Airdate:
11/22/79
John-Boy is flown back to a Washington hospital in a coma –
and John and Olivia hold watch for him. When it appears it might be a while,
Mrs. Denman suggests Olivia sign up to be a Red Cross case worker; that way she
could put her interpersonal skills to use for the war effort and be near her
son. Olivia loves the idea, but on the homefront, not everyone is warming up to
Rose’s attempts to emulate Olivia and Grandma in preparing for Thanksgiving.
Everyone’s spirits are lifted with news that John-Boy as said his first word,
and later on, moving his hand to hold his parents’.
Michael Learned’s final episode as Olivia Walton makes sense
(more so than taking off for a sanitarium), especially given her activism of
late. One can only imagine the shock of parents visiting their son in a coma
and seeing… SOMEONE ELSE! That’s right: John-Boy is played here by Robert
Wightman (they even gave him Richard Thomas’s mole). Can you imagine the
challenge of stepping into the shoes of a character, played so fondly by
someone else, and spending the first few week of it bedridden and completely
motionless? Welcome aboard, Bobby; you’ve got your work cut out for you!
Another holiday, another tragedy. God, can’t they ever carve a turkey at this place without tears?
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