'Little Women' Recap Part 2 & 3: Good Day Good Wives

PBS puts the back two-thirds of the Little Women miniseries together as a modernized two-hour movie.

Jo: In his pocket Marmee! Isn't that a dreadful state of things!?"

Last week's episode of Little Women ended right where it should, about one third of the way through the story, with Marmee running to Washington to tend to her ailing husband, leaving the girls alone to cope. That first hour as an adaptation wasn't bad, but it got frustrating at points where it handwaved in the directions of modernization: The odd opening, Jo's very firm line about wanting to be born a boy, vague hints of Beth being autistic in a time when there wasn't a word for it. But the series doesn't actually have the nerve to really follow through with any of that, because to do so would stray from the heart of the story.