Laura and Her Family Battle Hardships With a Smile in Little House on the Prairie

With my mom recovering from surgery, we’ve been watching a lot of television this summer. One series that has captured our attention is Little House on the Prairie, a series that has been referenced in formats as disparate as the latest VeggieTales video, which spoofs it, and LOST, in which snarly cynic Sawyer secretly considers it one of his favorite shows. While both of us had seen various episodes before, many of the episodes in the first season, which my friend lent us, were new to us, and the repeats were still entertaining the second or, in a couple of cases, third or fourth time around.

Little House on the Prairie is the long-running television series that is rather loosely based on the beloved autobiographical books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The show, which takes place in the late 1800s in the tiny town of Walnut Grove, centers around the Ingalls family, though individual episodes sometimes focus more on other townspeople. Still, at least one Ingalls is usually integrally involved in the story.

Laura (Melissa Gilbert) serves as narrator in some of the episodes, a device that harkens back to the books. This spunky pig-tailed child has a heart of gold but a knack for getting into trouble; her tomboyish tendencies are part of the reason she shares such a powerful bond with her pa, who calls her Half-Pint. Michael Landon is a bundle of warmth and humor as Charles Ingalls, though he has his stubborn and ornery moments as well. His relationship with the practical but fiery Caroline (Karen Grassle) is the cornerstone of the show, and theirs is a model marriage, albeit infused with a more modern flavor than the Ingallses we see in the books.

Less prominent than Laura but still a major player is her older sister Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson), who is ladylike and studious and often irritated by Laura’s behavior, though never for long. She’s a bit of a goody two-shoes, but there’s nothing mean-spirited in her outlook; she’s just not usually quite as fun as Laura is. Completing the Ingalls family is toddler Carrie, played by twins Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush. Because she is so young, she never has much of a role in anything that is happening throughout the first season, and most of her dialogue consists merely of repeating the words of others.

Beyond that core family, however, are many colorful residents. Chief among these are the Olesons, the owners of the local mercantile who stand as a sort of antithesis to the Ingallses. Richard Bull is wonderful as Nels, a hen-pecked man with a good head for business but also a kind heart and a sense of fair play. He’s a decent fellow who seems to envy Charles his devoted wife and well-mannered children. Poor Nels is stuck with Laura’s nemesis, haughty Nellie (Alison Arngrim), and her destructive little brother Willie (Jonathan Gilbert). Worst of all, though, is his shrewish wife Harriet, the scourge of the town who is played with devilish glee by Scottie MacGregor in the most consistently laugh-aloud funny role in the series.

Other recurring characters include warm-hearted Doc Baker (Kevin Hagen), whose gentle bedside manner and hearty sense of humor give him the perfect disposition for his difficult job; jovial Swede Lars Hanson (Carl Swenson), who owns the lumber mill employing several of the town’s residents; even-tempered Reverend Alden (Dabbs Greer), who ministers eloquently to his yearning congregants; and disheveled Mr. Edwards (Victor French), an earlier acquaintance whose gruff manner Laura adores and who is the only character on the show with his own theme music. While most stories focus on recurring characters, some involve characters who only turn up in that particular episode. In many cases, these are just people passing through. For instance, Red Buttons turns up as a one-man circus peddling peep shows and placebos. This storyline, which primarily involves a phony powder he passes off as a miracle drug, amused me since Buttons went on to play a similar role a couple years later in Pete’s Dragon.

Because of the harsh conditions and plentiful opportunities for injury, many episodes have a grim streak to them, and it’s not uncommon for at least one character to die. In one episode, an elderly widow on the cusp of her 80th birthday concocts a plan to pretend that she has died in order to get her children into town for the funeral. In another, Laura and family dog Jack are feared rabid after both are bitten by her pet raccoon. In the most morbid episode of the season, a typhus outbreak causes life in Walnut Grove to grind to a halt as residents begin dropping off. The sense of peril is acute, and it’s easy to imagine that even the most beloved characters could fall victim to the whims of the harsh landscape.

Nonetheless, levity is hardly hard to come by. The music of Landon’s laugh rumbles through most episodes multiple times, and Laura’s antics often elicit a chuckle, to say nothing of the calamitous occurrences in the Oleson household. It may be a time of simple pleasures, but those pleasures are very visceral. There’s genuine joy in the pick-up baseball games and the picnics that are such a favorite after-church pastime, with homemade goodies spread out over blankets under a sunny sky. The faith of these hard-working and hard-playing residents helps sustain them as they move along toward their next set of challenges.

And of course, there is love. The Ingallses are a model for the whole community in this regard, both in terms of the familial relationship and the strong partnership between Charles and Caroline. The Olesons model a very different sort of marriage, but love is present there as well, as evidenced by the conclusion of the episode in which the two of them have an explosive fight and nearly split up. We see puppy love when Laura falls for an older classmate, who, in a later episode, falls for a burlesque dancer he meets when he decides to run away from home. The romantic storyline that intrigued me most involves Doc Baker and Harriet’s visiting niece forming a swift mutual affection for one another, only to be thwarted by an unfortunate circumstance, though not the one I expected.

The first season includes several iconic episodes, including Harvest of Friends, in which the Ingalls family sets up house at Plum Creek and becomes acquainted with the townspeople, and The Lord Is My Shepherd, the two-parter in which Caroline has a baby who dies and a guilt-stricken Laura, who was bitterly jealous of him, literally heads for the hills in an effort to convince God to swap her life for that of her baby brother. This episode covers a span of at least a year, which throws the timeline off a bit. For instance, in the Christmas episode, Mary mentions that this is the first Christmas at Plum Creek, but it would have to be at least the second. Nonetheless, it’s a powerful episode and one of several in which Christian faith plays a significant role, which is one of the reasons the show is so popular with people like my grandma, who bemoans the lack of traditional values on contemporary television.

Little House on the Prairie is a wholesome show that blends the old-fashioned with more modern sensibilities. Charles and Caroline sometimes seem a little too hip for the 1880s, and some of the topics they broach seem to reflect the 1970s more than that earlier era. It’s definitely a different animal than the books, but if you enjoyed reading about Laura’s pioneer adventures, chances are you will like watching the stories that unfold in a mildly fictionalized version of that world. And if the old-timey setting doesn’t appeal to you, give it a try, and you may just find that the residents of Walnut Grove are not so very different from us.