A while back, I was stuck at home with a sore throat that was keeping me from sleeping. I was tooling around the dial after midnight and came across a Michael Landon marathon on TV Land. I was not a regular watcher of Little House on the Prairie when I was a little kid, but you didn’t have to be to know the episode entitled, “May We Make Them Proud,” one of the most haunting and disturbing hours of television that came down the pike in the early 1980s.  Everyone my age knows this episode.  It was the talk of the playground the day after it originally aried.

Yes, I’m talking about the blind school fire.

Generally, Little House was a sweet, old-fashioned confection, always topped off at the end with a lovely Michael Landon-ized moral, most often something along the lines of “It’s not nice to make fun of fat kids,” “Don’t make fun of stuttering kids,” “Don’t cheat on your math test,” “It’s not nice to make fun of kids with one leg seven inches shorter than the other,” “Progress is bad!,” “Once you reach forty, it’s too late to find fulfilling romantic happiness,” or “Never hide in an ice house that has a trick lock on the outside.”

But every so often, Landon would slap us viewing sheep upside the head with some perectly repugnant horror story, like a little girl getting raped by a mask-donning psycho, morphine addicts blowing chunks on camera, ma going crazy and trying to gnaw off her own leg, or parents rolling off a fifty foot cliff and crashing into a ravine as their newly orphaned kids wept in the panic brought about by total abandonment.

Also, on occasion, one of the Ingalls kids would get shot in the head, suffer a stroke, get mauled by a pack of wild dogs, or drown in the local lake.

But all of those pale in comparison to the infamous blind school fire.

Television wasn’t promoted to the extent it is now, where audiences are pretty much told all week long what to expect on the next episode. So back in the day, simpleton children such as myself would unwittingly plunk themselves down to watch their favorite shows, bowl of chocolate chip ice cream in hand, expecting nothing more than the upbeat Little House morality plays they were used to seeing, week after week.

Then this crazy shit goes down, and none of us slept for a month.

Let’s take a frame-by-frame look at the scariest-ass piece of 80′s television this side of Gary Coleman  and his buddy Dudley nearly getting molested by bike shop owner Gordon Jump on Diff’rent Strokes.

Baboon-faced Ingalls Foster Child and Anonymous Day Player are toking up in the basement of the blind school. Okay, so far the episode is shaping up to be nothing more than a cautionary tale on the dangers of tobacco and disobeying ma and pa.

Several minutes later – oops! Heh heh… fire!
Okay, but everyone will certainly make it out safely.  After all, this is Little House on the Prairie!  It’s family hour!

Nice production work, though.

Adam: “Mary, the blind school is on fire. We need to save all the blind orphans.”
Mary: “Okay, let me just tuck in our baby and leave him right here. He rolled over for the first time tonight. I wish one of us had vision.”

Mary: “Be sure to grab the backgammon set. It’s worth five dollars.”

Good-hearted, long-standing third-string character Alice Garvey (Hersha Parady) hears crying and busts into the room to get the baby. Oh, thank god. All will be saved.  And this will end up being a cautionary tale about why it’s important to keep around third-string characters played by actors with a few Florida local theatre credits… or something like that.

Finding it difficult to make an exit down the burning staircase, Alice heads for the upstairs window and uses Baby Ingalls as a battering ram. But apparently a single pane of 1870′s glass proves too much for her, and she and the baby go down in flames accompanied by a distrubing amount of screams.

Meanwhile, blind Mary and blind Adam and all the blind orphans sit outside and watch… well, not so much watch as point their faces in what they hope to be the general direction of the conflagration, proving that while stutterers, hobblers, and fat-asses can still make positive contributions, blind people are basically useless drains on pioneer society.

Okay, what the fuck is going on here? Is this Little House or an Irwin Allen disaster flick? I signed up for an hour of light-hearted wilderness merrymaking. Where’s the lovable drunken frump Mr. Edwards? Where’s that half-witted gork Carrie? Where’s the prairie bitch? Where’s Manly? Where’s Half Pint for god’s sake?

Charles goes dead-baby hunting and hey! He comes up a winner. Another Ingalls kid bites the dust, but at least the horses will eat tonight.

As the camera winds through the smokey wreckage, nine year old Gary Green is torn. Do I run out of the room and admit to my parents I’m being terrified by an epsiode of fucking Little House and need a re-assuring hug, or do I suck it up? My trust in television has been irrevocably shaken.

Poor Hersha Parady.  She asked Heir Landon for a pay raise, and now she’s been Fajita-fied right out of Walnut Grove. It’s back to Christian puppet shows and offering free cups of Fresca outside the supermarket for her!

Dead Alice’s husband and son gawk at wrapped up body. The way this episode was going, why bother with a sheet? Why not just show the two of them hugging and kissing Alice’s steaming, roasted loins? Instead, husband curses God and asks for directions to the neareat pine box outlet store.

Baboon-faced Ingalls Foster Fuck overhears the fire was caused by a pipe in the basement, expects fewer gifts at Christmas.

Mary wakes up from a ten day morphine-induced praire nap, “Oh, I’m so refreshed! You know, I’m so fortunate. I’ve survived scarlet fever. I’ve lost my vision, but I can still look on the sunny side of life. Hey… where’s my baby?”

“Uh, Mary, we have some news. I hope you take this well.”

Unfortunately, Mary does not take it well. Jesus Christ! Am I actually seeing the slit-open wrists of Melissa Sue Anderson? Is that Ingalls blood spilling down the facade of Nellie’s family restaurant? That definitely won’t be good for business.

Mary ends up going bananas. Blind and bananas. Good thing she’s already landed a man.

At least we get to see Prairie Bitch for a moment. She’s a hoot! And no amount of tragedy will keep her from donning that oversized donkey bow!

Yay, though I walk through the shadow of death, yadda yadda yadda. I hope the Ingalls’ get a family rate at that cemetery.

Then suddenly it’s just over. I’ve soiled my pj’s, and I get abruplty smacked out of it with the traditional end credits, snappy upbeat music, and Melissa Gilbert skipping through the fields and pretending she’s a bird? Hasn’t she heard the news? Is she just in denial?

Of course the biggest question of all is, do I have ANYTHING better to be doing on a weekend afternoon than create this post? Couldn’t I be reading a book? Getting some fresh air and exercise? Aren’t I supposed to be looking for a job?

This is how deeply “May We Make Them Proud” has affected me.  I’m a middle-aged man, and I’m still processing it.  I suspect that other people out there were as disturbed by this episode as I was back in the day. This is a way for all of us to come together and share our grief, take comfort in one another’s bosoms.

I’m sure that Fajita Alice Garvey and BBQ’d Baby Ingalls would have wanted it that way.