I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away

I think dressers just came with mirrors back then...even now, some of them.
I think May did her best work then too...she was always the "good" girl and this made her really spread her wings. When she went blind and started yelling, "I can't breath" I really felt that..how scary it must be.
I didn't think it was believable when they had her marry and have a baby, Mary was right, with 2 blind parents, it would be almost impossible to raise it well..you do need to see things.

In Little House tradition, they just had her lose them, by miscarriage snd burning in a fire but I feel they didn't need the wedding to have her work with Adam and the school...maybe when Adam got his sight back, it would have been more logical.

I cried watching part 1 today when Caroline and Laura said goodbye to Mary as she was heading off to the school. Mary breaks my heart when she begs Charles not to leave her at the blind school.

Missy really came into her own as an actress in this one. She was REALLY good!

I think for obvious reasons, Mary's character got a bit less time, but she was excellent in these shows, she captured the emotions many would feel very well, the shock, the reality, the depression, the hope. I thought her range of ability was greater than MG at the time. Just being the "good girl" is dull at times, but they gave her more meaty roles later, and Michael was so proud of her.
I agree with her when she said, later you saw Mary and thought "What awful thing is going to happen?" They lost 2 babies, fires, kicked out of their school, she suffered disappointment when her eyesight didn't return and then Adam's did. I'm not really sure where they ended up up but I wish they had one more special with Ma and Pa and everyone coming for a big aniv party or something.

Krissy wrote:

I wish at least they would of done few esp of of Mary being in the blind school.

I thought they should have done more episodes with Mary at the blind school as well.  Cramming it all into that one episode didn't seem to make much sense. I would have liked to see much more slow buildup to the scenes where Mary discovers Adam is also blind and would have been interesting to see what other things were taught at a blind school besides the touchstone stuff they showed in that 1 episode.  I don't know if I have a faulty memory about Part 2 having been much longer? when Mary was learning how to walk around....like there was an additional scene where Adam taught her to walk while feeling the sides of the walls?

I though it was so funny and strange later when when they compressed time again in Season 7 when Adam regained his sight in 1 episode and then 3 episodes later he's done with law school and ready to practice!

'I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away' was on today, and as I always do, I looked up the information on imdb.com for the actors, trivia and such.  I was a bit shocked to see that the young man who played Seth Barton, Robert Kenneally was born in 1940, making him 22 years older than MSA!  We've had discussions about Dean being 10 years older than MG and the awkwardness there when they had to do the kissing scene in 'Sweet Sixteen', but the awkwardness with MSA and Robert Kenneally has never been brought up.  Some might think it's no big deal, but when you see that he is only 4 years younger than Michael Landon and one month younger than Merlin Olsen, it makes you go, 'hmmmm....'

Wow! He looked really young in that episode.

I can't believe the actor was that much older! They sure made him look young to be able to fit the part. I wonder if he was perfect for the role and the crew decided to work with his age or if they couldn't find anyone else good enough for the role, that was closer to Melissa Sue Anderson's age.

A good ending to this episode with Mary going on to become a teacher.

I’ve been watching some episodes on Amazon Prime with an elderly lady I take care of. I took a break from watching for a while and read the Little House books. Today I started watching this episode. I am so disappointed at how melodramatic it is - so unlike the books and unlike how people in that time and culture acted. Not only would Pa not have cried in front of the doctor but he wouldn’t have lied to Mary for three weeks. The actors do a fine job of acting the parts in a series that has appealed to many people over the years, but it is very jarring after reading the books.

Rhonda wrote:

denaree wrote:

I’ve been watching some episodes on Amazon Prime with an elderly lady I take care of. I took a break from watching for a while and read the Little House books. Today I started watching this episode. I am so disappointed at how melodramatic it is - so unlike the books and unlike how people in that time and culture acted. Not only would Pa not have cried in front of the doctor but he wouldn’t have lied to Mary for three weeks. The actors do a fine job of acting the parts in a series that has appealed to many people over the years, but it is very jarring after reading the books.

Welcome to the forum, I hope you enjoy your time here. Things have been slow but hopefully will pick up more!

Whenever I watch any of the LH shows, whether the TV series or the made for TV movies, I have to clear my mind of Laura's books and/or the other books that I have read on her life in order to enjoy them.

I have found that when you read the books or watch the shows; whether it be the LHOTP series with Michael Landon or the LH movies that were made years later with Richard Thomas playing Pa Ingalls, you have to remember that Laura's books were written for children and a lot of things there are fiction since they needed to be toned down. Laura even combined 3 real people together to make one character in her books. You have to actually read the biographies and other books written about LIW and her life to get the TRUE story, even though one of the movies used "The True Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder" in the title. Michael Landon took a lot of liberties with the stories from LIW's books and put not only his own twist but that 'Hollywood' twist on them, as the made for TV movies did. Michael brought a LOT of his Bonanza drama to LH. He loved the emotions and the tears flowing...The first few episodes from ML's LHOTP series were more close to the books than the rest of the seasons...talk about Hollywood taking liberties with Laura's books and her life!  

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! It’s funny - my sister had a similar reply to me on social media. She said, “I enjoyed the series as a child. In one episode, Laura wanted a particular doll for Christmas, and she got a dictionary instead. The camera is facing her, with her eyes looking mournfully over the top of the dictionary. It was hysterical!
The trick is to mentally separate the book characters from the film versions. Robert Downey Jr. was a fun Victorian action star if you could forget that he was supposed to be Sherlock Holmes. Just be glad that we read the books first.” And I do have to say that my elderly patient, who is 92 and has dementia, seems to enjoy the episodes. That is almost all she watches. Sometimes I sneak Highway to Heaven on and say, “Look, there’s Pa! And look, there’s Mr. Edwards!”

Welcome to the prairie!

LauraIngallsfan wrote:

Welcome to the prairie!

Thanks!

I watched only part 1 tonight (and am recording part 2 on TV tomorrow), but I've seen the whole thing before. One thing I kind of wonder about is why they bothered to have the character of Seth be in this episode. Also, did Mary just completely forget about him when she was at the blind school? I know she yelled at him the last time he saw her, but it still seems like they didn't have any closure, unless there is more with him in part 2.

My thoughts about Seth would be to show how people act towards you and treat you when they find out that something has happened to you.  In this case, he was very interested in Mary until he found out she was going blind and would never be able to see again. Many people are unable to cope with these things and tend to withdraw.

This isn't just an idea in my head but I speak from experience...I went through cancer, twice...The first time through, I had a friend/neighbor whom I spoke with practically every day and/or saw every day. We even did some projects together. I had done some landscaping in my front yard, and she really liked how it looked and wanted me to help her do something similar in her yard. We worked on this project for about a month and she was very pleased with it...She had another friend that had come over and loved what I had done and wanted something in her yard as well. At this time, I was really feeling tired and run down (I hadn't been to a doctor yet and diagnosed with my cancer at this time) and wanted to pass on the project. My friend kept pressing me to help and I told her I knew she could do it since she was by my side the whole time we did her yard, if she had any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. She kept on and I agreed to help the best I could. We went to her friend's house to look the yard over, marked the shape the flowerbed would be, and got ideas about the plants her friend wanted to go in it. In the meantime, I had been going to the doctor since I kept feeling more and more run down. When I was diagnosed, I told my friend that I wasn't going to be able to finish helping her...surgery was coming up in just a few days from the diagnosis. Needless to say, I went on to have surgery, recovery, and start treatments without another word from my friend while she finished the project at her other friend's place.  

My point is...blindness is NOT contagious, neither is cancer...some people just can't handle being around people that are going through tragedies in their lives, and I'm guessing Seth AND my friend are examples of that. Perhaps they feel the sadness so much that they don't want to bring the one going through it, down...or, they can't handle the sadness themselves...It is hard to say, but I do understand Seth's character being shown as one who might not be able to handle things. As far as Mary forgetting him, I highly doubt it. She just knew she needed to concentrate on learning things from the blind school, put her past in the past, and move forward. You definitely find out who your true (real) friends are, that's for sure! Just my thoughts...  

Glad you are a survivor, Rhonda!

Yeah, I do think the writers were trying to show Seth as someone who could not handle Mary's blindness, but he did at least go back and see her (after Laura prompted him to). It could have been interesting to see him coming to grips with her blindness, but I still think she's better off with Adam. Maybe Mary realized that too and, like you said, needed to move ahead. I guess we just assume that Seth never likely inquired about her again or wanted to stay in contact with her. But I kind of wish there had been a scene where maybe Laura confronted him yet again and he said that he just couldn't handle having a blind woman for a girlfriend or even for a future wife or something like this, to bring some more closure to it. Perhaps the point is that sometimes there isn't really closure and those relationships just drop off in times of hardship.

I also think it was weird that Seth and his dad moved to Walnut Grove when they did and presumably had to move away right away. The timeline in this 2-part episode is not exactly clear.

I also don't think the actor who played Seth was all that much older than Mary and I think someone above may have seen another actor's bio with his same name or something. In real life, this actor was born in 1959 and Melissa Sue Anderson was born in 1962, so they were only about 3 years apart in age.