Little House: "A Matter of Faith"

Note: I did a full recap of this episode for charity here.

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV This Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV this week was another episode of Little House on the Prairie, just like the first one I did. In this episode, Ma scratches her leg on a piece of wire while she's getting out of the wagon, and then Reverend Alden stops by and asks Ma to bake some pies to help raise money for a church, but the Ingalls family was supposed to go on a little overnight trip. So then Charles totally volunteers Ma to stay home and bake the pies while he takes the girls on the trip, like, maybe Ma doesn't want to bake some damn pies, Pa! So the plan is that Ma will bake pies on Saturday and then Reverend Alden will drop her off at the meadow for a family picnic on Sunday. So the whole family leaves and Ma gets to baking but the scratch on her leg is bothering her so she slaps some bread and milk on it, like, I don't know what in the hell that was supposed to do, but this was the olden days when they didn't have hydrogen peroxide at Oleson's Mercantile. And Ma is getting all sweaty and stuff, but she manages to get, like, twenty pies baked, and sets them on some shelves outside the door to cool. So Doc Baker stops by and Ma tells him about her leg and he's about to step inside and have some pie and check out the cut when a neighbor rolls up and says his son fell out of the loft, so Doc Baker takes off. And Ma, of course, volunteers to help out, but they're like, "Just bake your pies," so she does. So that night, Ma's leg is getting worse and she takes down her hair, which was kind of when you knew something was wrong, because Ma's hair was always up except for a couple of times when she was eating popcorn in bed and reading her Bible. And then there's a huge thunderstorm, so Doc Baker has to stay over at the neighbor's and never gets back to check on Ma's leg. And then the Ingalls's cow gets out of the barn and maybe if they ever fed that cow it would stay in the barn but I think it was out foraging for hay or something in the wild because I could see the cow's ribcage, it was so skinny. So Ma heads out into the storm, but the cow won't budge, and then Ma faints and lands right in a mud puddle! So she wakes up and crawls back inside. And then she's trying to make a fire to warm up and she lights some newspaper and notices a story in the paper about a family's house being robbed so she goes over and locks the door and then I think Brian DePalma directed this segment because there's lightning flashes and close-ups on Ma's eyes and all I know is when I saw it when I was, like, eight years old it was pretty fucking scary. So Ma tries to settle her nerves by reading the Bible, but she passes out on the floor.

The next morning, Reverend Alden and Mrs. Foster come by to pick Ma up, but since Ma locked the door to prevent robbery, they can't get in, and Ma is still passed out on the floor, so they assume she isn't home and take the pies and leave. And Ma wakes up and throws a rolling pin at the window and breaks it, but it's too late and they are gone, so she manages to unlock the door before passing out again. Meanwhile, the cow has wandered over to the neighbor's house (the one with the injured son), and the son offers to take the cow home, but the neighbor is all, "Let Ingalls come and get his cow if he wants it so bad!" And after Ma was so nice to him! Bastard. So then the infection in Ma's leg is really, really bad and gross and, like, blackened and stuff, so Ma starts reading the Bible for comfort or something and she reads this part about "If thine hand offend thee, cut if off" and then she goes and gets a butcher knife out of the drawer and starts boiling water and reading the Bible and then she puts the knife in the fire to sterilize it or something and then puts a tourniquet on her leg and then passes out again and I'm just thinking that the knife would in no way be able to hack through her bone, but whatever. So then Reverend Alden and Mrs. Foster find Pa and the girls at the meadow and Pa is shocked that Ma isn't with them and he gets all worried so he leaves the girls with Reverend Alden and takes off like a bat out of hell in the buckboard. And his route just happens to take him by Bastard Neighbor's house, and Bastard Neighbor is all complaining about the cow and Pa realizes that if Ma let the cow wander about the countryside, she must be in deep shit, so he goes like an even faster bat out of hell and gets home and Ma is passed out on the floor, so I guess she never got the chance to hack her own leg off, thank God. So then everyone comes home and prays real hard and Pa cries with Laura because Ma might die, but then they pray some more and then the fever lifts and everyone is happy. All I know is that after I saw this episode, I poured like two bottles of peroxide over every cut and scratch I got because I did not want to be in a position where I had to hack off my own leg. But that episode was awesome.