I got sucked into the Nick at Night Landon-o-thon at my neighbors’ house tonight during dinner. I don’t mind Michael Landon. I think of I Was a Teenage Werewolf and giggle a bit whenever I see him, but he was a decent actor and very easy on the eyes. But this thread isn’t about Michael Landon the Actor.
An episode of “Little House” came on, specifically “The Family Tree” where Little Albert/Alfred/some kid who wasn’t in the books gets adopted or something. I left halfway through because the show was pissing me off. Particularly one scene. Caroline and Charles go to the county courthouse to get the ball rolling on Little Made Up For The Show’s adoption. Caroline is nicely decked out in sunbonnet, gloves, and Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. Charles is wearing the same shirt and pants he’s been running around the farm in. His collar and cuffs were even unbuttoned, fer cryin’ out in the blazin’ buckets! At this point, I had to leave. It was a minor thing, but I just couldn’t believe that Charles Ingalls would ever walk into a county courthouse in his shirtsleeves.
Am I the only one bothered by these things? Has anyone else ever been supremely bugged by a little tiny, almost unnoticable thing about this show? No wonder I never watched it as a kid.
Snow. I was born roughly near there and the only reason I can imagine for the near total lack of snow on that show was because nobody up there did anything on the farm during the winter except shoot their families then themselves. (Read Wisconsin Death Trip (it’s now a MOVIE!) and note, in the LaCrosse, Eau Claire, and Black River Falls areas, the TOTAL LACK of murders or commissions of or by ANYBODY from my family, despite our record of congenital insanity.)
Ma and her bonnets. I swear, but that trip to Mankato was the ONLY time she wore one and the Caroline of the book, like any lady who cared about her skin, ALWAYS wore a bonnet out of doors. And Caroline, despite her reduced circumstances, was a LADY.
And Charles on TV dressed like a bum. Mr Edwards would never have gone to town dressed like that, much less Charles Ingalls.
The more recent miniseries? They lost me when a timber wolves attacked a GROWN MAN on HORSEBACK! Not a chance; they’d starve first. Too likely half of the pack would die in the effort.
Otto, are you new to the Upper Midwest or do you have family going way back, or as way back as white folk do around there? We have to fight for an accurate representation of our ancestors on TV.
MY ex wife used to hate this show for two reasons:
!.) They were always using thing that weren’t supposed to be invented yet.
2.) the utter sappyness of the whole show.
I’m ashamed to admit, I was always a sucker for the sappy parts. MY eyes would always glaze over when I whatched the show; meanwhile my wifes eyes would be doing this—> :rolleyes: nuber, here.
The way Laura continued teaching AFTER her marriage.
And I used to really wish someone would slap Mrs. Oleson upside her head.
And Pa needed a haircut.
I spent most weekends with my grandparents when I was a kid, and they were ADDICTED to this show. And Hee-Haw. I have Hee-Haw songs burned into my brain that only sweet death will obliterate.
[sub]where, oh where, are you tonight…why did you leave me here all alooooone…[/sub]
I hated when it was supposed to be the dead of winter but all the trees were full of leaves. It was painfully obvious it was filmed in southern California when they were setting off for school or town and pretending it was cold, but the sky was bright blue with puffy white clouds and all the trees had leaves. Yeah, right.
As a native prarie-area Minnesotan, you’d think the most awful thing about LHotP is the mountains on the background, but no, my mother (who was born in 1925) said the most inaccurate thing is the number of trees. She said even when she was growing up there were practically NO trees, just some along rivers (oops, creeks) and a few scraggly ones homesteaders planted around their farms. In that part of the country you could see the grass (and later, farm fields) for miles.
During the open credits, when the youngest child, Carrie falls down, or any time she is in a scene! The twins who played here were never great actreesses!
The one where the girl gets raped by a guy in a clown suit becomes pregnant with Bozo’s clown child and Albert decides to marry her to “do right by her?” Wasn’t he at one point during that episode get accused of the rape?
Oh my god. I think I’ve seen every episode.
It always bugged the piss out of my how Pa would cry at some point in every frickin’ episode. I mean really. I doubt men back then were just so open with their feelings. Pa was such a martyr too. “I’ve been exposed to typhoid! Ya’ll just go on without me!” or “I have broken ribs! But hey, rather than ask for help, I’m going to be the martyr and try to load these bags of oats all by myself with my shattered ribs! The crops didn’t sell so well and I had to take this shit job to support the family!” Of course the family shows up to help him lift the heavy bags of oats and Pa is so touched that guess what he does? He cries.
Oooh I hated the episode where Albert developed the morphine addiction. But it was nice of Pa to let Albert puke all over him when going through withdrawal.
I started reading the books when I was 9. When I complained to my teacher that the tv show didn’t follow the books and Albert didn’t exist, my teacher pointed out that there weren’t enough books for the show.
I agree. I saw that episode after school and was scared to death. Of course, I didn’t know what happened to the girl, but I knew something bad had happened. I was already scared of clowns and this didn’t help. Another episode that scared me was the one were Laura stole the music box from Nelly.
I personally was always bothered by the fact that Caroline’s hair was always squeaky clean, like she maybe washed it every two or three days. In reality (or so I’ve been told), she’d have bathed, at most, once a month during warm months, and not at all throughout the winter.
Really? In the books, they bathed every Saturday night. It seems to me that our ancestors were vastly cleaner than everyone is giving them credit for.
I’ve never really watched the show, because of the aforementioned sappiness and historical inaccuracies, but I have to ask. Did Laura marry Almanzo or did they create someone else for her to marry? If she didn’t marry Manny, I’m going to be upset.
Hair wasn’t washed that frequently. In the winter time, many women didn’t wash their hair at all out of fear of getting sick. (Often, they combed cornmeal through it to absorb as much oil as possible.)
Perhaps it was the rarity of hair-washing that I remembered; or perhaps I was just wrong (I have two teenagers; I’m used to having it pointed out to me when I’m wrong )
In addition to the cornmeal, they also wore caps and such almost all the time, to avoid getting dust in their hair. Still, Caroline’s hair was always shiny just-washed clean. As was the hair of her girls, some of whom were the right age for hair to look dirty a mere 12 hours after it’s washed!
)