That’s easy! Livvie and John have money problems, Corabeth is snooty, Ike is exasperated and bewildered with her, the Baldwin sisters offer someone some of their special recipe, Grandma acts annoyed (or, in later seasons, twitches a bit), Grandpa sneaks off into the woods with his young male lover (okay, that was real life, not on the show), and the children learn a very special lesson. Then everyone says good night to everyone else and they turn the lights out and go to bed.
See? Simple as pie. Olivia’s Very Special Super-Baptist Apple Pie, that is.
You remember “The Waltons” ep where John-Boy and Grampa light up a J, doncha?
Okay, it was only a blooper shown on one of those lame Dick Clark specials. Richard Thomas blows a line, and says something like “Fuck it, I’m going out back to smoke a joint.” Geer laughed harder than anyone at that…
I was quite young when most of these episodes were shown, so I don’t remember plots very well; just certain images. Like Caroline and her gaping oozing leg wound, or Laura and her pet raccoon that they thought had rabies, or Nancy and Willie getting ready to hold up the bank with a gun made of licorice, which Willie eats, smearing it all over his mouth in the process, because he apparently achieved the age of 16 without ever learning hand-eye-mouth coordination.
I may have to try to catch some of the re-runs, just to fill in the gaps.
You know, my dislike for this program is well known, but I must admit to some intrigue now about the later episodes. I’ve never seen most of the Albert era eps, and none of the James/Cassandra era ones. I don’t believe I ever saw an episode after Laura and Almanzo got married. But I’m thinking now I might enjoy them – just for the weird factor. The clown rape one just sounds like a hoot; and this Nancy is worse than Nellie?
As for the Waltons, I always liked it despite the lack of realism. Of course, I thought it was realistic when I was a kid watching it – then, one day, my dad (born in 1936) was watching with me… The episode was one in which the big drama was that the family water heater had broken and they couldn’t afford a new one. To the eyes of a 1970s suburban kid this seemed pretty dire, and I’m thinking, “Wow, those poor people, the depression must really have sucked!” Then my dad says, very quietly, “My parents got hot water in the house in 1952.” I goggled at him, and he continued, “They got electricity in the mid '40s – after the war, anyway. We used to do our schoolwork by a kerosene lamp. When I was a kid, it was the rich people in town who had water heaters and electricity.” This sort of took the bloom off the Walton’s rose for me… After that, when I watched, my dad would often say something like, “You’re watching that show about the wealthy mill owners during the Depression?”
I still liked it, though – although it certainly shared other of LHotP’s faults. The transparent '70s style moralizing which replaced any actual appropriate-to-the-period sentiments, especially. Also the scary '70s hairstyles. And it certainly dipped into melodrama in the later episodes, too. Nobody remembers Mary Ellen’s first husband who was supposedly killed at Pearl Harbor? Then a few years later he turns up alive, but he’d had his balls shot off in the war, so he abandoned Mary Ellen and their kid because he couldn’t be a 'real husband?"
Hmmmm, I liked The Waltons. Ellen Corby was a fantastic actress, Richard Thomas was pretty decent (I liked him in the Stephen King miniseries, It), and it’s always amusing to see the various guest stars. (John Ritter playing a fire and brimstone fundy preacher was pretty funny).
Then you wouldn’t have done too well with the X-Files/Mulder. Maybe these two should have guest-starred in the 3rd Austin Powers movie–you know, the one with the MOLE!
I saw Alison Arngrim on some game show like Disco Fever and she was wearing a dress which had a top consisting of two bands crossing her front and tied around the back of her neck. Whoa, Nellie! Our little prairie bitch was ALL growed up!
I grew up about 10 miles from Walnut Grove, MN. Every summer, my best friend (and most of her family) was in “Fragments of a Dream,” a play based on Laura’s time in the dugout (which is now a big hole in a field, IIRC). I read the books obsessively. I wanted to be Laura. But I could never watch the show. It bothered me too much that the name of the book that occurred in Walnut Grove was On the Banks of Plum Creek darnit, not LHotP!
I didn’t realize that WKRP was up against LHotP, but that means one of my favorite episodes of WKRP has an “in joke”. On one of the funniest episodes Herb and Lucile Tarlek were on a reality show predecessor (complete with Peter Marshall as a host) called Real Families. The entire episode was filmed not as an episode of WKRP but as an episode of the reality series. At one point Lucille, lying through her teeth about her mothering habits, tells the camera crew "I only let my children watch wholesome
It’s not just the absence of Pa’s facial hair that bothered me, but the absence of every man in Walnut Grove’s facial hair (except for Mr. Edwards, but Victor French had a beard or a least a bush moustache in every role he ever played). The 1870s-1890s when the show was set was THE ERA for not just facial hair but great-big bull seal facial hair- walrus moustaches and thick sideburns and bushy beards, etc… Walnut Grove was apparently way ahead of the fashion curve.
I loved all of the characters who were on the show for one episode. Walnut Grove was supposed to be a town the size of a large snuff box, but suddenly Laura has a best friend you’ve never seen before (like Jonah who struck gold with her, or the most recent immigrant, or the stuttering girl, the old lady who leaves Laura a mansion, etc.) or even a special guest villain (like the crazy mother of a dead girl who traps Laura in her basement and converts her to her daughter, because griefstricken mothers often do that) but they’re never seen again after that episode. If you add up the guest stars and count them as residents of the town then Walnut Grove was at least as large as Mankato (which was basically Dodge City, complete with swinging saloon doors and can-can dancers of the sort for which Minnesota is rightfully world famous).
Did anybody ever notice the times that Michael Landon evidently thought “screw it, I’m sleeping late today” and just recycled a plot from Bonanza? This includes the orphans who were to be separated (but luckily an angel shows up in the guise of a minister to prevent it), the over-the-hill boxer who has a near fatal injury in the ring (from Jonathan Garvey in LHotP, from Hoss in Bonanza- there were others but they aren’t coming to me at the moment).
I also loved the already mentioned episode in which the Olesen’s grandtwins were to be raised as a Christian girl and Jewish boy (named for his living grandpa). How exactly would that work? “Now princess, Jesus Christ came to Earth and died for your sins… but not for your brother’s, who is one of the people our church teaches helped kill Jesus along with the Italians and the Freemasons… now we have a lovely ham for this Easter, but none for you little Benjamin” [why do I remember his name was Benjamin?] “because God forbids you to eat it. Now later your sister is going to hunt Easter eggs while you stay inside and wrap up the leftovers from that seder dinner we brought you on a TV tray the other night.”
And Walnut Grove was a little Peyton Place: Alice Garvey was married to a convict before and never told anybody, there was a clown raping girls (who had never been seen before), the minister was a dry alcoholic [revealed in one episode] who beat up a man in front of his congregation, the James gang passed through and they even imported a black kid for Laura to take to show’n’tell on Liberal Day (the kid later went on to be Willis on DIFF’RENT STROKES [a shame the Ingalls couldn’t have taken in poor Kimberly Drummond and maybe she wouldn’t have gotten mixed up in drugs]).
And Nancy was indeed an evil little bitch. I kept expecting Laura to voice over the end of an episode with “And that’s how Jenny outsmarted Nancy to win the spelling bee. Years later when Nancy left Walnut Grove to avoid questioning in Mrs. Oleson’s disappearance, the police only found three things in the house- the hoop she played with as a girl, Mr. Oleson’s head and hands in the icebox, and a letter saying ‘Damn you all to hell Jenny Wilder! SUPERCILIOUS was MY word!’, but that’s just how you spell growing up.”
All in all a very good show, though, except for usually.
Because that was the running gag throughout the episode in which Percival’s father appeared. Mrs. Olson would call the kid “Ben” or “Benjy” or “Benny” and Mr. Cohen would THUNDER out “BENJAMIN!”
Michael Landon didn’t just recycle plots from Bonanza. I swear, hand to God, I heard the music that would be the LHotP theme song playing in the background at least once on Bonanza.
I’ve really enjoyed this thread! Thanks for reminding me of all the reasons I hated this show (though, heaven help me, I watched it faithfully, first run and syndicated! What was I thinking??)
OK, I never saw many of the after-marriage ones either, but you have got to at least find the one where pregnant Laura passes out while hand-watering baby apple trees during a drought, and wakes up in a bathtub full of ice cubes.
I also remember seeing Albert throw up all over Pa in the drug episode. Man, that was weird.
I don’t think they actually said that Albert died in the “whatever incurable disease he had” episode. I remember him climbing one of the Minnesota Mountains and having a look of exhausted triumph, and his diagnosis was of course terminal so it implied this was his last great act, but perhaps he got better due to some of Doc Baker’s chicken bladder and dried apple poultices and Hester Sue’s biscuits. (What a nice thing that the only black woman in the town of Walnut Grove fell in love with the only black man in Walnut Grove.)
All in all the show was like a historical romance novel (the “Fabio in a ripped pirate shirt on the cover” type, not your researched historical fiction) without the sex.
That final episode (or TV movie- Little House: the Last Farewell) was a Doozie. I don’t remember the exact plot, but somehow due to a royal grant a century or more before of the land on which Walnut Grove is sitting the whole place becomes the property of an evil speculator. The plotholes in this thing make those in Rescue From Gilligan’s Island look like a documentary on the Donner Party. Supposedly it was because Landon, ever the egomaniac, didn’t want the sets for his show to be re-used in any other projects.
Yes, and I thought he also carved Laura’s braces out of wood but then found out that Tinker (the dopey metalsmith who made the new churchbell) made them out of his own fillings. Pa was so moved that he, ya know, cried.