LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE

I've read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books.  She was a wonderful writer.  But I must say that the TV series Little House on the Prairie was shameless '70s cheese, made for the sort of people who voted for Ronald Reagan or buy Thomas Kincade prints.

Laura's father was a great character in the books. But the way Michael Landon played him, I always felt that if his kids gave him any real trouble he'd burst into tears!  The show had such an anachronistic feel--one episode even involved telephone gossip!--that it could have been called Little Suburb on the Prairie.  And of course, everyone had clean white clothes (unlike the real frontier).

Shall I compare the TV show to the books?  In one book there's a chapter where Laura goes to Nelly's birthday party but when she tries to touch the dress on her new doll Nelly snatches it away, leaving her feeling humiliated.  In the TV version, she also knocks Laura down!

There was one episode where a guy convinced the town to entrust their money to him so he could buy them seed corn, but he went and bought it alone, and on the way back his wagon crashed and the townsfolk thought he'd absconded and started bullying his pregnant wife.  You know, he should have taken some assistants with him, but then there'd be no story! (I hate that kind of plot that depends on characters being careless at crucial moments.)

There was another episode where a boy was dying of leukemia and his last wish was to see California before he died.  So he and Pa Ingalls sneaked onto a train and they went out to California, where they boy died in view of the surf.  Sob, sob.

The show could be very predictable.  I remember one episode where Mrs. Oleson went out in all her finery to meet the new schoolmistress.  I thought, "The new schoolmistress will turn out to be African-American!" and she was.

Don't get me started on The Waltons either! It was truly cheesy to end each show with the family bidding each other goodnight. (That house must have had thin walls.)

I admit that I actually watched The Waltons at the time, but I'm ashamed of myself now.  The French writer Gustave Flaubert grew up in the provincial city of Rouen, and later said about his hometown, "Disliking Rouen is the beginning of good taste." For me, the beginning of good taste was disliking The Waltons!