Little House on Television

Nobody will be surprised to learn that we're huge Little House fans around here. My sister and I spent years playing Laura and Mary. The girls have my childhood copies of the entire series (with the yellow spines). It was the first set of chapter books we read to M. Now that she can read, she rereads at least one of the books every week. Her favorite game when she was 4 was "Laura and Mary tornado," which I loved because I was pregnant with E and all I had to do was sit on the couch, get covered with a blanket, and hide from the tornado. S is now in the middle of Little House in the Big Woods with E.

So though Saturday night at 8 is not good TV time for us--we're usually out and about or heading for bed--we were determined to remember to watch the new version of Little House on the Prairie.

Alas, M lasted only five minutes. She was indignant that Laura's hair was not brown enough and that the whole thing did not look like she imagined it. Which I suppose is positive testimony to the power of her imagination. So she went downstairs to play Scrabble with Grandma, and E and I watched the rest.

A few thoughts:

Pa was the ultimate babely frontier hero dude. I'll take him.

Ma had too much of the Nicole-Kidman-in-Cold-Mountain hair thing going on. Don't you think those long blonde tresses would have gotten just a bit mussed out there on the frontier? And wasn't Ma's hair always in a bun in the book?

Laura was clearly cast on the basis of her resemblance to Melissa Gilbert, not the Laura of the book. (And there was definitely some Karen Grassle going on with Ma.) (And what useful information--like, say, how nuclear power works--can find no space in my brain because I remember the name of the actress who played Ma in the 1970s Little House in the Prairie?)

Mary was perfect. Looks and attitude.

Way too scary for kids, at least my kids. Even the fearless E had to cover her eyes a couple of times (ice breaking up, Pa fighting the wolf).

The Indian racism thing is just hard to reconcile with contemporary mores--and they didn't do a very good job of it.

But hey, I watched the whole thing, which is rare for me, and I must say I enjoyed it. Stuck pretty much with the book (aside from the deletion of Carrie), added some gritty realism, and still looked good. Thumbs up.

[This one was for Sandra.]