Shark Bytes

I will give the show this - most of the guys on it were decently hot. I was really into albert. There was one episode where we got to see his sexy hairy legs. And Almonzo in his nightshirt - waiting for it to ride up or something! Andrew Garby - nice eyes and even Willie Olson had it and got it even more as he got older. Pa himself wasn't so bad either especially in the shirtless scenes and then there was the cute guy they adopted later on. Not a bad show for a little eye candy.

lol @ Emily's rundown on a Pa cry. LOL!
Don't forget the sudden inhale gasps and watery eyes!! I wish he would have just BAWLED and sobbed and put us out of our uncomfortable misery watching him hold in his emotions. Anyway, I too Liked the Harriet and Nels scenes. What a classic bigot and self-righteous bee-otch! She was obviously an exaggeration of such a person. Oh another thing that bugs me....why are ALL the kids at the school CRUEL to the newcomer??? I mean in real life, there is always ONE or TWO mean kids who make fun, but why does EVERY kid laugh, point, stare, ridicule, harass and make fun of anyone new? I think this is very unrealistic...not every kid is a mean bully. ok enough for today.

I watch this show 4 times a day on Hallmark and TVland and I have NEVER seen the blind school burns down episode which apparently kills Mrs. Garvey and Marys baby;nor have I seen the clown rapes Sylvia episode. I wonder if they stopped airing those two episodes as just too over the top.. ANYHOO where the BEEP do I begin to talk about this show? I agree with EVERYTHING you all are saying about the show..How much I am enjoying this website. Let;s list a few gems:
1) Pa acting as holy messiah to EACH and EVERY needy kid/adult/person he comes in contact with.
2) Pa GUFFAWING at STUPID things that arent even funny!!! Like when Mr. Edwards digs thru the mine and finally finds him, they both bust out laughing for about a half hour.that was uncomfortable to watch!
3) Laura;s (Melissa Gilbert;s) nasty greenish brown teeth. Did Hollywood not have teeth whitener back then???
4) Mary going from hot blonde babe to honely mouse brown fuzzy headed depressing bore.
5) Albert detoxing from morphine and puking cream all over the place!GROSS
6) the reason Carrie never got a decent storyline is because Lindsay and Sydney Greenbush were the most HORRIBLE actressess in the history of child stars. OMG Could you cringe when she would sappingly sweetly call, : NIGHT PAAAAA!!: and then look up at the camera lights and around as if to say GOOGOO GAH GAH ARE U PROUD OF ME I SAID EXACTLY WHAT YOU TOLD ME TO SAY! Oh man I hated that little girl.
7) Laura wearing braids at age 16
8) what happened to WIld Boy?
9) Merlin Olsen worst actor on the face of the planet (next to Jonathan Gilbert, next to Allison Arngrim) lol THEY WERE really bad
10) Nancy oleson yelling, OH ELMERRR!!

Ok more later I am getting upset now.
How I loved the survival episodes when laura was in 4th grade. She is my exact age and I could relate to her!

You don't have to be a psychologist to see that Michael Landon had a major messiah ccmplex as HE was ALWAYS saving people and working out their problems that had become unbearable. This dynamic became more evident in his show Highway to Heaven where that was his only job. (Roma Downey was better at it though, lol.)

Why didn't anyone ever cut Albert's hair. It was hideous. It was really weird when the orphan kids kept being taken in by the ingalls. Charles never diciplinted his children which was very odd and he never missed the oportunity to get into a fight. All the blind people looked more retarted than blind. Mary's husband was the worst actor I've ever seen. It was weird that Jenny almost drowned once and then purposly tried to drown herself again. Laura was always trying to act tough and get into fights and she a Almoso were alway jealous.

I am a huge fan of the show, and I would say that this show did not jump the shark, because if anyone reads the credits in the beginning, they will see that this show is based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. But there are somethings that bothered me about this show, like in Season 5 when Mary got married, Charles and Caroline are in the merchantile and Harriet is showing them a clock. Mary and Adam are blind, why would they need a clock? And in Season 6 What kind of mother would just leave her child to get the rest of the children out of the burning house. Also in Little house a New Beginning, the episode where Nellie comes to visit, why isn't she staying at the Hotel? Also in Season 5 when the family moves to the city, there is a girl there named Amelia, does any realize it was the same girl who drowned in season 4.

Hey Heather, turn off the Hallmark Channel and get a life. It's 2008, so better get your facts up to date. Melissa Gilbert is no longer president of the Screen Actors Guild and hasn't been since 2005. Alan Rosenberg is that organization's current president. By the way, Ronald Reagan isn't the president of the United States anymore in case you've missed that, too.

FORTY PAGES and COUNTING! Wow, what a love/hate relationship we have with this show. In an interview, Alison Arngrim explained it perfectly...there are several different types of Little House fans....and each of the following types are present here at JTS......
As she tells it, there are the fans who were raised on it, the fans who loved the books, the fans who loved family drama, the fans who love to laugh at it, and the Michael Landon "always our Little Joe" fans....and finally....what I and so many were: the fans of the Olesons...who giggled with glee over Nellie and Harriet and their hilarity.
Those two sure beat the Michael Landon patented squint/giggle/guffaw thing he did in every...and I mean every episode.
NELLIE, WE LOVE YOUUUU!!!!

I have to say I agree with the following comment.

Bouncing off several of the comments below, especially the "crying" comments... well, Landon had a very difficult childhood, with a mother who was nuts, and I always got the impression he was working out a lot of very personal psychological issues in his scripts or script ideas. Anything he ever wrote made broad attempts to make the audience cry. I personally wearied of tv tear jerker plot lines long ago.

The comments on this program are some of the best I've read at JTS. Very interesting.

Bouncing off several of the comments below, especially the "crying" comments... well, Landon had a very difficult childhood, with a mother who was nuts, and I always got the impression he was working out a lot of very personal psychological issues in his scripts or script ideas. Anything he ever wrote made broad attempts to make the audience cry. I personally wearied of tv tear jerker plot lines long ago.

But Little House does seem to have some authenticity. My grandmother grew up in a Northern Michigan Norwegian community of the early 1900's, and said the program - particularly the opening scene with the three daughters running down the hill - reminded her of her childhood. She was a die-hard fan of the show. Her community was mostly Norwegian to her death in the late '70's - all Olsons, Larsens, Johnsons, Andersons, etc., with the general store being still owned by the original family of Scots who founded it. She thought Little House was pretty authentic, and didn't watch a lot of other tv, except the Waltons.

Landon did a pretty good job, but it was disappointing to watch him dump his wife (& family) for a younger blonde who worked on the set. How cliche, how sad, how NOT old fashioned values.

One thing that I always hated about this show is the lack of continuity between seasons. I've seen every episode, and the writers didn't always check the older scripts before putting the show together.

Also, Michael Landon must have paid actors squat because they used the same guest actors over and over again. E.J. Andre appeared as 3 characters (Zachariah in "Gold Country", Uncle Jed in season 8, and the gun peddler in "His Father's Son). Even Kyle Richards did a guest spot as a fairly random character when at one time, she had a prominent role on the show. Then again, this was all before internet geeks were on the scene to dissect these things mercilessly.

to heather- relax, woman! i think most of us agree this was a good show, it's just not perfect. the purpose of this site, my dear, is to say when the show JUMPED THE SHARK. If Landon was still alive he'd even tell you you cry too much!

I love how so many of you are so quick to criticize this show, when I'm sure none of you have ever acted a day in your life, and if you are some struggling actor, you haven't done anything as half as famouse as Little House on the Prairie. Whether you enjoyed the series or not, truth is it's one of the most beloved shows of all times. Much better than any of the "talent" in these pathetic reality shows we have now with such "skilled" actors (I'm sorry, Paris Hilton is only on TV because her daddy is filthy rich).
I always thought that entertainment television was supposed to be a place to escape life, not live reality. So, in conclusion, if you don't like it, don't watch it. But know that most of those actors are have more money and more fame than any of you. By the way, who is the Screen Actors Guild President??? Oh, THAT WOULD BE MELISSA GILBERT! Go Michael!

I understand that when a series runs as long as this one did, and encompasses so many years of the Ingalls' lives, it would be necessary to create events and characters that were never part of the Little House books. The show omitted some events that would have been great entertainment, like when Laura took her first teaching job twelve miles out of town in the freezing middle of winter and was boarding at the superintendent's house and was scared for her life because she saw the jealous psychotic wife threaten the husband with a knife so he would give up their claim and take them back East. But most other events would have been too mundane for good TV ratings, like Laura's burgeoning social life that pretty much went off without any problems. She never 'enhanced' the front of her dress with apples in order to look like Nellie; she just ordered personalized picture-cards and went to a fun birthday party and a boring church social and never got in a physical or verbal fight. I didn't mind at all when, on the show, Nancy became best lunatic child ever in Walnut Grove and Albert had to kick morphine and poor introverted Sylvia got violated and pregnant and Caroline experienced very real insecurity as she went through the 'change of life'. These types of situations have happened throughout time! (But a poster was absolutely right about the unlikelihood of Percival's Orthodox parents supporting him when he married Nellie. About all the death and sickness on the show: this was decades before penecillin and safety awareness on the job! Frontier life was hard. But for all of the tragedy, there were also lessons about spiritual faith. This was one of the best family shows ever.

Baby Battering Ram was on a repeat today.

I watched very closely; without question, at one point, Alice (in total panic) uses poor baby Kendall as a battering ram. Why she couldn't just roll the baby off the roof to a waiting Hester Sue ("..it's too late Adam!! It's too late!!") down below has always been the question on my mind. Sure, baby Kendall might have suffered some scrapes or even a broken limb (or worse if good ol Hester didn't catch him), but could it be any less risky that waiting in a burning room to die of carbon monoxide or worse yet, death by burning?? The whole scene just makes you scream at the TV. Albert the wimpy bastard Ingalls should have been hung from the nearest tree for that one.