Little House: "Little Women"

So the Most Awesome Thing I saw on TV last week was an episode of Little House on the Prairie which, you know how on The Simpsons, the first few minutes of the episode are some random thing that has nothing to do with the main storyline? This was kind of like that because Willie Oleson and his two henchmen wouldn't let Mary and Laura and a redshirt named Ginny down the road to school because Willie was pretending to be Robin Hood. So then Laura beat Willie's ass (which is even funnier because in real life, Laura and Willie are brother and sister along with Darlene from Roseanne) and Miss Beadle told them not to act out the books they read in school unless everyone consents to play their roles ahead of time which is some weird Antioch College bullshit, so Mary the brown-noser suggests that they all do plays of their favorite books like how many books did they read per year in their one-room schoolhouse and how did they afford all the books anyway when Laura and Mary couldn't even afford a penny for a pad of paper on the first day of school?

So then Laura and Ginny and Mary are trying to decide what book to act out and Ginny suggests Little Women and Nellie is all lurking nearby because no one wants her to be in their group and Nellie jumps in and basically takes over the whole thing and Mary is about to tell her to bug off but Ginny is entranced by the idea of seeing Nellie's parlor (is that a double entendre?) so they agree to do it. So Harriet writes up the play and makes Nellie the star even though she's playing Meg who wasn't even the main character in the book, but that becomes clear later.

Meanwhile, Ginny's mom is a bitter widow who won't let any men come calling even though there's one dude, Mr. Wakefield, who's also a widower and trying to get up on Ginny's mom by hanging out with Ginny and calling her young 'un and whatnot but Ginny's mom is not having it. So Ginny begs her mom to come see their play at school but Ginny's mom claims she can't come because she doesn't have a nice enough dress like anyone cares but Harriet Oleson.

So then Harriet orders a wig for Nellie to wear during the play, and it costs about a million dollars (or, in pioneer dollars, $7) and Ginny is overly interested in the fact that the wig man buys hair and if you didn't see this plot twist coming a mile away, I don't know what to tell you. Also there's a scene where Laura steals Ma's mop and puts it on her head since they can't afford a wig and Ma and Pa totally laugh at her because she apparently caught Carrie's slowness that day, because seriously, a mop? So the day of the play, Ginny gives her mom a new dress and Ginny's mom thinks that Mr. Wakefield paid for it and refuses it like nice parenting, Ginny's mom, and way to not even notice that Ginny refuses to take off her bonnet. So Ginny's all crying and Mr. Wakefield comes upon her (doesn't he work?) and promises to get Ginny's mom to come to the play.

At the schoolhouse, Willie's group has to go first, and they're supposed to do Tom Sawyer but Willie couldn't steal any tobacco from the Mercantile to give his group members so they bail on him and dump paint on his head. Waa waaaaaaaaaah. Also, Willie comes into the school and totally drips paint all over the place and I don't know who had to clean that shit up but it better not have been Miss Beadle. Ginny's mom and Mr. Wakefield slip in after that. So then Laura's group goes and of course they are doing the scene where it's revealed that Jo sold her hair to help pay for Marmee's trip to see their father in the hospital and Laura was Beth and Mary was Marmee and Nellie was Meg and Ginny was Jo and no one was Amy so they couldn't even include the one good line where Amy tells Jo that her hair was her one beauty. So Ginny takes off her bonnet and she sold her hair to the wig man, surprise! And Mary and Laura are all breaking character and questioning her about her hair like nice professionalism there, Ingalls girls. And Nellie's the only one who's trying to keep the scene going but they tell her to stuff it and force Ginny to admit in front of the whole town that she sold her hair to pay for her mother's dress, like how is that good manners? Couldn't they have had that conversation privately? So Ginny's mother is all humbled and agrees to date Mr. Wakefield finally and everyone in town approves except probably Harriet who shelled out for Nellie's really expensive wig for no good reason and it doesn't even matter because Ginny is never seen nor heard from again so maybe Mr. Wakefield killed the whole family in their sleep or something. But it was awesome.