Little House: "Survival"

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 thanks to the Little House on the Prairie marathon on the Hallmark Channel. I actually saw an episode I've never seen before! So that in and of itself was awesome. In this episode, the Ingalls family is coming back from a big trip to Mankato. These three dudes ride up on horseback, and one of them is the Sheriff from Sleepy Eye. They're looking for the last member of the Sioux tribe, a guy named Lame Horse. Which is more like Lame Name, since it doesn't exactly inspire confidence. The Sheriff wants to kills Lame Horse. Also, the Sheriff warns the Ingalls family that a blizzard is coming, and since this was before the days of Triple Doppler radar, he knows it because his foot got frostbitten twice and now it tells him when snow is coming. Pa scoffs at this, because it's way too late in the year for a blizzard. So next thing you know, it's a total blizzard and the Ingalls family holes up in a conveniently abandoned house. Pa goes out to chop some wood for the fire, and his horse is like, "Neigh!" and Pa's like, "What's up?" and the horse is like, "Neigh, neigh!" and Pa figures the horse is on crack but we know it means that Lame Horse is nearby. So Pa comes back with the wood and he and Ma have a conversation about how they don't have much food left and things are tense. So the next day, Pa goes out hunting and gets a deer but it's still a total blizzard so he falls down in the snow. Meanwhile, the Sheriff (who totally knew there was a blizzard coming but ignored it for some unknown reason) stumbles into the Ingalls's temporary housing, and Ma helps him warm up and feeds him, even though he's totally creepy. So then Lame Horse finds Pa and brings him to the house and the Sheriff makes Ma tie Lame Horse up even though Lame Horse saved Pa's life. That night, while everyone is sleeping, Lame Horse totally uses the fire to burn through his ropes and escape. Awesome! So then the next morning, the Sheriff is all pissed off and yells, and Pa gives him this totally anachronistic speech about loving other people despite their racial differences, like, somehow Pa was the Martin Luther King of his day. And then Pa has to go out to the barn to shoot one of the horses so that they have food, and he's all sad about it and the horse is like, "Neigh?" and Pa is like, "Sorry, dude." And then Lame Horse comes back and drops off a deer for the Ingalls family. But the Sheriff sees Lame Horse walking away and totally shoots him but not fatally, and Ma nurses Lame Horse back to health because all he needed was to get his Ingalls on and he's all better. And Pa shames the Sheriff into giving up his bloodthirsty hunt and then the storm stops and they all go home. And the horse was like, "Awesome! I totally lived!"