Seriously, can this show get any more adorable? This episode was so incredibly charming, even though it was about a bunch of characters that have yet to be introduced beforehand. The children in this episode were portrayed really life-like. Well, I guess that that’s the World Masterpiece Theatre for you. ^^;
Anyway, this episode starts with a regular day at school, in which Mildred is showing off a brooch with angels that she got from her birthday. Anne stays away from them, but she of course is interested in the angel-story, but when Randolf notices her looking she looks away again. Mildred wonders if Anne is interested in the brooch as well, but Anne answers that while angels tend to grant wishes, they’ll never grant wishes to liars (a nudge to what happened in the previous episode).
During class, Anne actually did better than Mildred (for her grade, anyway), which rather pisses Mildred off. A girl then arrives at the classroom, whose name is Sadi. Her house seems to be poor, and she too apparently has had to stay home to take care of it. Because of this, Anne becomes interested, and sits down next to her during the afternoon break, and starts telling about Elisa and Katie Morris.
Sadi then reveals that she has a number of younger siblings, and the reason why she has been away is because her mother is sick: her father is dead (you have to love how Anne rejoices when she finds this out, having discovered someone who is similar to herself, even though it’s about such a touchy subject), and since her mother has been taking care of the family and making the money, her becoming sick has put them into a bit of trouble.
Anne, still fascinated by the angels, asks her what she wishes for if angels were able to grant wishes. She herself wishes for new ribbons in her hair, since she’s gotten bored of her old ones. Sadi of course answers that she wishes that her mother would get better soon. Meanwhile Mildred is setting everyone up against Anne, and they come up with a plan to frame Anne: Randolf was supposed to put Mildred’s brooch inside Anne’s bag, so that they could blame her for taking it. Obviously the plan goes wrong because Randolf mistakes Anne’s bag for that of Sadi.
At the end of the classes, Anne notices how the brooch is in Sadi’s bag, but at first she’s too afraid to say something. That’s why she follows Sadi to her house. Sadi then comes out of the house and notices Anne, and then tells her about the brooch. It turns out that Sadi never knew of anything, and Anne informs her that it’s Mildred’s.
A while later, they start talking about the brooch with the angels on it along with Sadi’s younger sister and brother, and when the two of them find out that angels are supposed to grant wishes, they wish for their mother not to go to heaven. Apparently, their mother’s condition is much worse than previously thought, because one of the kids overheard her mother say that she’d join her husband soon, that evening earlier.
They then drop by their mother, along with Anne, who gets all shy when the mother gives her a compliment on her looks. When she is about to get up to do the chores, Anne and the other children instead insist on doing the chores themselves, so that she can rest. Afterwards, Sadi gets more and more worried about her mother’s condition, and how she can’t believe that her mother is hiding a serious illness from them. Since they don’t have any income, they also don’t have any money to call a doctor. The children suggest soup with milk, which is supposed to help (hey, they’re 3 years old…), but even for that they don’t have any money. Anne suggests collecting a type of flower, which is supposed to help according to Eggman. In the meantime, Sadi’s mother suddenly gets out of bed and starts doing the chores like there’s nothing wrong.
After a very touching moment in which the children seem to give up all hope because they can’t find that particular flower, they return home… and find out that it’s all been one big misunderstanding. All their mother had was a simple cold. When they overheard her talking that evening, she simply was talking about how she remodelled some of her late husband’s clothes to fit their children, so that it’d be like they’re always with him.
Anne stays until it’s nearly dark, after which they say goodbye but not before giving Anne a new set of pink ribbons,
This really was a mean episode. It was so sad, with especially superb voice-acting from Sadi’s little brother and sister, who really sounded like a bunch of sad children, only for everything to be a simple misunderstanding that was blown out of proportions by these simple kids’ minds. Stories around misunderstandings are often a bit lame, but this time it was the complete opposite, and this episode became so incredibly adorable because of it.
There’s one thing that doesn’t quite sit well with me, though, and it has to do with the continuity with the original Anne of Green Gables. I mean, how often has Anne been praised for her looks by now? It becomes harder and harder to imagine how this would have caused her to start yelling at Gilbert Blythe like that when he first pranked her. But then again, around that age she indeed should have started to get into puberty, so I think that that was the major cause of it.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
A light but downright adorable episode.
