"THE MUSIC BOX"

“THE MUSIC BOX”


Laura befriends a timid classmate named Anna, whose excessive stuttering negatively impacts her ability to make friends. Laura stands by the girl's side when she is excluded from Nellie's elite new club, but matters are complicated when Laura is caught stealing Nellie's music box. Nellie agrees not to tell anyone, but she has some ulterier motives of her own that may threaten Laura's friendship with Anna. Terrified of the disappointment her parents will feel if they find out her secret, Laura goes along with Nellie's game--but when it hits a dangerous level, Laura must use her own moral judgment to resolve the problems caused.
















I like this episode. A great one for Nellie to shine as the Prairie Brat lol. Nellie went overboard in this episode and she specially looked evil sucking on one of those candies in Laura's dreams! lol
I really felt bad for Laura in this one. She didn't know what to do, she didn't want Nellie to tell her parents she had stolen something. Most of all, I felt sorry for Anna. She tried so hard to fit in in the last scene when Nellie was trying to make her say something she couldn't... my heart just breaks when she can't even make sounds come out of her mouth anymore. Laura came through in the end though.
Great episode!

This is one of my favorited ones. It teaches us all a good lesson in friendship. & how telling the truth and being honest can be hard at times,but sometimes it's best.

I felt bad for Anna.all she want was some friends.Least at the end it turned out good, boy was Nellie a little brat.I want to slap her lol

@Sweetskrissy Yes, Nellie a little brat in this episode. I want slap her too.


very good lesson about from telling the truth to lying about it.

Laura's other crazy dream.


the funny scene in this episode. After Laura's dream, (The one where Laura & the other cell mates were getting the scamp foods on the floor. Laura is pounding on the wall, in the loft. Shouting I want more food. Mary, is asking Laura what she was doing. Charles calls up to them, what's going on. Laura telling Mary not to tell.


I think, this is what they say: ("m going by memory)

Mary: *thinking of excuse to lie.* Laura fell out of the bed.

Charles: Laura, you all right?

Laura: Yes, Pa.

Charles: Good, go back to bed.

I love this episode!!!!!!!!

Dad got me season 3 for an early B'day pressy....

My little brother watched this episode an said to Dad, " Hey Dad! Laura had a stupid dream that she was in prison and Mrs. Oleson is feeding them nuts!!!" lol... I think its more like popcorn...


Nellie is Prairie Brat in this one!!!!!!!!

This is a great episode, one of my favorites. It has great moral lessons that can be very helpful for kids (and adults too for that matter).

I want to slap her too.lol

Me too, Krissy...

Poor Anna though!!!!!

I think it's bread crumbs, Ruth. Wow what dreams of terrifying things. They are kind of fun to watch,but show how Laura terrible felt.

jes9 wrote:

This is a great episode, one of my favorites. It has great moral lessons that can be very helpful for kids (and adults too for that matter).

agree

I really liked this episode.......Nellie sure did shine in this one

Ruth wrote:

Me too, Krissy...

Poor Anna though!!!!!

Felt bad for her

I liked parts of this, I thought the dreams were a bit weird (hanging??) Anna was sweet and I thought it was good to show the different reactions with Nellie, Charles and Caroline and Mary being upset with Laura, Anna's hurt, Laura's anguish.
I do think that although Laura taking the music box was wrong and she did go through a lot, it was made light of to some degree. What if it didn't break, would Charles just have heard it playing in the barn loft and then asked her what that was? Then what? The Anna angle softened the stealing part but the fact was, she took it being upset over a more practical present and whether Nellie cared about it was not a factor. It wasn't a living thing like Bunny. She might as well took all her dolls too!
That said, I have empathy but it reminds me when James took the razor, no matter what, stealing is wrong, what Nellie did was awful, but it was Laura that went along with it.

I thought this episode was great.. it teaches a good lesson in that stealing is wrong, and lying is wrong as well. It also teaches in the end that you should tell the truth and don't wait. Laura was scared that she could go to jail or worse if anyone found out what she had done... That's why when Nellie found out, Laura was desperate enough to say she would do anything that Nellie wanted if she wouldn't tell anyone. That's when Nellie makes her do all sorts of awful things including hurting her friend Anna's feelings. The nightmares that Laura has every night show how much pain and suffering she was going through because she hadn't told the truth. After Nellie had set it up for Laura to hurt Anna's feelings, Laura couldn't take it anymore and went and talked to Anna. Then she went and confessed to her family what she had done... I like how Charles said that the punishment would be up to Nels. Then in the morning they went over to see Nels... After Laura tells him what she did, Nels says "Well, I can't condone stealing, but I think you've been punished enough."
It was nice to see Laura and Anna as friends again in the end! Great ending to the episode!

Laura tends to get out of punishment a lot though. She stole something and although Nellie "made her" do things, she was old enough to know better. She knew she could work off the money at the store or whatever but it made better drama this way.
I always thought Mary should have punished with the barn fire too, not hit, but punished. That wasn't a little thing, the whole barn and animals could have died and she could have been hurt too.

littlehouselover wrote:

I always thought Mary should have punished with the barn fire too, not hit, but punished. That wasn't a little thing, the whole barn and animals could have died and she could have been hurt too.

Mary was punished.  After all that studying she did, Ma wouldn't let her take the test that was given.  Instead, she wrote a note to Miss Beadle telling her why she wasn't allowed to take the test.

littlehouselover wrote:

Laura tends to get out of punishment a lot though. She stole something and although Nellie "made her" do things, she was old enough to know better. She knew she could work off the money at the store or whatever but it made better drama this way.

But she was punished... her punishment was all of the pain and suffering that she ended up going through before she told her parents. They could see that she had been through a lot, and decided that Nels would determine the punishment for Laura. Laura even told Nels that she would do anything to pay for it (like work off the money at the store). Nels also recognized what she had gone through, and thought that was enough of a punishment. Doesn't sound like she was trying to get out of any punishment to me.

Savannah wrote:

I agree. It wasn't as if Laura was merely sorry that she got caught, or something like that - she was repentant for what she had done. And she learned her lesson, because she never did that again.  

Right Savannah! She hated what she had done, and the only reason she didn't confess to her parents sooner was because she was scared that she could go to jail what what she did... After she suffered and suffered (her dreams indicated just how much this was bothering her conscience), she finally couldn't take it anymore. She gets home and doesn't wait to tell them, and she tells Charles that she is willing to take her punishment. That is when Charles says that would be up to Nels. So she willingly confessed, without her parents having to find out from someone else. She was definitely repentant for what she had done, and never did that again. Punishing her more at that point would be wrong in my opinion. If her parents had found out what she had done and she wasn't sorry than that would be different.

I always thought that this ranked up there as one of the sweetest episodes ever done on Little House. When Anna tells Laura that if she had a doll, she would call it Laura because she was so nice to her, it really got to me. Katy Kurtzman was cast perfectly for that show. Just as she was in " I Remember".

It's a good thing I wasn't Michael Landon. I would have made them ALL regulars! Katy Kurtzman, Rachel Longaker.....the list goes on and on.....

I've never wanted to punch a child in the head as much as I did when Nellie made fun of Anna's stutter.

Rob wrote:

I've never wanted to punch a child in the head as much as I did when Nellie made fun of Anna's stutter.

Funny you should say that.......To this day, it is hard for me to watch that scene of Nellie making fun of her. Of all of the stuff she pulled, that to me was the cruelest....

It was difficult for the actress to do that scene. Sometimes it is harder to realize that something is just fictional because of strong implication of what can and does unfortunately occur too often in real life.

david wrote:

It was difficult for the actress to do that scene. Sometimes it is harder to realize that something is just fictional because of strong implication of what can and does unfortunately occur too often in real life.

Unfortunately you are spot on David. Never understood how a human being can be capable of that. I was sure no saint when I was a kid, but that kind of thing was off limits for me.....

Davetucson wrote:

Funny you should say that.......To this day, it is hard for me to watch that scene of Nellie making fun of her. Of all of the stuff she pulled, that to me was the cruelest....

Very true... that scene really showed Nellie's true colors!