Growing up I always wished he were my father. Don’t you think he would of made the perfect dad?
Are you talking the book Charles Ingalls or the TV Charles Ingalls?
The t.v Charles Ingalls of course.
No “of course” about it, Vision. The TV show utterly, utterly sucked and the Michael Landon version of Pa Ingalls was a modernized, sanitized, wieniefied version of the real, true, book Pa Ingalls, who was, of course, a wonderful dad.
Jess (go ahead, ask me how I really feel about this)
Vis, do yourself a favor and read the books. They have considerable merit. The tv show is not a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Geez! Give Vision a break. Some of us didn’t have wonderful homes. I’m not saying that Vision did, but my own experience made me wish many times that I had different parents.
I had an alcoholic father and once saw my father stabbed in the head with a butcher knife during a fight at my grandmother’s birthday party. At a different party my father got into a fight and my mother pushed us kids out the window and we ran and hid at our neighbors house. On another occasion, he woke me up to hit me, my brother, and my mother because we did something he didn’t like.
It seems reasonable then that I, or anyone else with this type of dysfunctional family (again not saying that Vision experienced this), would see a tv character and wish he was a member of our family. I mean, even if you didn’t like the tv version of Charles Ingalls, at least he didn’t come home drunk, throw dishes, hit his wife or kids, and basically ruin every nice moment his children ever experienced.
Charles Ingalls wasn’t my perfect idea of a father. I thought he was great and I watched Little House on the Prairie regularly.
I always thought Jimmy Stewart was the perfect father. I don’t remember when I saw my first Jimmy Stewart movie but I thought he always played such likable characters and wished he was my father. When he passed away in 1997, I literally cried for 3 days. Even though I was an adult (28), I still felt like a member of my family had died.
I cannot tell you how much I loathe that show.
I loved the books, have every one of them, but that simpering, “cute-as-a-button” Laura and her stupid family on TV just…argh! Can’t even think about it. Need to go scrub my brain!
OTOH, I can see where people like Grace, whose fathers were far below par (((Grace))))), would look up to someone like the character that Michael Landon portrayed. He was loving, strong, and took time to listen.