James and Cassandra's parents getting pinned under the wagon.  Remember the one where Laura & Albert use their honey money to send Mary & Adam to some awards ceremony or something, and there's a wagon accident?  Adam gets pinned under the wagon, and of COURSE there's a pregnant lady in the wagon about to give birth.  And I seem to recall an ominous shot of the driver's bloody arm or something like that, before a pair of glasses accidentally starts a fire. 

 

It's almost as though ML had a big grab bag of Frequently Used Plot Devices and he would just stick his hand in there and yank a few out every so often.  "Oh, a wagon accident!  We haven't used that in a while!  Heavily pregnant lady?  Well, I suppose we could use that one again, though I think we just used that a few episodes ago.  Oh well.  A fire?  We use that like every other episode!  But so it must be.  The grab bag has spoken." 

Edited June 24, 2014 by Creeper Jen

[DoughGirl]

Yes, there was a shot of the dead, bloody stage driver.

All I could think of was how painful it must have been for the pregnant lady (wasn't she played by Leslie Landon?) to give birth to a "bouncing baby boy" with two broken ribs.

[Libby96]

It was indeed Leslie Landon. She got to play not only Unfortunate Pregnant Stagecoach Passanger but also Laura's Dishwashing Buddy in that awful Arizona episode. Then she eventually landed the gig of Miss Etta Plum, the Walnut Grove Schoolteacher.

[sgittinger]

I always thought Albert slapped Ms. Plum because of LL's crappy acting.

 

I remember watching Thylvia at Grandpa's house (we didn't have cable at home), and being completely ignorant as to what was actually happening...

[Libby96]

I was about 10 when the Sylvia episode aired. For some reason I was watching it alone. That mask was the creepiest thing I had ever seen, but I wasn't sure of the extent if the attack until Doc Baker said "she's with child.". I remember thinking "if she's pregnant, then the creepy guy....ewwww! On Little House!". Did I mention I was 10? And watching safe family programming alone?

[sgittinger]

I only knew what "with child" meant because it's in the Christmas story, that Mary was great with child...I was sheltered...

[charlieboo]

Leslie Landon was also a victim of the plague (not that one....). She didn't eat the mutton; she ate the cornmeal. 

[Samwil]

I have nothing new to add to the comments, but this site really needs a like button.  

 

I am so glad to see this thread getting busier.

 

You are all so funny.

[Pepper the Cat]

I have nothing new to add to the comments, but this site really needs a like button.

I am so glad to see this thread getting busier.

You are all so funny.

There is a like button.

Bottom rt corner, thumbs up icon.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Pepper the Cat

[BatmanBeatles]

Aside from the mime mask, the close up of Sylvia's stalker's eye freaked me out.

 

Albert puking up Carnation Instant Breakfast horrified me as a kid.

 

The episode with the wild child frightened me. The idea that someone would lock a child in a cage tramatized me.

[SpaghettiTuesdays]

The blizzard episode with the Native American guy and the random sheriff always got to me.

 

And it's not terribly dark, but I was poor growing up so every time the Ingalls girls were made fun of for being poor, it was a dagger to my heart. :(

[mansonlamps]

Out of curiosity why are we using "mline" for "blind?"

[BatmanBeatles]

Because that's what it kind of sounded like when Mary said the word blind.

[DoughGirl]

Because that's what it kind of sounded like when Mary said the word blind.

Because MSA was such a bad fake cryer she mumbled her words in an attempt to make up for it.

[Brn2bwild]

There was also the circus family whose father drowned while attempting to perform an escape from being tied up in a coffin underwater.

[BatmanBeatles]

Which episode was that?

[DoughGirl]

It's the one where an Italian circus family comes to town. The patriarch of the family has a Houdini like trick of escaping from, IIRC, a burning coffin. I believe he burns to death trying to escape, rather than drowns (getting old and too slow).

Albert is all interested in learning the tricks until that happens.

[BatmanBeatles]

Crispy Gambini

 

Seriously, what is with Micheal Landon and death by fire?

Edited August 1, 2014 by BatmanBeatles

[DoughGirl]

Wasn't that also the episode where psycho Nancy is acting as ringmaster? That was just bizarre.

[Ubiquitous]

As far as horrible stuff goes, how about "Be My Friend"?  The poor girl who gets preggers and has to hide it from her dad, and gives birth one day out in the woods without him knowing.  (Okay, first of all - I've given birth twice, and the thought of doing it in the woods, by myself, while my dad thinks I'm fetching a bucket of water, and then I just hop in and whip up a batch of stew?  NO EFFING WAY.)  The dad is that guy who plays a corrupt president in one of those Harrison Ford movies - and here he decides that their shame is so great that they must go down, quite literally, in flames. 

That one upset Mom. A lot.

 

How about the time Charles came home (with his father?) but failed to tell Caroline his mother's body was in a box in the back in time?

 

Speaking of Carrie, how about the LSD ep with her seeing giant strawberries and such?