Now, why would I watch a random 1972 episode from a long-dead TV show? Why, because Sissy Spacek starred in it. It seems I’m in my “dig up episodes of a long-dead TV show to see more of her at that age” part of my obsession.

The episode is freely downloadable from the Internet Archive.

Sissy’s haunting loveliness inhabits a sheltered girl living alone with her religious nutcase of a mother, who has been raising Sissy’s character alone after her husband died. The episode starts with Sissy dating a certain John-boy, whom I assume is one of the main characters of The Waltons. A guy named John who’s a wannabe writer, because fuck me sideways.

Sissy is sick of being subjected to her mother’s impositions and restrictions. She wants to get married and leave as soon as possible. She even tells John-boy that she’d marry him in a heartbeat if only he asked. But John is a sensitive, sensible young man who only hears foolishness in such reckless behavior. Sissy is more in love with the notion of a passionate life waiting for her somewhere away from home than with our John-boy, so she starts dating this John Dillinger wannabe with a fancy period car. Initially she seems like she’s just trying to make John-boy jealous, see if he’d grow a pair. When he even gives her his blessing for dating that other guy, she clearly resents John’s pussyness. Will she choose that arrogant new man as her ticket out of their small town?

I appreciated Sissy’s acting here. She showed the raw hurt of her character in a scene in which she refused to grow up to become like her mother. In another scene, I noticed that she had a smiling fit in a moment when she definitely shouldn’t have been smiling. In any case, seeing her on screen is plain haunting.

I was struck as well by how this TV show earnestly tried to tell a human story. The Waltons came out seemingly before TV shows, and movies for that matter, became vehicles for subversion in order to further the goals of some groups. Better times, like most everything I experience from the 70s.

Sissy only stars in another other episode of The Waltons, in the second season, so I’m likely watching that next.