u/ASGfan

Nancy. It's not just Walnut Grove, we hate her here too. As a mod of this community, I can tell you that (true to form) her user flair is one of the very few that's never been picked by anyone. Which is sort of appropriate when you think about it. 🤣

But a thought just occurred to me -- Did Nancy have any friends? Say what you want about Nellie but she seemed really adept at making friends (even if there was a bit of bribery going on). And as far as Willie goes, I'm reminded of this hilarious exchange:

Nels: "You can't buy friends!"

Willie: "I'm not -- I'm just trying to rent them!"

But Nancy -- Gah, I can't remember her having any friends at all. The reason I mention it is that I'm sure that fed into her "Everyone hates me" mentality. Nancy did do plenty to drive people away but I guess I'm curious as to what she thinks and how she perceives the world around her. Did she know that she was essentially a "replacement" for her older sister? Did she find those shoes too big to fill?

Maybe I'm just overanalyzing things but I've always been baffled that Nancy acts the way she does when she seemingly has everything she could want or need. Nellie was smart, got good grades, achieved various accomplishments and had some degree of popularity whereas Nancy was endlessly ridiculed. Not saying she didn't deserve her just desserts when she got them but I'm just trying to figure out her line of thinking.

Season 4, episode 16 -- "I Remember, I Remember". As you may remember, this scene finds Charles' older brother Peter apparently looking for some sort of revenge on Harold Watson and his friend Ike after they roughed Charles up. Peter leads them away to some dark, secluded room under the guise of something to do with girls. The way this whole sequence is filmed is creepy as hell. I think most people assumed Peter roughed up the boys the same way they did with Charles, but there's three huge problems with this theory:

The first is that going into a 2-on-1 disadvantage is an absolute NIGHTMARE for anybody on this show and particularly the Ingalls. How many times did Charles get his ass handed to him when he took on two at once? Granted, these boys are younger and smaller than Peter (who doesn't look particularly muscular or anything) but still, it would be incredibly risky to go 2-on-1 with some boys with obvious grappling skills.

The second is that Harold Watson is the son of Mr. Watson and Peter knows that the elder Watson is making life a living hell for his younger brother. So, it would be incredibly risky for Peter to continue the Watson - Ingalls feud at a time when his father was trying to smooth things over between the warring factions and Peter can rationalize that if he sends Harold home obviously beaten up that his father will want to know who did that to him.

The third is that there's an entire room full of witnesses, so if the boys emerge from the room and it's obvious there was a fight going on, it's a dead giveaway that Peter was roughing up these younger boys. When Harold and Ike roughed up Charles, they did it away from witnesses, But there's no way Peter could have gotten away with this since his parents are literally *right there*. In a room full of people, somebody would have seen or heard something.

So with all of that being said, what the hell happened here? I know this wasn't a focus of the episode as it's really about Charles and Caroline and this was basically a quick way to tie up a loose end, but this has to be one of the show's biggest "What the..." moments.

For me, it's just about anything with Nancy.