For the love of nancy

Nancy was so mean in this one.I want to smack her. Poor guy really liked her. She just used him.Glad at the end he knew the true her.It's never nice making fun of over weight people. Glad they all said sorry at the end and made up.good message in this one.

I saw this yesterday.....Nancy is so mean.....Good episode though

They never gave Nancy ONE redeeming value...kind of odd. There wasn't a show when she was even a little kind...no "tinker jones" type of episodes where she would even work with someone else. She kind of scared me, it was like she was void of empathy.

littlehouselover wrote:

They never gave Nancy ONE redeeming value...kind of odd. There wasn't a show when she was even a little kind...no "tinker jones" type of episodes where she would even work with someone else. She kind of scared me, it was like she was void of empathy.

Yes. That's odd. She is ALWAYS mean. And this is not common in "Little House", a show in which everyone has something kind to show...

Vanesa.

I never understood that...and felt sorry for the actress. Maybe she didn't mind, but I'm sure she was not well liked and I don't recall seeing her again.

I think if they made her not so scary, she might have been lovable...she wasn't normal and there weren't shrinks in Walnut Grove.

Elmer actually reminds me of a boy I remember back in school. This guy ask me to a jr high dance and sadly he was very hurt when I said no. I saw him years later and he had lost a lot of weight that I didn't even recognize him! Poor guy

this was a great episode. The young man that played Elmer was quite the actor!

littlehouselover wrote:

They never gave Nancy ONE redeeming value...kind of odd. There wasn't a show when she was even a little kind...no "tinker jones" type of episodes where she would even work with someone else. She kind of scared me, it was like she was void of empathy.

This is interesting, as I never saw Nancy this was. But now that you mention it, she mostly was like that, void of empathy. Hmmm, not a good realization for me as a Nancy fan. I do remember an episode or maybe two where she at least had facial expressions of empathy over something. I have to re-watch to recall which eps they were.

I like that Nancy just had to walk a few steps to be home, as opposed to the three miles the Ingalls have to walk. I would definitely want to live in town.

I never realized either that Nancy was never given any really 'good' qualities. She made fun of an overweight boy, she got Cassandra and other students into trouble at school, and she locked a girl in the icehouse because Albert was interested in the girl instead of Nancy herself. Now that I think about it, I do feel just a bit sorry for Nancy, and I suppose for the characters that had to be on the receiving end of her actions!

ingallsfan2008 wrote:

I never realized either that Nancy was never given any really 'good' qualities.

That always bothered me. With Nellie, you saw that sometimes she could be less than nasty. She had more human moments. And once she met Percival, she changed. Nancy was manipulative in such a way that you could never push aside her evil ways. I don't know why they did that to her character.

bethandmanly wrote:

ingallsfan2008 wrote:

I never realized either that Nancy was never given any really 'good' qualities.

That always bothered me. With Nellie, you saw that sometimes she could be less than nasty. She had more human moments. And once she met Percival, she changed. Nancy was manipulative in such a way that you could never push aside her evil ways. I don't know why they did that to her character.

I always felt that Nellie was just plain mean, aiming to hurt people's feelings plain and simple. Nancy seems to me to have a very very high opinion of herself and is mean for her own best interest, not just for the heck of it. Nellie was a just-for-the-heck-of-it kind of character.

Indeed! I enjoyed the hilarious moments that writers gave to Nancy, but I would like to see her more "humanized". Why did the writers ever give the same possibility to be nice to Nancy than to Nellie?

Vanesa.

Nancy="Little Sociopath on the Prairie." Nellie was a spoiled brat, and she was kid-mean. And it was something she grew out of after meeting Percival. Nancy was just a plain sociopath with no empathy, no kindness, no emotions, nothing. Clearly a severe narcisisstic personality too. Hope a psychologist got to her before she could axe-murder a whole town.

Ok, getting back to the episode. This was an excellent episode in establishing boundries. Elmer didn't know what healthy boundaries were. He thought, "Ok, they're laughing at me because I'm fat, so I'll eat with a fork in each hand and make them really laugh. See they accept me!"

When Albert and the kids from school went to have a talk with him, that got him to see he needed to establish healthy boundaries. And I love it when he still ran to school, and was trying to lose weight.

Yes! It sure had a good storyline in it,

Nancy was mean to Elmer. She only wanted him as a boyfriend to do stuff for her. I was happy when he told her she has to do things on her own from now on.

I think the writers went overboard making Nancy so mean. Mrs. Oleson didn't want to punish Nancy or see the bad in her. The one episode Nancy wasn't real mean was The Legend Of Black Jake. She did seem to feel bad her parents were being held captive. I'm happy Nels stood ground and said no about her getting a pet rabbit for Easter in The Last Farewell considering she had one before and starved it to death by not feeding it.

This episode makes a good point at the end, but there's a lot I really don't like about it. #1 thing I don't like about it is Nancy. I really do not like that they wrote this character into the series as a Nellie wanna-be. Maybe this is not the place to discuss that. Maybe I should make a character thread about Nancy if there isn't one. I think the actress does a fine job, so it isn't about her. It's about the character. For some reason, it was fun watching Nellie be snotty and mean but, to me, it is just grating to watch Nancy be a mean, lying brat. And if I had to hear hear yell "ELLLLLLMERRRRR!" one more time, I might want to throw something at the TV!

I also don't like the way Elmer's mother pushes the younger son to eat and does not seem at all concerned about Elmer's weight. She even kind of seems proud of him being overweight. Can't she realize how harmful it is to him???

I also am disappointed in Willie somewhat in this episode, especially when Elmer comes to the Oleson's house to eat and Willie eggs him on to eat quickly. It seemed that Willie was growing up, but in this episode he seems to have taken a step back more towards immaturity.

I also don't like how it seems that the writers wanted to re-create the Nellie-Laura feuding with Nancy and Cassandra. Cassandra and James are other characters that I do not really care for, but probably Cassandra even more than James because she seemed to take over a role that I think should have been reserved for Carrie. It's like Cassandra was pushed to the forefront and Carrie has to take even more of a back seat than before. Again, this is nothing against the actors, just about the characters and the writers!

Anyway, I did tear up when Elmer read his essay about friendship, and I'm glad that most of the kids seemed to learn a lesson. The outstanding character of this episode, to me, besides Elmer, is Doc Baker! I think he's so sweet to be so encouraging to Elmer when Elmer lost 12 pounds. And of course so opposite of that brat Nancy. I'm so glad Elmer didn't give up on trying to lose weight and I do like how he is running around at the end of the episode, in an apparent effort to continue his weight loss.

littlehouselover wrote:

They never gave Nancy ONE redeeming value...kind of odd. There wasn't a show when she was even a little kind...no "tinker jones"  type of episodes where she would even work with someone else. She kind of scared me, it was like she was void of empathy.

That's how I feel about the Nancy character as well. With Nellie, I did sometimes feel empathy for her, and also we understand why she was the way she was, due to her mother. But Nancy just seems evil to me....she even uses Mrs. Oleson and whines to her all the time. She seemed like "the bad seed" or something. And she wasn't even fun like Nellie was. She kind of seemed like a sociopath or something to me.

Alice Garvey wrote:

Elmer actually reminds me of a boy I remember back in school. This guy ask me to a jr high dance and sadly he was very hurt when I said no. I saw him years later and he had lost a lot of weight that I didn't even recognize him! Poor guy

this was a great episode. The young man that played Elmer was quite the actor!

I thought Elmer really did have a cute face and smile. And he was a good actor. I wonder if it would have been really difficult to play that kind of a part.....even though they were acting, he had to take the brunt of all those kids' jokes about his weight.

Sadly, I just discovered that J. Brennan Smith, who played Elmer, died in 2007. He was just 36 years old.