When I was growing up, I recall my family gathering around the dinner table on weeknights and flicking the TV on to watch NBC news, but not so much “Little House”. We’d catch a glimpse of Michael Landon guiding his covered wagon through the opening credits before changing the channel to a sitcom on another network. Even so, the show fascinated us because part of it had been filmed in an open space preserve at the edge of my neighborhood. It was an unspoiled piece of land nestled up against the Santa Monica mountains, where motivated hikers and runners could follow it West to the ocean.
The Show I Didn’t Watch…Until I Did
About 12 years later, the show was in full-force syndication, and I started watching the re-runs after school. I’m still not exactly sure why I became so absorbed in the characters, but if I think back now I can still remember all the cast, how they grew up through the years, their perseverance beyond all the toils and tribulations on the frontier and, of course, how impossible it was not to tear up whenever Pa did. I’m sure I’m not alone. Even my mother-in-law loves and watches the Italian-dubbed version that reached all the way to Sicily decades ago and is still on the air.
Finding Walnut Grove Years Later
As a kid, it was fascinating to glimpse life through the eyes of the pioneers, without the comforts we had in our own time (like telephones, televisions, cars, and freeways!). It was hard to imagine that my great-great-grandparents’ generation had lived with so few conveniences. My grandmother, who herself grew up in Oklahoma at the height of the Dust Bowl, valiantly tried to implore to my sister and I that most material items were frivolous and that we should embrace her midwestern values of hard work and frugality. But we were pretty entrenched in the excess of the 1980’s in Los Angeles.
Forty years later, I finally understand what she was trying to teach us.
What My Grandmother Already Knew
Netflix recently released a new 8-part series re-imagining “Little House on the Prairie”, based on the original book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder from the 1930’s. I personally never reached for these books as a child. I was really into teen suspense novels, like Lois Duncan’s I Know What You Did Last Summer. But given my fondness for the original show, I decided to see what it was all about.
Immediately I was immersed into the characters and the scenery. Watching a loving but inexperienced family venture onto the frontier creates immediate dramatic tension. There are striking visual moments of majestic native tribes in all their glory, forced to migrate from their ancestral homes. Buffalo and wolves still outnumber the settlers, empowered in their fight for territory. And the passage of time is agonizingly slow, when a loved one doesn’t return home, and has no way to communicate that they have been waylaid a day, a week, or months into the future.
Why It Lands Differently Today
Technology has advanced so quickly over the last two decades that many of us barely notice how dramatically our lives have changed. When watching the Little House episodes, it is impactful to see how much perseverance and strong will so many people had to possess in the 1870’s, particularly young children. Life-threatening diseases, creatures and bad actors lie in wait around every turn — risks we not only take for granted now but can barely contemplate. While I certainly appreciate the modern conveniences of today that make us healthier, and more closely connected as a planet, I can’t help but feel a tug of longing for more basic times, where sustaining oneself meant carving out a piece of land for yourself, building a homestead, growing your own food, and enjoying the fruits of your labor.
What We’ve Gained…and What We’ve Lost
Of course, frontier life wasn’t idyllic, and I do like how the show explores some of those themes. The adaptation also isn’t afraid to examine difficult themes through a modern lens, including racism and cultural displacement. But visually and emotionally, the stories portrayed have pulled at my heart strings. It reminds me to linger over my morning coffee, leave my phone inside for a while, and pay closer attention to the birds, the trees, and the quiet beauty that’s been there all along.
Maybe that’s why the story feels so relevant today. It isn’t asking us to return to the 1870s. It’s simply reminding us that some values don’t have to become obsolete.
Little House on the Prairie for Netflix was created and adapted by Rebecca Sonnenshine (The Housemaid, The Boys)
Leave a Reply