The “Little House on the Prairie” stars are reminiscing on the western’s most outrages plot lines.
The drama, which ran from 1974 to 1983, didn’t always hit the mark over nine seasons.
Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder, went on co-star Patrick Labyorteaux’s “The Patrick LabyorSheaux” podcast and called out Season 9, Episode 20, titled, “For the Love of Blanche.”
The episode saw Isaiah Edwards (Victor French) promise a dying traveler that he would care for his baby. Turn out his child isn’t a child at all but an orangutan named Blanche.
“It’s like, ‘Where does this come from?’” Butler, 69, inquired. “And of course, Mr. Edwards adopts the orangutan. And we never see the orangutan again. You go through this whole moment and you never see it again.”
After the short-lived adoption, the episode ends with Blanche being sent to live at a zoo.
Labyorteaux, 60, joked that it was actually a big deal to get the orangutan on their show.
“It was good enough for Clint Eastwood,” he said, referring to the 1978 film “Every Which Way but Loose.” “They did two movies with Clyde. Why not?”
Eastwood’s, 95, co-star in the comedy was none other than an orangutan.
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time the former residents of Walnut Grove, Minnesota walked down memory lane on Labyorteaux’s podcast.
In November, Butler recalled a moment on set with Michael Landon, who played the show’s patriarch Charles Ingalls.
Landon, who died of pancreatic cancer in 1991 at age 54, was the father of Melissa Gilbert’s Laura Ingalls. The Hollywood icon was also a producer on the beloved series and directed a handful of episodes.
Butler was joined by Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson, Pamela Roylance, who starred as Sarah Carter, Jennifer Donati, who played Baby Rose Wilder, and the children of French, who played Mr. Edward: Tracy and Victor French.
“I wanted to test and see how strong Michael was,” the actor joked to his former cast members. “We’re doing a scene together where I was supposed to go limp when I lunged at a guy and I didn’t. The first time [Landon] said, ‘Go limp.’ I didn’t. The second time he said, ‘Go limp.’ I didn’t.”
By the third go, Landon wasn’t having it.
“The third time — this was the test of his strength — he picked me up and threw me across the interior of the barn as he yelled at me, ‘Go limp,’” Butler recounted.
“It was a signature moment. I just remember saying, ‘What the hell?’ as I was flying through the air and landing on the ground and rolling across the barn, and there were a lot of yucks from the crew.”
Butler stressed that it was “totally” his “fault” since he was “too pumped” for the scene.
“I got a flight lesson in one of the barns at Big Sky Ranch as Michael launched me across the barn,” he added.
Arngrim, 63, replied, asking if he did go limp after the toss, to which Butler concurred: “The next take was just fine.”
