Little House on the Prairie

[Gothampc]

Posted: 9/15/14 at 11:26am

A bundle of melodramatic crazy.

And they don't even list the baby battering ram episode or Ma's menopause episode.


Link

Updated On: 9/15/14 at 11:26 AM

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 9/15/14 at 6:48pm

Another classic show I have never seen.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/15/14 at 8:40pm

Oh man, the masked rapist thing terrified me as a small kid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZTK7EGLuUM Little House was one of the few shows my parents felt comfortable leaving us kids to watch without adult supervision -- little did they know (I was obsessed with the books as a kid, and they read them to us, so probably assumed it was all like that...)

[lovepuppy]

Posted: 9/16/14 at 12:57am

Ok, I have totally loved this show since I was a kid. But to be fair, I was about 2 when it began, so much of it was seen in its later years and in reruns, anyway. I mostly have memory of the episodes with "Albert" in them, and when Mary had already gone blind, because of the age thing, though do remember seeing lot of it as a child. (Mary Ingalls did go blind inexplicably as a teenager, in real life, but as we all know, the Ingalls didn't adopt a zillion kids like they did on the show.) I oddly have the most clear memories of watching the episode where Albert got addicted to morphine and went through withdrawal. It coincided with learning about drugs, in school...

Every so often The Hallmark Channel runs through the entire series--it's doing that now and I'm on the bandwagon! For the record, that "Sylvia" episode, I do NOT recall seeing as a kid, and I wonder if my parents sheltered us from that one or something; later in life I read about it and caught it on a rerun. Definitely creepy. I love Michael Landon and his legacy, but I can't for the life of me figure out some of his choices like in this episode, considering it was a kid show.

Watching the early years as they've aired recently, I'm struck by how many episodes contain implications or out-and-out abuse of children in them. Now, of course, back in the real "prairie" days, there were no laws about that sort of thing, like in our over-legislated society these days, but, as we know...again, it was a kid show! And this was 40 years ago. It's interesting to me that this was considered ok to air for families, and that despite some subject matter, remains so beloved by adults of today who were kids, then. If it caused parents of the day to look at themselves and not abuse kids, or provoked family conversation, or simply aired because abuse and child labor, and kids suffering through their parents' alcoholism, or supporting parents who had heart attacks by stealing food from neighbors was a necessity in the 1800's, well, I suppose that's why NBC allowed that sort of thing. In the name of history? Ok then.

It's almost more odd to me that in a recent rerun where Charles make a point to say "its a week until Thanksgiving," it was sunny in the Simi Valley in CA where they shot--so, sunny in Walnut Grove--and there was nary a winter coat to be seen on anyone! Lol. In another few (non-consecutive) episodes, there was occasionally a nasty blizzard, but in the following week's episode, it was back to being warm, sunny, and the kids were coat-less, again.