Little House on the Prairie: One Man’s Defense

When my wife explained the premise of Little House on the Prairie to our British friend, Action Man, he stopped drinking his over-sized beer and said {insert English accent}, “That sounds like a show for ladies.”  This inadvertently forced me to reveal my secret love of the show by defending it.  I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but instead I slipped into some sort of automated, Y chromosome, justification system; scrolling through the show’s numerous points of manly interest (that said, Almanzo “Manly” Wilder will be included nowhere in this list).

1.  When Laura met God, it turned out to be Ernest Borgnine.
2.  Albert the bastard pretended he was a werewolf to get the girl.
3.  Pa built his own house, played the fiddle, an kept making kids while his existing children slept in the loft above.
4.  Johnny freakin’ Cash showed up in Season 3 as a con man/preacher.
5.  Based on the song he would sing when he was excited, Mr. Edwards was probably drunker than we realized:
“Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man
He washed his face in the frying pan
He combed his hair with a wagon wheel
And died of the toothache in his heel.”
6.  Mary, Mary, Mary.
7.  Pa became a “powder monkey” for one episode and got to blow stuff up (including unfortunate stereotypical ethnic characters).
8.  Albert the bastard’s addiction to, and miraculous recovery from, morphine all in one episode.
9.  Willie Oleson was like the “George Costanza” of Walnut Grove; you knew he was gonna screw up, it was just a matter of how.
10. They actually blew up the town at the end of the series.  Take that Happy Days!
11. Rams Hall of Famer, Merlin Olsen, was living in Walnut Grove, and providing extra muscle for Pa for almost four seasons.
12. The long term payoff: Melissa Gilbert turns out to be hot soup as an adult, no longer needing to resort to hiding apples in her dress.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 3:06 pm.
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My So-Called Zombie Life

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• Question from Karl, lurking somewhere in the woods

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