"JOURNEY IN THE SPRING"

“JOURNEY IN THE SPRING”


Charles' father, Lansford Ingalls, doesn't want to live after his wife dies. Charles brings his father to Walnut Grove to help him out. When Laura's horse gets hurt, she blames her grandpa. Lansford leaves because he feels really bad. Once Laura realizes that her grandpa wasn't to blame for the accident, she looks for Lansford and convinces him to come back home.

This was like a bitter-sweet esp.touching.

So sad to see Charles, hearing his mother passing away. I like part 2 better in this episode.

This is a sad one.

I thought Charles did a touching job with expressing his sadness over his mother's death and his feelings for his father. What I didn't like, (and there were many dark moments in LHOP) was the father trying to burn himself alive in his home....a bit upsetting to watch, an awful way to die and not a legacy to leave your family.

Michael seemed to have a fascination with being blind and fire. So many homes and barns burned over the years but this was upsetting to me because he wanted to kill himself and didn't care about his children enough or grandchildren. Hard to understand as a child.

Michael and Melissa did outstanding work in the episode. Charles should have made sure Laura was far away enough to where she couldn't hear him shoot Bunny. Michael Landon should have won an emmy for his great acting performances. It's sad he never won any awards for his outstanding acting. He played emotions well. I will always admire him and the shows he did. There will never be anyone like him. His daughter Jennifer inherited his acting genes. She's a great actress. Awesome that she won 3 daytime emmys for the role she played on As The World Turns. I miss that daytime drama.

I just watched this episode and I will never forgive Michael Landon for writing Bunny out of the series like this. Why does Bunny have to be severely hurt in an tragic accident and have to be killed? Especially after that big emotional race between Laura and Nellie a few episodes before. Why couldn't there just be a black horse on the Ingalls' farm forever?

At least it didn't happen in the books. Bunny went with Mr Hanson along with the mustangs.
It's an eye squirter allright, I can't even watch the scene with Bunny, I fast forward it.

I just watched this episode yesterday. There were parts that I didn't like as much, like when the grandma died, and when Bunny died, but overall I thought it was a good episode. Like other posters have mentioned, I thought that the acting was very good in this episode, especially from Charles and Laura. When Charles read the letter from his dad that said his mom had died, his acting was about as real as it can get.

Part 2 was definitely my favorite of the two parts. I enjoyed the part where Isaiah sat down in the tree and talked to Laura... and where she said she was going to go tell grandpa sorry. But my favorite part of all was the ending when Laura had gone and found her grandpa at the train station. I love how she uses the same tactics that the grandpa had used on Charles in the earlier flashback to get him to come home with here. She really thought that whole acting of going to run away to Boston up on the fly! I also loved the part where Charles and Isaiah found Laura and grandpa walking home.... perfect ending!

I don't really love this episode......it's okay, but something about it rubs me the wrong way. I'm not even sure exactly what. I think that it tries to deal with so many things, too many, even though it is a 2-parter. I think that having the whole Bunny incident as a part of it was unnecessary, too. To me, something like that should have encompassed a whole episode. I also don't really understand what Charles' Pa was going to do by going back to the Big Woods....was he going to rebuild his house which presumably was now in ashes? I kind of would have liked to see him reunited with Peter and Peter's wife and family in a good way. And I would have liked to see Charles and Peter have a happier reunion. If we could have seen Charles go back with his Pa at the end to the Big Woods and have a nice reunion with Peter I think that I may like this episode a bit more than I did.

bestshowever wrote:

I just watched this episode and I will never forgive Michael Landon for writing Bunny out of the series like this. Why does Bunny have to be severely hurt in an tragic accident and have to be killed? Especially after that big emotional race between Laura and Nellie a few episodes before. Why couldn't there just be a black horse on the Ingalls' farm forever?

At least it didn't happen in the books. Bunny went with Mr Hanson along with the mustangs.
It's an eye squirter allright, I can't even watch the scene with Bunny, I fast forward it.

I agree that it seems too quick to write Bunny out. We had not even heard of or seen Bunny since Season One I think, then suddenly she(?) is a major part of two episodes and now she is already dead? I don't think this was necessary and think there could have been some other promise not kept by Grandpa Ingalls to bring the episode to a head.

I do think Laura was quite defiant in this episode.....I can understand she was so upset over Bunny when she kept telling her Pa "no" but I don't know if she really would have gotten away with something like that back in that day. But then stealing the family money?? Also, how did she even know how to get to Springfield and how on earth could she have made it there on foot and apparently part of the way home before Pa and Mr. Edwards even arrived? Is Springfield really that close to Walnut Grove?

I looked up the real Laura Ingalls Wilder’s grandma, when she died. Her Pa’s ma. Died on October 18, 1883. Laura Ingalls was 16 when her grandma Ingalls passed away.

Thanks for that information. So the episode played kind of loose with the historical timeline, as Laura definitely is not 16 in this episode.

amyk wrote:

Thanks for that information. So the episode played kind of loose with the historical timeline, as Laura definitely is not 16 in this episode.

You’re welcome. It got me thinking, did her grandma passed away, when she was 8, in that episode. I looked it up.