- Welcome back to another segment
of "Behind the scenes of 'The Waltons'".
Today I'm going to be talking about an episode
from Season 3, "The Caretakers",
when Grandma and Grandpa move out of the Walton house.
Early in the episode,
John says to Grandpa that Grandpa looks a little tired
and that he should maybe take it easy.
Try not to do so much.
Grandpa resents this
because he feels like John is telling him
he's old, he's useless.
John's just worried because Grandpa recently
had a heart attack right around his birthday
and the doctor said he should take it easy.
Grandpa just doesn't agree with that
and just thinks that he's being pushed out.
Meanwhile, Grandma is also feeling
like she's not necessary and she isn't appreciated.
I, Mary Ellen, comes home all excited
because I've won some sort of a prize
where I got some makeup items.
Grandma thinks this is ridiculous
and the children are all grabbing snacks
and Grandma thinks they should wait till dinner,
and Olivia sort of sides with the children and Grandma says,
why do you always side against me?
And Olivia just kind of brushes it off.
But Grandma's really taking this to heart
so both Grandma and Grandpa are feeling
just overlooked and underappreciated.
Grandpa goes to visit his friend Henry Townsend,
played by actor Dan Priest.
Henry's wife passed away not too long ago,
and so he's feeling the emptiness
of the house with her gone.
And he is considering taking a job someplace
away from Walton's Mountain,
but needs someone to be a caretaker
for his property while he is away working
and it would be something that was a paid position.
So, he mentions this to Grandpa,
and Grandpa says he'll keep his ears open.
Now all of this is what we would call a setup.
This is part of setting up the story.
So, typically when you are doing kind of an outline
for a script, for a story, there's certain aspects to it
and one of them is the setup.
You need to sort of set up the various different aspects
of the story that lead
to what the story's going to be about.
So in this case, we have Grandma and Grandpa
both upset and feeling pushed out
and neglected and unappreciated.
And then you have someone else
who is in need of someone to be paid
to take care of a house.
So we as an audience now understand
what direction this story is potentially going.
So if you look at films or television episodes
or something like that, in most cases you will see
this sort of format, this kind of formula that plays out.
Now, the content of that is gonna be different
from show to show because every story
is gonna be a little bit different,
but there is almost always the need
to set up what's going on.
You establish who the characters are
and what the situation is.
I was fascinated by this
what looks like a flour bin in the Walton kitchen.
Now, some of you might be really familiar
with this sort of an item, but I certainly was not.
Here is Olivia and she's pouring probably flour
into this bin and then I can see that down below
the cupboard that this is in that there seems to be a spout.
So I'm assuming that then she could go
and she could just like release the flour
from below and measure it and use it for baking.
I thought this was an ingenious
sort of a thing to have in your kitchen.
But certainly my mother never had anything
like that when I was growing up,
so I had never seen it before.
When Grandpa is at loose ends
and trying to figure out what to do with himself,
he wanders into John Boy's room.
John Boy is writing. He is working on an essay for school.
And someone had asked me at one point
when John Boy was writing
in his journal or whatever, what was he really writing?
Was he writing actual words or sentences
or was he just sort of writing gibberish?
And I believe that most of the time
he was writing real words, real sentences.
Whether it was,
like sometimes when you could hear his narration
when he was talking,
he very well might have been writing
what the narration was, but maybe not.
Obviously if you can see the words,
then you're going to know
and he is going to need to write what's there.
But it's always a question when one needs to be reading
or writing in a scene,
just how engaged you are in what's going on.
It reminds me of sort of an error of mine one time.
I was doing a play,
and there was a long scene where I was barely involved.
The other three people in the scene were talking
and I was sitting doing a crossword puzzle
or something like that.
Well, I was on stage and to some degree or another
I might be engaged in doing this crossword puzzle.
And one night I got very involved
in doing the crossword puzzle and missed a line cue.
All of a sudden there was silence
and I was like, oh shoot, that's me.
And I had this moment of panic and trust me,
from that time forward,
I did not get quite so engrossed in the crossword puzzle.
Having finally had enough,
Grandpa decides that he and Grandma
are going to take this job as caretakers for Mr. Townsend.
So Grandpa is going to pack,
and he goes to this cupboard
that is clearly meant to be a closet in this case
and pulls out a suitcase.
Now, this was the only door that you can see
in the bedroom and this door often got used
as a closet door in the grandparents' room.
You saw it occasionally.
But it was also the only door
and that sort of mystery door
that went between the grandparents' room
and the living room,
and on a couple of occasions we saw someone,
Grandma came out of the door one time from her bedroom.
And in one case someone went through that door.
It was Paul Northridge's father in the episode
where Erin and Paul were getting married
and his father entered the grandparents' room
where Paul was getting ready.
So, this was a sort of a versatile mystery door,
because in this case it was being used as a closet door,
but sometimes it was used, on rare occasion,
as an actual entrance door
between the living room and the grandparents' room.
The Waltons were not without their community gossips
and in this case, Corabeth and Mrs. Brimmer are gossiping
in Ike Godsey's store
about what's going on around the Walton house.
So Corabeth of course was a major gossip,
but I think I saw less of Mrs. Brimmer being a gossip.
Everyone in the family is trying to resolve
this upset between, particularly between John and Grandpa
'cause Grandpa doesn't wanna back down
and John thinks Grandpa's being ridiculous
and that he does need to take it easy,
and Grandma's caught in the middle,
and they're being told that, you know,
no one should go visit
and that Grandpa needs to stop being so stubborn.
It's just kind of a mess,
and no one's happy about it and everyone wants it resolved.
John has a contract that he needs to get finished up
and this was part of the problem
because he goes and he hires extra help,
and then they hire Easy Jackson,
who is a complete disaster and is wasting more time
and more money than is worth the trouble.
So finally, John does go to talk to Grandpa
and admits that Easy is a complete disaster,
that how much he needs Grandpa's help.
And you know, John Boy's been helping, but he's in school.
So, it gives everybody a way out.
And it's the truth.
You know, Grandpa is very valuable.
So Grandma and Grandpa can't wait to get back,
and they do come back home and the family is reunited.
There's also a good solution for the caretaker position
because John doesn't want Easy working around the lumber
again because he's breaking boards
and he's costing John money.
So, Grandpa becomes very handy in convincing Easy
that he would be doing Grandpa big favor
by being the caretaker for the Townsend property.
And that Grandpa can't handle it and it's a lot of work,
but you know, he thinks Easy could do it.
So Grandpa is very clever
in the way he sort of resolves the situation with Easy.
And there you have it.
That was the episode, "The Caretaker" from Season 3.
I will be back with more
"Behind the Scenes of 'The Waltons'"
and more of your questions in another segment of "Ask Judy".
Thanks for watching.