Little House: "I Do, Again"

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 on the Prairie. Shout-out to my peeps in the Little House thread, even if they don't like to read my recaps! Holla! Anyway, in this episode, Laura announces that she's pregnant, and then Ma is like, "Hey, me too!" which I found kind of creepy but I guess in those days, when people got married at, like, sixteen, it would have been a lot more common, because no one is really shocked or grossed out. So Pa is all fired up because he thinks he might finally get a son, which is kind of rude to Albert, because even though he is adopted, they always made a point of telling him that he was an Ingalls and shit. So then Ma goes to Doc Baker to find out when she's due, and I'm glad I don't live in Walnut Grove, where you go to the same doctor for a cough, a broken leg, and a pregnancy test. Although now that I think about it, I only had one doctor growing up.

(Sidebar: My brother and I were asking my mom a few months ago why she never took us to a pediatrician as kids; we just went to the regular doctor in town. She said that she took one of us (couldn't remember which one) to a pediatrician once, and the pediatrician said that one of us had a heart murmur. So instead of, you know, getting that checked out, my mom just never went back to that pediatrician. And she still doesn't remember if it was my brother or me. My mom is crazy.)

Anyway, Doc Baker is like, "You're not pregnant." And Ma insists that she's missed two cycles, and Doc Baker tells her that she's going through the change, except he doesn't even say "the change" or "menopause" and I remember watching this episode when I was a little kid, and I totally didn't know what in the hell was going on, and I think I asked my mom, and given the story referenced above, I doubt I got a satisfactory answer.

So Ma begs Doc Baker not to tell Pa, and promises to tell him herself in time. So Ma practically has a nervous breakdown on the way home because she doesn't think Pa will love her anymore because she's not "a whole woman." So then Doc Baker finds out that Ma hasn't told Pa yet and he basically blackmails her into telling him, like, what business is it of Doc Baker's anyway? And I guess they didn't have doctor/patient confidentiality on the prairie. So then Albert runs and gets Pa at work and says that Ma is crying in bed, so Pa rushes home and Ma lies and says that she lost the baby. So Pa goes to see Doc Baker, for some unknown reason, and Doc Baker is like, "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you earlier," and Pa is no slouch in the brains department so he figures out that Ma was never pregnant at all, and Doc Baker explains why Ma lied. So then Pa goes and sees Laura, and she tells him to prove to Ma that he still loves her, like, isn't Laura a little too involved in her parents' marriage? So Pa decides to take Ma out of town on a vacation to go to a wedding of the son of their childhood friends. And on the way, they stop and camp out because there was no Motel 6 back then, and Pa makes up this whole story about how he didn't even know if he wanted the baby because he would be an old dad, and he was looking forward to having alone time with Ma, and she says she was feeling the same way, and I guess they had a change of heart about two seasons later when they adopted James and Cassandra, and meanwhile, they still have Grace who's, like, two, so there isn't going to be any alone time for a while, but whatever. So then they meet their friends and the friends' family, and then they go to see Ma's childhood home and Ma goes up to her old bedroom window and Pa climbs up the trellis and they reminisce about how Pa proposed right there, and then the trellis breaks and Pa goes crashing to the ground, but he's okay. And then they decide to renew their vows, like, did people even do that back then? So then the son of the childhood friend asks Ma and Pa to make it a double wedding, and if there's anything gayer than a double wedding, it's a double wedding where one couple is renewing their vows. So Ma and Pa renew their vows and Ma is happy once again and totally forgets that she's a barren shell of a woman, and everyone is happy. Which is awesome.