The Raccoon 1/5

This episode is starting out at the homestead with a title card that reads “The Racoon”. Really, show? Who signed off on that spelling? That does nothing but make me nervous about what the next hour has in store.

Moving on, we can hear Jack the dog barking and Mary and Laura playing outside. Mary wants to play catch with her sister, so Laura sets the doll she is playing with down on a fallen tree as she and Mary start to toss a ball. Mary throws the ball high and Laura bobbles the catch. Mary apologizes and Laura tells her she needs to aim better. Mary Ingalls sucks at life and slow-pitch softball. Laura throws the ball back to Mary, or, more accurately, throws it in Mary’s general direction. Opening day is less than three weeks away, girls. You’re going to need a LOT more practice. Laura tells Mary to throw the next pitch right over the plate. Mary interprets this as “throw the ball as high as you possibly can” and Laura keeps backing up to catch it. She goes ass-over-teakettle across the fallen tree and knocks her doll to the ground. Mary runs over to check on Laura, who is crying over her now headless doll. “I feel like I killed her,” Laura weeps. Mary apologizes as Laura clutches the doll to her chest. Mary Ingalls does not suck at gross negligence.

That evening Charles is working on trying to glue the doll head back together. Caroline comes down from the loft, presumably after tucking the girls into bed, and comments that Laura is one unhappy child. Charles says that the unhappiness will probably continue because there is no way he’s going to be able to reconstruct the head, what with all the teeny tiny shards. Caroline starts to ask if they can afford to buy a replacement, but Charles just doesn’t have the money right now.

We’re now flipping through a catalog of disembodied heads. “Ah, here we are,” says Mr. Oleson. Ah, he’s helping Mary with getting a replacement for the doll. Mary’s purple dress and ribbon ensemble really reminds me of the New Jan Brady without the fright wig. It’s a good look, but seems a little anachronistic. Anyway, the cheapest doll head is 59 cents, so Mary is SOL. Mr. Oleson apologizes for not being able to help in that friendly businessman way he has. Aww, no worries, Nels!

As Mary returns home, she notices Jack barking at something hiding in a bush. She goes to investigate and asks Jack what he’s doing. “If you flushed another skunk,” she starts. Yeah, I don’t think she needs to finish – I think we can all guess what happened. Mary pulls the dog back and looks into the bush to find a baby raccoon. Actually, toddler raccoon would be a bit more accurate given its size. “Poor little baby,” she says as she reaches out to pet it. Uhh, that seems like a bad idea. Jack seems to agree with me as he is still carrying on.

Back at the house, Laura is cradling the raccoon in her arms. Wait, what? She speaks some baby talk at the animal and then asks Mary if she can really have it. Meanwhile, Caroline is snapping peas calmly at the table as she watches this conversation play out. Wait, WHAT? Laura walks over to Carrie so that she can pet the raccoon. Laura continues with the baby babble as Mary looks on with a stupid smile on her face. Laura asks Ma if the raccoon can sleep in her bed, but Caroline says that raccoons aren’t really indoor animals. Laura promises she’ll take care of her new pet and to prove it she christens him “Jasper”. Caroline decides to adopt a non-committal approach to the whole “raccoon as a house pet” debate as she hears Charles riding up to the house. Mary walks to the window to get a look at Pa and tells Laura that he looks like he is in a good mood. Charles walks in, greets everyone, and then notices Laura with her new pet. He asks where the raccoon came from and Mary fills him in on the details. “I’m gonna make a pet out of him,” Laura says proudly. “I’m sorry half-pint, that isn’t going to work,” he replies. Finally: someone who is responding to all of the red flags popping up throughout this scene. Mary and Laura both try to argue their case, but Charles points out that when the raccoon grows up it will be “as big as a dog and nowhere near as reliable.” Laura says it will be tame if he lives with the Ingalls, but Charles said he would be really surprised if it stayed tame. He tells the girls they can play with it outside for a little while and then set it loose. As the girls exit, Mary apologizes and says “I never thought Pa would say no.” Have you met your father, Mary?

After the girls exit, Caroline suddenly becomes pissed about something. Charles notes this and asks if she thought he was wrong. “No, I think what you said was very sensible,” she replies in a way that is extremely difficult to determine if she is being facetious. Charles prods Caroline a bit and she reminds her husband that Laura has been missing her doll a lot. Is there no affordable happy medium between a broken doll and a toddler raccoon? Somehow, this argument works on Charles and he goes outside to let his daughters know that he changed his mind. There are a couple of conditions: Laura is only going to take care of Jasper until he is old enough to take care of himself and he is going to live in the barn. The girls go to the barn as Charles muses on the name “Jasper”. It’s not just the name that’s stupid around here.