Little House: "Goodbye Mrs. Wilder"

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was one of the later episodes of Little House, after Laura got married but before James (Jason Bateman! My crush begins!) and Cassandra showed up. So anyway, Laura was teaching the students about something stupid, and none of them knew the answers, and she was, like, the worst teacher ever with her leading questions and inappropriate anger, and of course Harriet Olson picked that moment to show up because some guy from the state board was coming, and his visit would determine whether the school got additional funding. So Harriet called a meeting of the school board (Pa, of course, Doc Baker, the Olsons, and two randoms) and argued that they needed to upgrade the curriculum and include French and art appreciation and Pa was like, "Why do farmers need art appreciation?" which, way to encourage education just for bettering yourself, Pa, and Laura said she couldn't really teach those subjects because apparently she was incapable of having the Pony Express or whatever deliver a book on those subjects, reading it herself, and then teaching the students, so of course Harriet stepped up and said she'd do it and then Laura got pissy and quit on the spot, and I really thought this was going to be the episode that Laura revealed she was pregnant because she was being such a bitch. And then I remembered that Laura's pregnancy was revealed in the same episode where Ma thought she was pregnant, but it was really "the change," thus leading to (on my initial viewing at like eight years old) an awkward conversation between me and my mother about the facts of life, and particularly, menopause. So Harriet took over the school and made the kids dress in uniforms, and Albert outsmarted her by putting coal dust on his ankles to simulate black stockings, like, wouldn't the fact that his leg hair was totally poking out be her first clue? Meanwhile, Laura was using her newfound free time to cook elaborate meals for Almanzo, who kind of hated them, but tried to be nice, but Bitch On Wheels Laura must have been taking lessons from Old School Nellie because she got pissy and flounced out, and Almanzo had a hilarious callback joke to the cinnamon chicken incident. And then Albert found out that some other kids were planning to screw up Harriet's big day in front of the guy from the state, so he ratted them out to Laura and she went into the school and took over to help Harriet out, and they got their funding, and no one cared about French anymore, or art, because they were just poor farmers who were never going to leave the town limits, or have to talk to anyone from Canada or whatever, and it was awesome.

Mother Knows Best

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a television movie called Mother Knows Best. It starred Maggie Seaver from Growing Pains as the mother of Emily Valentine from 90210. And Maggie was all rich and snooty and stuff and was always bugging Emily to find a good man and get married. And Emily worked as a nurse so Maggie was always telling her to marry a doctor, although it does seem kind of weird that the family was so rich and lived in a mansion and then Emily worked as a hospital nurse. It just doesn't seem like a profession that someone from a wealthy family would have, but maybe she had a calling or something. So anyway, Maggie totally responds to a personal ad in the paper and sets Emily up on a date with Jake from Melrose Place, and of course Emily is all annoyed at first but she ends up falling in love with Jake, who is a mechanic who owns his own shop. And Maggie is all pissed off because she doesn't want her daughter dating some dude who works with his hands, even though Maggie set it up in the first place. So Maggie does various things to try to get Emily to break it off with Jake, but they don't work, and Emily and Jake end up getting married and having a baby and cutting all ties with Maggie, who gets really nutty and decides to hire a hit man to kill Jake. And the whole time all this is going on, there's this really bloopy music in the background, like it's a slapstick comedy or something, and I think they were going for a To Die For vibe, but it just didn't work out. So the hit man Maggie hires turns out to be a cop, but they need to pretend Jake was killed so that Maggie will pay the money and they can arrest her, so Emily has to call Jake's mom and say that Jake is dead to keep the charade going, which seemed kind of mean and unnecessary. But then Maggie gets arrested and Jake and Emily live happily ever after and it was all based on a true story, and it was awesome.