He Was Only Twelve

true enough

Vanesa wrote:

jes9 wrote:

The first part of this episode contains Carrie's last line of the series: "What are you going to spend it all on, James?"

At least , it was a half-intelligent line. Generally, her lines were very baby-like, extremely poor...

Vanesa.

You mean like, "I have to go to the outhouse."

I wasn't crazy about this episode. I didn't remember part 1. I remebmer part 2 at the end. Cause, remember the big altar.

jes9 wrote:

I wish all of the kids could have come back for "The Last Farewell", and Mrs. Oleson too. I really missed Mrs. Oleson in the "season 10" movies. It would have been nice to have seen Mary, Adam, Nellie, and Percival again too. Unfortunately, the reality was many cast members were unavailable after the show ended and they decided to do the movies.

I totally agree with you

I did not care for the second part of this episode.....I found it to be boring and unbelievable.
But I can see why Michael Landon did what he did based on a few of the comments in this thread.

Strange that Charles was determined to make sure James isn't going to die and going as far as to leaving his wife and children behind and building an altar to pray for a miracle for James. He didn't do all that when Albert was dying from a blood disease. He wouldn't accept that James was dying, but he accepted it that Albert was dying. James went from being close to death, then a lightning bolt strikes and he's suddenly cured.

I don't like how he blew everyone off that tried reasoning with him by trying to get him to accept James wouldn't get better.

I think he understood Albert's disease but not James's coma. Since Michael Landon's daughter was in a coma and they said she wouldn't know things (and she did hear him) and he always believed that, he wanted to put that faith in this show. He asked God to help her and again, I feel he wanted to put that into the show with James.
You never saw Albert die, but I'm sure he would have been prayed for, but Charles did say he would have faith whether James lived or not. I suppose that would have to apply to Albert also.

I have mixed feelings about this two-parter. (And what is it with James and the miracles - first we had the miracle of the wild dog/wolf in NO BEAST SO FIERCE, but that seems like it was just warm-up for this episode...) I feel that it was strange that this was a two-parter because the two parts seemed practically unrelated to one another, other than the fact that the first part created the injury from which James needed to be healed.

I thought it strange in the first part that Charles, Mr. Edwards, and Albert all just up and left poor James potentially dying in a strange town with no family around him. I would think that Charles would be focused on James and if the bad guys got away, so be it. And I know COZI-TV cuts out stuff, so was there more to Coy's son getting the gun out of the drawer? I thought he was going to end up shooting himself with it, but I didn't see anything more than him taking the gun and blowing of his mom. And that guy Coy was sure a winner, wasn't he? His line about women only being good for childbearing was one thing, but then he said they should die giving birth!! But his poor wife must have been so mistreated by him that she even said "Amen" to that! All in all, I really didn't like this first part of HE WAS ONLY TWELVE.

As for part two, I'm not sure what I think. I am a follower of Jesus, and I do certainly believe that God can grant a miracle. So I don't really take issue with the miracle aspect. But I feel that this kind of thing was handled in a more compelling way in the episode THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD. I mean, I assume that Jonathan in that episode is an angel, sent to care for Laura. And the whole thing with her little cross falling off and being found by Charles is a miracle. It was just so much more subtle than this big altar, the lightning bolt, etc. which we had in part two of this episode. And the old man kind of creeped me out, going to Mr. Edwards in the storm like that. I actually didn't understand why on earth Mr. Edwards and Caroline would be heading out in a storm and at night anyway.....if Charles has already been out there for days, what difference would waiting until daylight make? It was somewhat interesting to see how the townspeople dealt with Charles, from Doc Baker, to Mr. Oleson, to Revd. Alden. I kind of feel like this episode was a set-up or a preliminary for HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN!

Anyway, although James and Cassandra are, in my opinion, unnecessary additions to the show, I don't hate them or anything, and it was good that James recovered. I almost would have rather though that this episode be about Albert when Albert and Pa came back to Walnut Grove and Albert had leukemia.

Also realizing that this is the last episode with the whole family makes me kind of irritated that the episode focused mainly on just Charles and James. I would have preferred an episode about the whole family together, or if it had to feature just one of the children, I think it should have featured Carrie, since she was the only one of the children there from the beginning....she could have been the one to get shot in Sleepy Eye and been in need of the miracle!

I do think it was a good touch for us, as viewers, to learn that Charles would not lose his faith even if James had died. And once Charles himself learned that, it seemed that was the time that God was willing to go ahead and heal James.