The Wedding (1) - Recap

After Mary Ellen abruptly announces to the family that she is engaged to John Spencer, a doctor interning at the hospital she is studying at, they have to scramble to prepare for the couple's wedding that will be happening a few weeks. As family and friends throw an engagement party for the couple, Curt Willard, the new county doctor, arrives unannounced in the middle of it.

Almost immediately following their meeting, Curt and Mary Ellen start butting heads when it comes to treating their patients, with several residents stating that the new doctor must have missed the course in bedside manner in medical school. Things get worse when he shocks the Baldwin sisters when he asks Miss Mamie to take off her blouse so he can examine her.

When Miss Mamie becomes extremely ill one day, Curt and Mary Ellen have to rush her to the hospital in Rockfish, due to the lack of proper medical equipment on Walton’s Mountain. She survives her health scare, but Curt angrily says that he would have been able to treat her on the mountain, if he had the proper equipment. What happened with Miss Mamie ultimately prompts Curt to come up with an idea of having a “Hard Luck Dance”, with hopes of raising fifty dollars for medical equipment, with the grateful Baldwin sisters promising to match whatever Curt and the Walton’s take in ticket sales. A rousing success, the event raises over one hundred dollars for the supplies he needs.

Meanwhile, Mary Ellen is unable to hide her growing feelings toward the new doctor. After setting the bachelor doctor up with Nora, the county nurse, Mary Ellen because jealous seeing them together and decides to start working as Curt’s nurse in order to spend more time with him. When her and David’s rehearsal ceremony, Mary Ellen runs out of the church when the ceremony comes to the part of her having to say I Do, and ultimately telling David that she can’t marry him because of her feelings toward Curt.

By the time Curt comes back to Walton’s Mountain after purchasing the equipment he needed, he and Mary Ellen talk about the feelings they have towards one another and he eventually proposes to her, and they get married at the old Walton family homestead on the top of the mountain.

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