Airdate: 1/29/76
While taking his
parents to the bus station so they can go to Newport News for a lumber
contract, John-Boy chances upon Muffin Maloney, a waifish-looking 12-year-old
girl who claims she is waiting for her mother to meet up with her – they had
both run away from her mean stepfather in Lancaster, PA. When the mother never
arrives, he takes the girl in to meet and stay with the other Waltons. Everyone
is instantly beguiled by the child - everyone except Grandpa, whose sixth sense
warms him to be distrustful. Later, the audience affirms his suspicions when
Muffin goes to her grandfather in the county jail and finds that he needs
twelve dollars bail to be released money the girl raises under the auspice of
needing bus fare to go back home. She almost gets away with it, until the
Baldwin sisters come to the house and recognize her from a previous scheme.
John-Boy chases her down and escorts her to see Sheriff Bridges, but she uses
Jim-Bob as a stool pigeon to distract the lawman so she and her grandfather can
escape the cell, and flee using John-Boy’s car. When they get flat, they hoof
it to the next county, leaving everyone feeling gullible for being taken in so
easily.
The writers have
certainly crafted a real imp here – the slickest juvenile con artist since the
Artful Dodger, although her success owes just as much to the frustrating
gullibility of her victims. Due also to the time period, one can’t help be
reminded of The Sting, and perhaps
the producers made this intentional with the raggy, precocious score. Vicky
Schreck plays crafty well as Muffin, and perhaps her escape and the end opens
the door for a return to Waltons Mountain.
Quibble: show is
mistitled – it refers only to the girl’s ruse of buttering up John-Boy by
calling him the brother she never had –as well as a very marginal sideline in
which Ben and Jim Bob learn to trust him more often. But that’s not the crux of
this story; maybe calling it “The Con Artist” would spoil the twist too early.
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