- Welcome back to another segment
of Behind the Scenes of "The Waltons."
Today, I'm gonna be talking about the episode,
"The Triangle," where all sorts of triangles
and love relationships are happening
and people are winning and losing and competing for love.
If you're enjoying these, please do hit like and subscribe.
This episode revolves around the relationship,
the blooming, beginning of the relationship
between Reverend Fordwick and Rosemary Hunter.
And caught in that triangle is John Boy,
who it seems has a bit of a crush on Miss Hunter
and also feels very possessive of her
because she's been so important in his life,
in his writing, and in helping to guide him.
At this point, he is working on an essay for a contest
and Miss Hunter has been helping him finesse the essay
so that it can be in its best possible form
to enter this competition.
Then here's a moment where John Ritter,
as Reverend Fordwick,
enters and shares a scene with Miss Hunter,
played by the fabulous Mariclare Costello.
And I love this sense of awkwardness
that I think we often can feel in a new relationship.
How do you go forward?
Do you say something?
You're so vulnerable.
And it's just a lovely moment
between these two brilliant actors.
Another struggling romance is of Ben's.
Ben has a crush on Naomi who is teasing him
and pitting him against Willie
who's a much bigger boy and is threatening to knock
Ben's head off if he causes any sort of trouble.
And Ben, feeling that size difference
and feeling like he can't compete physically,
backs down.
But he has a plan.
Now, John Boy tries to give him advice
saying that he should perhaps move on
to one of the other girls in class.
But Ben's like, "Nope, I've got a plan."
As Jim Bob and Elizabeth are teasing
about Ben being in love,
Olivia and John share a cute little exchange
where John thinks Ben's too young
and Olivia says, "Well, when you were Ben's age,
you were basically making a play for me."
And John was like, "No, I just grabbed you and kissed you."
So an interesting piece of history
about the relationship of John and Olivia.
John Boy's essay is supposed to be about
the most interesting or extraordinary
or most important person in his life.
He's writing about Miss Hunter.
Although he has not told her that,
he says it's about an aunt of his.
But he speaks about this woman being ordinary,
but extraordinary in an ordinary way,
which was very interesting to me because
the character of Miss Hunter, yes, was very gentle and kind
and not big and flashy and flamboyant as a character.
But that can be some of the hardest work
to do as an actress, to stand out and command the screen
with this sort of a gentle character.
And I always felt that Mariclare Castello
did that so well.
And she was absolutely mesmerizing and stunning on camera.
Reverend Fordwick finally gets up the courage
to ask Miss Hunter if he can court her.
She is pleasantly stunned by this request
and becomes quite girlish.
She's distracted, which is annoying to John Boy,
and John Boy is becoming very jealous of this attention
that is no longer his and is now focused on the Reverend,
and resents him.
But Miss Hunter has these lovely moments
where she goes to Olivia's to ask for help with a dress
that it be fitted better because she wants to look pretty.
She confesses that Matthew has
shown an interest in her and she's curious about
whether she can do something different with her hair.
That she never really thought much
about trying to look pretty,
but now she would like to look her best.
And I felt that that was just a lovely, sweet moment,
like sharing girl talk between Olivia and Rosemary.
Ben's answer to winning the girl
turns out that he has purchased this magazine
that tells him how to turn from a 97-pound weakling
into the strongest man.
And here, you see these pictures in this magazine
and this is what he's gonna do.
All these resistance-type exercises to build up his muscles
so he's strong enough to take on Willie
if Willie decides to pick on him.
So throughout the episode, he is with John Boy,
with Jason he's working on building his muscles
and also knowing that the upcoming church picnic,
there is going to be a nail driving competition.
And he's gonna build up his strength
so that he can win this and win the girl.
Erin, in typical tattle tail busy body mode,
can't stand that she doesn't know what Ben is up to.
And at one point,
climbs out of one of the upper story windows
and goes across the roof
'cause she's gonna peek in John Boy's room
to see what Ben is up to,
but she slips and then she's squealing and screaming
for somebody to come rescue her.
So she's kind of gotten herself in a pickle there.
But I felt for Mary having to be up on the roof,
crawling around because I never liked doing that.
Mama basically tells John Boy
that Reverend Fordwick is courting Miss Hunter
and John Boy reacts to this
and she also tells John Boy
that he should let Miss Hunter know
that the essay is about her.
And John Boy isn't at all sure he's happy about that.
And being as upset as he is
by how he feels he's being overlooked by Miss Hunter
in favor of the Reverend,
starts feeling - that differently about her
and feels that his essay now,
he doesn't care about, he doesn't wanna submit it,
and it's not the person he knew,
and he writes very harshly about her.
And understanding what's going on for John Boy,
Grandma and Mama and John,
all sort of conspire to send John Boy over to Miss Hunter's
with gifts that they want to give her
to thank her for all the help she's given John Boy,
but you he's finally trapped into having to go over there.
When he is there, Reverend Fordwick is there
and he is put in a really awkward position
because Miss Hunter wants to look at the essay,
and then the Reverend sort of starts goading John Boy,
which is very interesting.
And he becomes a little petty also.
Both John Boy and the Reverend display some rather
petty characteristics there,
which I didn't usually see from either one of them.
In this case, the Reverend starts saying
that maybe John Boy should write something
for the church service,
but of course, he would have to approve it
and he'd have to write on different topics
and something with more depth
that was appropriate for the church.
John Boy is really feeling
like his buttons are getting pushed.
And even Rosemary feels that this is a little awkward
and she wants to try and protect John Boy,
but then says that the Reverend should hear
how beautiful John Boy's words are.
And so she pushes him into reading some of this essay
and John Boy is so incredibly uncomfortable
that he finally sort of tells her
that it's about her and that when he tried to tell her,
she was too busy and too distracted to notice,
but that he doesn't feel this way about it anymore.
And so all of what has happened
and the damage that's been done and the hurt,
all comes to the surface there.
♪ You've heard lots of songs about lazy days ♪
♪ But mine's the laziest of all ♪
♪ We live on a farm way down in Louisiana ♪
♪ All day we sit around and watch the wall ♪
Along the way in this episode,
I found a lot of really sweet family moments.
At one point, we were all pulling taffy.
At another point, it's just a typical kitchen scene,
but I noticed that that door
to what we have all determined was a pantry
that was rarely open in the kitchen
is visible and open and has a wall in there
that we can see and is lit.
That wall that we can see back through there
was not typically there.
So they would've put that in just for this scene.
We are all preparing for church picnic.
And so another great example
of one of those community events
that the Waltons were always engaged upon,
which just added so much sense of the community
and the fun and the charm of the time
when we actually are all at the church picnic.
We're frolicking in the water again.
The boys are jumping off a raft
and I am rowing Erin and Elizabeth in the water,
and then Grandpa's telling tall tales
and everybody's participating in food and in games
and a sack race.
And so just a lot of underlying background
against which all of these angst-written love stories
are placed.
When it comes time for Ben to display his newfound strength
in the nail driving contest,
he's up against Willie and he loses.
So although he loses and he walks off,
Naomi comes and tells him how much he loves red hair.
And so the two of them walk off
and I love this little moment
where Ben starts to put his arm around here
and then he feels embarrassed
and he just takes her hand instead.
So for the moment, he has won the girl.
Then John Boy does decide to attend.
And he,
after John has basically flat out accused him
of being jealous when John Boy said he wasn't gonna attend
and how he's been behaving.
And so when John Boy attends
and the Reverend is about to participate
in the spike driving contest,
John Boy says he wants to take him on.
And the two of them pound stakes.
The Reverend wins this.
John Boy's handle literally breaks on his hammer,
on his sledge hammer.
He shakes his hand and walks off,
but then he has a lovely scene
where he confesses to Miss Hunter that he was jealous
and she apologizes for her part in that
and says that she will always care about
John Boy and his writing
and wanting him to be the best that he can be
and be there for him.
So the two have a lovely reconciliation scene
that was set against these beautiful flowers,
this bush where you see the flowers in the background
in these closeups.
And then as they both walk off,
the camera pushes in on these flowers,
which were an analogy for how
John Boy had described the character of Miss Hunter
in his essay.
As it turns out,
pretty much everyone won in some way in the episode.
So another happy ending for the Waltons all around.
That's what I have for you for this segment
of Behind the Scenes of "The Waltons."
I'll be back with more Behind the Scenes of "The Waltons"
and more "Ask Judy."
Thanks for watching.