4) "The Halloween Dream" (season six, episode seven) It has a reasonably sweet conclusion (and plays into the show's general calls for tolerance), but it's hard to imagine what writers' room discussion possibly led to this storyline. In this one, Nels Oleson goes to the circus, only to find out the morbidly obese sister he's always been ashamed of is its fat lady. 3) "Annabelle" (season six, episode five)Īnother thing that was always happening on this show: the circus coming to town. Along the way, she receives some help from William Randolph Hearst. In this one, Laura helps a dying boy fulfill his wish of seeing the ocean by hopping a train. 2) "The Odyssey" (season five, episode 24)Įpisodes where the characters took incredibly unrealistic road trips, like they were the Brady Bunch or something, were surprisingly common. Even odder: everybody would be back in the show's more familiar setting of Walnut Grove, Minnesota, within a few episodes. But rarely did they do so in what amounted to late '70s caravan road trips. Yeah, pioneers would occasionally follow the gossip of those they had once known to new towns. But this two-parter - in which the vast majority of the show's characters just up and move to a new town, because why not? - is where things started to spin off their axis. Were there crazy episodes on this show prior to the season five premiere? Sure. 1) "As Long As We're Together" (season five, episodes one and two)
#LITTLE HOUSE SEASON 5 TV#
Here are nine episodes of Little House that will remind you what a whacked-out masterpiece this could be, and display just how frequently TV shows used to run out of plotlines about three seasons in. And as it got older, that love of melodrama combined with the general lack of stories any TV show faces in its old age - and the show just completely lost its mind. It never missed an opportunity to tell a story that involved as much weeping and misery as it could muster.
#LITTLE HOUSE SEASON 5 SERIES#
The series took a few incidents and ideas from Wilder's writing, but for the most part, it started constructing its own world more indebted to ‘70s and ‘80s TV drama than anything else.Īnd it loved melodrama. The books Little House was based on weren't terribly easy to adapt for television at the time - particularly since its protagonists, the Ingalls, were always moving around. It was also, particularly as it got older, completely bugnuts.
Based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's novels, it was one part coming-of-age series, one part small-town show, and one part Western in the vein of something like Gunsmoke. The show was a massive hit for NBC, at a time when the network was in need of hits even by the time it was canceled, it had yet to fall out of the Nielsen top 30. Some might date its debut to the airing of its pilot (a made-for-TV movie) in March of 1974, but the first regular airing of the show, which would run nine seasons, came on Sept.
The TV series Little House on the Prairie turned 40 this year.