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The Daily Jim

All the wit that's fit to spit

Sunday, September 5, 2010

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.

edwards

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 3:06 pm.
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Facebook comments:

  • Steve

    Was Ernest Borgnine in Airwolf at the time?

  • TV watcher

    I see many holes in this this man's defense. Admit it, you're either a sucker for ole' timey family drama or Michael Landon.

  • Himjill

    Nellie was an assholeson

  • Wham

    Pa got into a lot of fights but he also cried in public a lot.

  • grammar b*tch

    typo alert!! ethic or ethnic? :)

  • Thedailyjim

    Nice grab. Thanks.

  • Brendas114

    re: #2 on the list: Albert pretended to be a werewolf to get the town bully to be nice to the shcoolteacher. If the teacher left town then so would her brother Manly, on whom Laura had a crush.

    How sad is that that I knew that!

  • RoxKhd

    Almanzo is my uncle in real life…
    just sayin

  • Leehubbard73

    Laura stated that Albert Ingalls (after his addiction to morphene), later came back as Dr. Ingalls and opened his practice. But later on in a TV movie, Albert was dying of a rare blood disease. What gives?

  • Behyeh

    As a proud owner of all of the seasons on DVD (including the pilot DVD), I have to agree with your list. When I was young I hated it. My mom and sister wanted to watch Little House while I wanted to watch my beloved Sesame Street. After much crying and tantrum throwing, it was worked out that we'd switch off days. It was then that the seed of love was planted, though it would not bloom until about 8 years ago- when I bought season 1 for 10 bucks at Target.

  • Ornelas Monica96

    In real life Laura Ingalls (Melissa Gilbert) and Willie Oleson(Jonathon Gilbert) are brother and sister. I have been a fan for many years and never knew this until recently……Did anyone else know this?

  • rbcbgirl

    I didn't like the series; the changes were a disservice to the author and her family.

  • Olivia

    Amen, RBCBgirl! What made the books so good was their simple, unvarnished realism. The TV show apparently didn't think realism would be popular enough, and fancied it up for 20th century tastes—for example, marrying Mary off and giving her a baby, so young viewers wouldn't have to accept the reality that, back in the 19th century, blind women were unlikely to have marriage prospects.
    Give me the real thing any time. I've always loved the books, but the TV show was pure Hollywood hokum.

  • Bfghg

    your point being?

  • kali

    LMAO!! quite interesting and SO SO funny, my mother used to FORCE us to watch this show as a way to *show us life wasn't always easy, so we had to fight for what we wanted” never found that lesson on the frigging thing.

  • B54oramaster

    You didn’t mention Albert the bastard’s rather startling projectile vomiting when coming off the morphine (not something you see on network TV, normally). Nor the fact that he was killed off before they did in Walnut Grove itself.

  • B54oramaster

    You didn't mention Albert the bastard's rather startling projectile vomiting when coming off the morphine (not something you see on network TV, normally). Nor the fact that he was killed off before they did in Walnut Grove itself.

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