A Wiser Heart

I like this episode quite a bit...Especially Laura pushing that legalistic,grumpy woman in the leftover scrap barrel !!!! I loved seeing Leslie Landon in this one too.

The only thing I really couldn't stand in this episode is how they changed Eliza Jane's character. She became jealous of everything Laura has and acted like a real jerk. It seems they were out to make her bad guy once she was out of Walnut Grove. She didn't act very well in Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow either.

Yeah. Eliza Jane isn't normally like that.

And the whole Harve Miller deception was never really worked out either. I think Eliza Jane said she would later write to Laura and Almanzo and explain that it didn't work out with Harve, but it seems that word would have gotten out that Harve actually married somebody else and that Eliza Jane would have had to come clean on the whole thing.

Maybe they just all agreed not to talk about it, but it is the strangest thing.

I liked and enjoyed this episode. I just didn't like how Eliza Jane acted in the episode. I want slap her for her being a bit childish. Glad and the end she saw the why she acted was wrong and her and laura made up.That teacher was a umm "jerk"(nice why to say it.) lol. Liked at the end the other guy pushed the teacher and told him off. LOL

Does anybody out there know whether or not that final confrontational scene in the classroom was based on something that happened in real life? (After all, it is supposed to be a writing class--and the episode was obviously written by a writer.) Let me know. Thanks.

Interesting to note that the school scenes in this episode was shot
right in the middle of the University of Arizona campus. It was shot
in front of the "Old Main" building that has been there since the
late 1800's. Amazing how they can shoot tight shots right in
the middle of a modern university........
Just Thought I would Share Some Trashy Trivia!

I love trivia.......very interesting Dave

What happened to Laura has happened to many women and still does..that was done well. Professors could be controlling and it takes a strong woman to stand up to them. I didn't like how they made Eliza Jane go from a pious God-fearing woman to a floozy in the way she would date a married man and not care!

I'm glad they made it a momentary lack of sense and it seemed like she would end up with the "nice guy" in the end. : )
Like the trivia about the college...nice that is was standing back then and they could use it.

Davetucson wrote:

Interesting to note that the school scenes in this episode was shot
right in the middle of the University of Arizona campus. It was shot
in front of the "Old Main" building that has been there since the
late 1800's. Amazing how they can shoot tight shots right in
the middle of a modern university........
Just Thought I would Share Some Trashy Trivia!

I didn't know it...Thanks for telling us about this trivia, Dave!

Vanesa.

Not one of my favorite episodes. I'm surprised Almanzo let her go being that she was pregnant. I don't like how Eliza Jane acted.

Spanky wrote:

Not one of my favorite episodes. I'm surprised Almanzo let her go being that she was pregnant. I don't like how Eliza Jane acted.

That's right! I always forget she's supposedly pregnant in this episode...yet she never mentions a word of that.

Was Eliza ever mentioned again with Mort ? I'd like to think that she ended up with Mort, but it was just insinuated at the end.
with Mr
I know Eliza isn't likable at times, but I hate to see people put in a box, if you aren't pretty, no one loves you, wants you, kind of thing. She did kind things along with not so kind things, but I'd like to think someone ended up happy.

Quote :

Was Eliza ever mentioned again with Mort ?

Eliza Jane appears again later in season 8, in "Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow", but as I recall, there is no mention of Mort.

jes9 wrote:

Quote :

Was Eliza ever mentioned again with Mort ?

Eliza Jane appears again later in season 8, in "Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow", but as I recall, there is no mention of Mort.

Exactly. They left it wide open. As far as we know, they went off to the school together and Mort applied for the job that Eliza Jane was happy to recommend him for. When she returns in Season 8, there is no mention of Mort, and she takes a leave of absence to stay with Laura and Almanzo. I would guess either they forgot this tiny detail or ignored it when she returned, because her motivation for keeping Almanzo in the wheelchair was because she missed them. Though if you listen to what she really says it is, "I realized last night how much I missed being away from all of you." I doubt she would miss them as much if she had Mort to go back to. Bare minimum, if she had a good life where she was, she wouldn't have needed to interfere so much in Laura and Almanzo's life.

I don't know why the writers decided to leave Eliza Jane as a spinster when, even if later in life, she actually married.

Vanesa.

Yes, I remember that now, so sad, no one could really be happy with someone. Mort was cute and I liked how he pursued Eliza and his face at the end, when she said, "She'd be happy to recommend him" He was just as nice as "Harv" Even if she wanted to help Almonzo she could have said Mort was doing something or that he could come live with them.....I know it doesn't matter, but it bothered me she had to stay the lonely spinster even when they introduced a nice man not in love with someone else.
Laura denied it, but Eliza was right, she had never really known loneliness, she had her family, friends surrounding her all the time.

Yeah,I did kind of feel for her.Everybody needs to be happy and feel loved.

jes9 wrote:

Quote :

Was Eliza ever mentioned again with Mort ?

Eliza Jane appears again later in season 8, in "Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow", but as I recall, there is no mention of Mort.

That voice of hers probably drove him crazy......A little bit of her went a long way! I know one thing,
she made a huge impression on Albert. He never dressed up for school again!

I grew up with Pat Collins (Mort) in my neighborhood. He ran the youth group for my church.

He is awesome and he really does do those bird calls in real life.

That's cool, he seemed like a nice guy for some reason, even though he was just playing one.

I wish he could have stayed on, they might have been some comic relief like Percival and Nellie.

Deem714 wrote:

I grew up with Pat Collins (Mort) in my neighborhood.  He ran the youth group for my church.

He is awesome and he really does do those bird calls in real life.

That's sweet!  Patrick Collins is a lovely character actor. I just watched this episode last night because I remember how much I liked Mort.  I thought it was pretty ridiculous for Eliza Jane to have a crush on a married man and what bothered me during this episode was that Laura didn't just blurt out what happened and let Eliza Jane arrive at the slow way to figuring out that Prof Whatshisname was a jerk.

Oh and Leslie Landon shows up again in a character part as Pam, the girl that works with Laura as a dishwasher. Way for M.L. to work his family into the show at certain times.

I'll say though, the ending scene where Mort punches the Prof out didn't seem realistic...think a formal complaint should have been filed with the school's administration about the Professor's harassment of his female students...wonder if that would have been a realistic way to solve that problem in those days.  The fight scene seemed as though all the adults reverted into children...as if they were outside the Walnut Grove schoolhouse fighting each other and the Prof was the bully (which he was).  I just love that Mort knocked him out with 1 punch though!

Time after time, "A Wiser Heart" is a classic. I am embarrassed that I disliked most of it when first viewing as a 10 year old. The episode has quite a bit of depth. More guys than we are willing to admit sympathize with Mort Carstairs. What a great combination of multiple climaxes to the latter stages.

david wrote:

Time after time, "A Wiser Heart" is a classic. I am embarrassed that I disliked most of it when first viewing as a 10 year old. The episode has quite a bit of depth. More guys than we are willing to admit sympathize with Mort Carstairs. What a great combination of multiple climaxes to the latter stages.

Oh I agree about its depth! I watched it in my early teens and I completely empathized with Mort. If I were Eliza Jane I would have picked him right away.