In various conversations among people, and on this blog, I had mused that "Little House on the Prairie" was a very popular show but I somehow had never watched it. Finally, repeating this same thought before my family, I suddenly heard my older sister exclaim, "'Little House on the Prairie' was SOOOO DEPRESSING!" Instantly, in just that moment, I time-traveled 30, maybe 40, years into the past to when I first heard that same phrase ringing in my ears, said in the exact same way by the exact same person. It was suddenly clear why I had no history with this show. My sister had seen it, had formed a very decidedly negative opinion of the show and then had wielded much more power over the TV.
Another mystery solved.
Now, back in our own time, having watched the entire run of the series, I consider it to be one of the great TV shows of all-time. But even as I enjoyed the show very much, I had to contend with the thought, all throughout, that, "Well, my sister wasn't exactly wrong." The two things can be true at the same time. "Little House" was a "family drama" and how does one generate drama week-in and week-out for years? There is only one way: create likable characters and then hurl an unceasing barrage of tragedies at them until their lives are a Hellish nightmarescape.
The "family" template is best illustrated by a thumbnail sketch of "Family Ties." "Family Ties" was something of a sitcom but generally you'd watch an episode and it would be, for instance, Uncle Bob is visiting from out of town and he announces he has terminal cancer. That's one week. But then the next episode, they're visited by Uncle Ned but it is revealed that Uncle Ned is hiding the secret that he has become an alcoholic. We're up to episode 3 now and in this episode, they'd throw a curve-ball - in this episode, a black family moves into the neighborhood and suddenly the suburban Ohio town of the 1980s turns into a Deep South KKK stronghold because, it turns out, racism is everywhere.
"Little House" is a lot like that but without all the laughs.
Early on, there are two main themes of the show: the man-versus-nature struggle (the harshness of living on the frontier) and the cruelty of children towards their fellow children. The former is one of my favorite aspects of the show and, as a plot device, it's abandoned pretty early on. The latter continues throughout and it's nuts. I mean, these children are monsters to each other - I would say they're demon children but that's being too kind. Words fail me to describe it, I can only say it's hard to watch.
As for the rest of the episodes, every pregnancy is a potential complication, every baby is going to get sick, every building is in danger of burning down, every dear friend can die, every loved one presents a potential for irredeemable grief and don't forget - never forget - that sometimes children with bright futures can suddenly contract an illness that brings on permanent blindness... The onset of blindness will be slow, of course, but it will be sure and it will be permanent. Yes, it's a "delightful Bambi romp through a flowery fairy land of happy, harmless, froufrou family fun for the whole family of all ages."
To that point, an imdb trivia note from S01E18 is illustrative:
Matt Clark appears in this episode as "Eric Boulton", a man whose wife and son die after contracting Typhus after eating rat-infected cornmeal. He would return in Season Five's "Mortal Mission" as a character whose family die from Anthrax infected meat.
That actor just can't catch a break.
That said, I will defend the show's position in the Pantheon of Television with 3 semi-counter-points.
- It is a family drama and this is the core of drama. You know this is what you're getting into (like I said about "Family Ties" above.)
- It rarely feels forced. The hardships may seem a little overwrought in that 70s style, but they're rarely gratuitous - the quality of the writing is so high, it mostly earns its awful extremity.
- The show seeks to depict not just frontier America but actual people who lived on the frontier. These were hard times and certain tragic events did happen to these real people. Another imdb trivia note from S08E18 is illustrative here:
The real Almanzo and Laura Wilder contracted diphtheria in 1888; then in August 1889, Laura gave birth to a son who died two weeks later, and in the same month they lost their house to a fire and their crops to drought. These circumstances, along with Almanzo's inability to do physical work, led the Wilder's into debt and poverty.
So that's fun. "Hey kids, what do you want to watch tonight?!"
I've covered the quality of the show in general terms - generally it's excellent - but there is a great variance in quality across the hundreds of episodes, spread across 9 seasons. There are weaknesses, aspects I hate, episodes I loathe and it is arguable that the show jumps the shark at a point. Along with the great episodes destined for the TV Hall of Fame, there are certainly terrible episodes also. My complaints and criticisms of this series could be an entire post of their own but I'll spare you that. Suffice it to say that the series has high highs and low lows but, for any given season, the ratio of excellent episodes to bad episodes never goes below 2:1. That is, until Season 9 when the series settles into a heat death of mediocrity; Season 9 is just unremarkable, tired and pointless.
There's just one loose end left. My biggest reason for pursuing the series was how impressed I was by the amazing pilot episode/movie. But, following that, I was spurred on by the rumor that the show ends with one of the most bizarre finales in any television show ever. The last episode of the series, true to the 9th season, is not bizarre or unusual in any way. But I have not been rugpulled yet. For there have been 3 "Little House" made-for-tv movies made after the series ended and I will be watching those next. We shall see...
