Last week, I was doing some research for another topic that I was writing about, and I discovered something that got me a little excited: a "Little House on the Prairie" podcast. "Little House: Fifty for 50 Podcast" is hosted by Alison Arngrim, who played mean girl Nellie Oleson, and Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder, along with "Little House Super Fan" Pamela Bob. Apparently, it started out last year as a 50th anniversary celebration of the show, but it was so popular that they kept going beyond the originally planned 50 episodes.
My mom practically raised me on LHOTP and the work of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Before I could read myself, we would lie in her bed at night, and she'd read the books to me. And while the shows were in reruns by the time I was old enough to watch them, it seemed like they were a constant on our TV. As a matter of fact, in the couple of years leading up to her death, my mom would lie in her recliner most afternoons and watch the show, along with "The Waltons" and "The Andy Griffith Show." She was a fan of wholesome.
But there are some people who do "wholesome" right, and many in more recent years who do it totally wrong. And that was the topic of discussion in the most recent episode of the LHOTP podcast. As Bob points out, this show had the family values and the life lessons, but it was authentic. It didn't sugarcoat things or offer some whitewashed "syrupy, saccharine, overproduced" version of them. The hosts compared the show to "Touched by an Angel" and "Seventh Heaven," claiming that they just didn't quite match up.
Arngrim replied and said, "The acting and the writing made it work, and I will tell you that my father... used to hate sentimentality, but he said, 'I hate fake sentimentality...' The way they're doing it on the show, because of the acting and the writing, he said, it's real. You buy it."
But according to Butler, there was one man to thank for this: Michael Landon. Landon, who played the show's patriarch Charles Ingalls, also produced the show and directed many episodes, and he more or less had most of the creative control.
"I think something else that with the sentimentality, Michael also has a way he can turn that on a dime and find the humor in a moment, which immediately can yank you back away from the sentimentality into a good natured laugh. And I think that the balance that he was able to strike allowed the audience to be surprised by where the emotions turn. I mean, people's lives, the emotional lives that we all have, can turn on a dime depending on what happens," Butler said.
After praising Landon's writing and storytelling abilities, he added, "I just think when you see an episode like this, you really get that and I think people respected Michael, but I don't think he had that industry respect that what he did deserved. He captured audiences in this profound way and continues to capture audiences. In a changing world, he still is able to capture people because there's truth in what he's writing about."
I'm not sure about industry respect — I was in elementary school when Landon died in 1991 at the far too young age of 54 —but I wholeheartedly agree with Butler about the way he captures audiences. He was a talented man when it came to storytelling and reaching through the TV screen and touching the audience. Even though she grew up in a totally different world than I did, I could relate to that little girl named Laura Ingalls, whom Landon and Melissa Gilbert essentially brought to life for the show. Despite the fact that we lived in different time periods, we faced the same real ups and downs, and I appreciated, even as a child, that they weren't always sugarcoated. Shoot, I even had my very own Nellie Oleson in my life. He didn't try to take a tale as old as time and mold and shape it to fit some weird new agenda like you see on TV today.
And apparently, my friend and colleague Chris Queen agrees, too. I was digging through some old articles on our site and found that he wrote about the 50th anniversary of the show last year and had this to say: "Looking back at 'Little House on the Prairie' today, the show holds up remarkably well. Sure, the scenarios, the acting, and some of the music are over the top, but other than some of the hairstyles, it doesn’t come across as dated to the ‘70s and early ‘80s. The historical subject matter stands up as well, even if some of the minorities on the show benefit from a post-civil-right-era treatment. Above all, it’s still entertaining."
Chris also mentioned a Netflix/CBS reboot of the show, which apparently begins filming next month. I'm sure it will fall short. Even if anyone in Hollywood wanted to try, we can't make good, authentic TV these days without getting canceled. Heck, even the American Library Association and Harper Collins have made attempts at canceling Laura Ingalls Wilder herself because of her depiction of Native Americans.
That leads me to wonder what would have happened if Landon had lived another two or three decades and continued working. Would he have developed something else that is as timeless and beloved as LHOTP, or would he even be allowed to try? Would he be someone who fell in line with Hollywood's obsession with political correctness and desire to erase history, or would he be someone who didn't let that disease that runs rampant in the entertainment industry today destroy his talent and creativity? I know Landon was a man of faith and a big Ronald Reagan supporter, so I'd like to think he'd be the exception to the rule. I'd like to think he'd be the guy finding a way to make good, honest television that didn't sell out to the woke mob or force nauseating amounts of virtue signaling down our throats.
