"Look Back To Yesterday"

I don't know if this episode already has its own topic on here, but it was one of the three special episodes Michael Landon made after the end of the 9th season. this is the episode where Albert found out he was dying of a rare blood disease, right after he decides he wants to be a doctor. this episode made me cry because Albert was definitley one of my favorite characters on the show. though the episode never says whether or not Albert does die, it was still a very touching episode. it was nice to see Albert and Charles back in Walnut Grove after not really being in any episodes for most of Season 9

An excellent episode! It has a very unusual plot and turns out to take a serious situation and turn it into something very triumphant.

after watching the end of Home Again, I'm a little confused with this episode! at the end of Home Again, Laura says that Albert came back to Walnut Grove years later as Doctor Albert Ingalls. Then, in Look Back To Yesterday, Albert finds out that he has a rare blood disease, and that he will most likely die from it. I wish it had been clearer as to what happened with Albert! did anyone else pick up on this?

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after watching the end of Home Again, I'm a little confused with this episode! at the end of Home Again, Laura says that Albert came back to Walnut Grove years later as Doctor Albert Ingalls. Then, in Look Back To Yesterday, Albert finds out that he has a rare blood disease, and that he will most likely die from it. I wish it had been clearer as to what happened with Albert! did anyone else pick up on this?

It's one of those writing inconsistencies, like Almanzo's two nephews turning into his one niece, or Jimmy Hill turning into Jeremy Dodds. It's annoying. I guess what happened is the writers just forgot what they had written, or they had different writers and nobody bothered to go back and check for consistency. To be fair, at the time they probably had no idea so many people would be watching these episodes decades later and analyzing them. There's been some discussion of this particular inconsistency with Albert. One possible explanation is that Albert didn't really die. As I recall, Look Back To Yesterday ends with Laura, Albert, and the students climbing the hill, so it's possible a cure was found or Albert somehow recovered. I guess if it happened to James, it could happen to Albert.

that is true, but watching the end credits for this episode, when they were showing all the pictures of Albert, it gave me the feeling that they wanted you to think he had died. anyways, I think this episode will always be a tearjerker for me, no matter how many times I watch it!

Ok i got like 20 min. into this and had to turn it off. Even the thought of Albert dying made me cry!

ingallsfan2008 wrote:

after watching the end of Home Again, I'm a little confused with this episode! at the end of Home Again, Laura says that Albert came back to Walnut Grove years later as Doctor Albert Ingalls. Then, in Look Back To Yesterday, Albert finds out that he has a rare blood disease, and that he will most likely die from it. I wish it had been clearer as to what happened with Albert! did anyone else pick up on this?

I was woundering the same thing!!

Who knows if Albert actually dies? During "The Last Farewell" they refer to the "children" back in the city (who are sorry about Walnut Grove being taken over) without mentioning them by name.

david wrote:

Who knows if Albert actually dies? During "The Last Farewell" they refer to the "children" back in the city (who are sorry about Walnut Grove being taken over) without mentioning them by name.

true! I've only watched about it once, and I don't think I picked up on it until now. but even if Albert did die, I'm glad it was in the third to last episode of the show, instead of something like the third to last season!

Let's hold hope from that voice over at the conclusion of "Home Again" that Albert did survive, became a doctor, returned to Walnut Grove, beat up Lassiter and his Army, and had a thriving practice full of satisfied patients and buckets of apples. : )

There was a thread a while back about the same actor playing multiple roles, and I don't remember this being mentioned there. I just noticed another one while watching Look Back To Yesterday. The actor who played Vance Reed, Miss Plum's fiance, was Cooper Huckabee, who also played Herman in Troublemaker. Herman was the student in Miss Beadle's class who kept dropping his book and disrupting the class. He's also the one who was late to class because his "cow was birthin'".

He was great in that "Troublemaker" episode. Really put that right wing teacher in his place.

*sigh*

why did albert have to leave?? at least they didn't show him literally "go" in that episode, that would've been even harder to watch. I'm gonna say that he recovered, lived on, and became an amazing doctor!! this may help you understand the whole episode and Albert being a doctor in 10 years.... in Matt's 2007 interview, he said they didnt actually show Albert die, so it was up to the fans to decide. Albert lives!!

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Why not? According to the ending of "Home Again" he was supposed to have returned to Walnut Grove as Dr. Albert Ingalls anyway!

If he can survive being addicted to morphine, then he can survive that blood disease.

It's hard, but in fact you are able to survive any drug adiction. Leukemia, back then, was really a mortal illness. Nowadays, you can cure some kind of leukemias. Others, are still very hard to cope with, and even mortal ones.

Vanesa.

I've always felt that Albert died, and that this was an inconsistency caused by shooting the movie after the episode where the narration says he came back.

I think they want you to think he died.least that how it feels what happens.

I don't remember ever doubting that he died until reading on this forum....and actually, to me, it may be a more meaningful episode if he did die. I just think that we can forget the narration which says he came back to Walnut Grove, since there was no Walnut Grove to come back to anyway....or at least all the people would have had to move and come back again and rebuild everything yet again.....and we don't get the impression at the end of THE LAST FAREWELL that anything like that would happen (if it was really "the last farewell" I guess I take that to mean the farewell to Walnut Grove).

But I guess we can all decide however we want....a lot of TV series have many inconsistencies, I suspect. I'm sure the way that the shows are put together makes consistency mistakes a lot harder to realize than for those of us watching them in order. They may be filming multiple episodes at the same time, even, if they only need certain actors or certain sets. And then, too, if the show was only on once a week, you would not be so likely to notice inconsistencies. But with the advent of VCRs and DVDs, and some of us can have marathon watching of our favorite series, so it is very easy for us to notice inconsistencies.

Even soap operas, which are supposed to be continuing stories, probably have lots of inconsistencies.

[b]I think everybody is making to much of the episode that says Albert would return as Doctor Ingalls. That is what Albert was PLANNING to do, and would have if he had not gotten sick.
I get a kick out of Melissa Gilbert saying that no one on the show had a realtionship with Charles like Half Pint did.
I think he loved Albert every bit as much as he did Laura. And MAYBE even a teenie bit more because he ALWAYS wanted a son. Matt was my favorite character in the show, and always will be. That boy could act and could rip your heart out. When he told Charles he wanted to go back to Walnut Grove because that's where he became Albert Ingalls, it was all over for me.

This episode is sooo tear-jerking...
I still can't work out if died or lived..?

sweetheart wrote:

Too me i get the vibe he died....but the show kind of ened with too many lose ends.

I agree.......