"If I had a remembrance book, I'd mark down this day as very special. Though I didn't know it at the time, I had just met the man I would someday marry: Almanzo Wilder." - Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls
Little House on the Prairie: Season 6 DVD Review
By Christopher W. Czajka
After a clunky and sometimes bizarre fifth season which included a sojourn in the Big City, the adoption of a curly-haired moppet, an unexpected trip to the Pacific Ocean, and a marauding giant spider, Little House on the Prairie returned for its sixth season on September 17, 1979. Apparently, the writers and producers spent their summer vacations figuring out how to refocus and reinvigorate the show...and they did one hell of a job. Season six serves up a heapin' helpin' of everything that the series does best: adventure, humor, steadfast love, sweet life lessons, and, as usual, a ceaseless parade of heartbreaking catastrophes. But the key ingredient in this season's success is a relatively new element for Little House: romance. A plague of lovebugs has descended on the good folk of Hero Township, and practically no one is spared. Reverend Alden (Dabbs Greer) courts and marries a cheerful widow. Mr. Oleson (Richard Bull) toys with the idea of ditching his battleaxe wife in favor of a comely young lady. A deaf boy falls in love with Laura (Melissa Gilbert) after she teaches him sign language. Albert (Matthew Laborteaux) nurses a crush on a new girl in town, who is, in turn, smitten with Andy Garvey (Patrick Laborteaux). Most importantly, Laura meets and falls in love with a burly blond sodbuster named Almanzo Wilder (Dean Butler). The braids come out, the skirts go down, the hair goes up, and young Miss Ingalls claws her way into adulthood. This is it, folks. . .I would argue that season six is Little House on the Prairie's high tide, its zenith, its ne plus ultra. Plainly and simply, it doesn't get any better than this. . .and it will never be the same afterwards.
The sixth season begins with the sublime "Back to School" Parts 1 and 2, which set the wheels in motion for the rest of the season. Laura, Albert, and the alarmingly sullen, increasingly morose Carrie (twins "Lindsay" Robin and "Sidney" Rachel Greenbush) head off for the first day of the new school year. The revolving door on the Walnut Grove schoolhouse has turned again, and the quirky Eliza Jane Wilder (Lucy Lee Flippin) is now presiding over the students. The year begins, oddly enough, with a graduation: Nellie Oleson (Alison Arngrim) has passed the necessary exams, and is leaving her school days behind. After she gives a hysterical commencement speech ("Fellow students, friends, and OTHERS. . ."), Mrs. Oleson (Katherine MacGregor) presents Nellie with her graduation gift: a combination hotel and restaurant. . .because let's face it, every town with a permanent population of 40 really needs its own hotel and restaurant. Mrs. Oleson's plan (?) is for Nellie to run the establishment and catch a husband in the process. . .because let's face it, in a town with a permanent population of 40, you're really going to attract a lot of hot, rich, single guys when you run the only hotel and restaurant. It's beside the point that Nellie can't cook and has, to put it delicately, a sadist's temper.
It's soon revealed that the anemic, birdlike Miss Wilder has a buff and brawny brother, Almanzo. When Laura sees Almanzo, the trumpets blare and the angels sing (in her head, anyways), and it's love at first sight. There and then, Laura decides that she will marry Almanzo. For now, we will choose to ignore that she is fifteen and he is obviously well past twenty. Thankfully, for most of the season, clearly grown-up Almanzo regards fresh-faced teen Laura as a cute "young friend." She calls him "Manly," after mishearing his nickname, Manny, and he calls her "Beth," when she reveals her only nickname is the childish "Half-Pint," and that her full name is Laura Elizabeth Ingalls. An interesting historical note is that the real Almanzo Wilder called Laura "Bess" or "Bessie," not "Beth," to eliminate familial confusion, because he had a sister also named Laura. However, "Beth" sounds far more "late '70s romantic" (and decidedly less bovine) than "Bessie."
Soon, Mrs. Oleson sets her sights on Almanzo (or as she calls him, "Zaldamo") as an appropriate catch for Nellie. It's the opening salvo in the Ingalls/Oleson Walnut Grove Smackdown. Viewers haven't seen rivalry on this level since Laura pushed Nellie down the hill in the wheelchair in season three. Laura ruins a dinner that Nellie plans with Almanzo, Nellie misleads Laura when she is studying for her graduation exams, and it all culminates in a no-holds barred, vicious mudwrestling match in a sun-dappled prairie bog. It's purely and simply a blast. Almanzo breaks up the fight, and takes Laura back to his house to warm up and get out of her muddy clothes (it sounds WAY more sinister than it actually is). Pa (Michael Landon), however, questions the young man's intentions, and, after being egged on by Nellie, gives his future son-in-law a classic Michael Landon roundhouse, which sends Almanzo sprawling across Eliza Jane's daintily-appointed parlor. The real Laura Ingalls Wilder was unquestionably doing somersaults in her grave.
"Back to School" is a microcosm of season six's defining storyline. Unlike past seasons, where there were a few mildly sustained plots (Mary's engagement to John Junior, the price war with the railroad, the trip to Winoka), this season features a number of ongoing story and character arcs. In the sixth season, Little House basically reformats itself as serial. Throughout "Back to School," and the entire season, Laura struggles to be viewed by both Almanzo and Pa as an adult rather than a child. Throughout "Back to School" and the entire season, Pa has a lingering mistrust for Almanzo and his intentions. And throughout "Back to School" and the entire season, viewers have to get used to the idea that this MAN is going to end up marrying this CHILD who they've watched growing up for years. After all, since the credits for every episode remind us that the series is based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, we know (and we knew when it first premiered) that Laura will ultimately end up with Almanzo. However, the writers throw up enough roadblocks, heartaches, and unexpected circumstances to keep the game interesting. But more on that later.
While the Laura/Almanzo relationship buds and blooms, several of the supporting cast members deservedly get the spotlight in a series of refreshing episodes. In "The Preacher Takes a Wife," Reverend Alden courts Mrs. Craig, a local widow with a heart of gold. Die-hard fans who have always been left to wonder why the good Reverend's wife was never seen after this initial episode get their sobering answer in the set's extras - the actress died shortly after they filmed the episode. Reverend Alden and Doc Baker (Kevin Hagen) both find their livelihoods in jeopardy when a charismatic con artist dupes the townsfolk in "The Faith Healer." Mr. Oleson takes the stage in two episodes: "Annabelle," in which the circus comes to town and he is reunited with his long-lost (and previously shunned) sister who performs as the fat lady in the sideshow, and "Second Spring," in which he takes to the road to escape his shrewish wife, and briefly flirts with the idea of an affair. The Garvey family also gets a chance to shine: in "Crossed Connection," their marriage teeters on the edge of divorce when it is revealed that Alice (Hersha Parady) had a brief previous marriage, and in "The King is Dead," Jonathan (Merlin Olsen) is conned into a wrestling bout by an unscrupulous profiteer.
As in season five, the camaraderie and good humor among the cast is in fine form in season six. Despite some pretty wretched tragedies, it is one of the funniest seasons in the series' history. Ma Ingalls (Karen Grassle) is significantly softened in the sixth season, and she is allowed to fully develop her underutilized sense of humor, especially while working "outside the home" at Nellie's restaurant. As a matter of fact, the restaurant is a gold mine of endless and genuine humor. Be on the lookout for the establishing shots, in which black smoke continuously bellows out of the kitchen chimney. Also be on the lookout for actor Dan McBride, in the show's greatest uncredited role, as the guy who continually dines in the restaurant and bitterly laments the food, the service, and his internal miseries while dodging flying crockery, raw chickens, and blackened pancakes. Once again, Mrs. Oleson (Katherine MacGregor) steals the scene each time she appears. While she's still undeniably hateful, Mrs. Oleson becomes even more of a clownish buffoon in this season. Her mounting frustration with her daughter, her shrill sobs at the slightest provocation, and her enthusiastic, misguided operation of the newly-installed telephone switchboard ("WAL-NUT GRO-OOOVE!") are comic gold.
Mrs. Oleson's unlikely foil comes in the form of the Ingalls' adopted son Albert, who proves to be quite the merry prankster in season six. At one point, Albert convinces Mrs. Oleson and Nellie to move a beehive filled with very active, very angry bees ("The Third Miracle"). When Ma's father writes a book of reminiscences ("Author, Author"), Albert persuades Mrs. Oleson to buy the entire print run, by telling her that Ma appears nude in one scene of the text (it turns out she does, but she's a baby at the time and her "di-a-per," as Mrs. Oleson calls it, has fallen off). Albert also exacts sweet revenge on Mrs. Oleson in "Crossed Connections," when he teaches her a hard lesson about eavesdropping and hits her where it hurts. . .in her bank account. Albert's monkeyshines and shenanigans pay off when his biological father tries to reclaim him in "Family Tree": he pretends to be blind and scares his deadbeat dad away. Lord knows Albert's had plenty of experience with the blind folk.
Speaking of the blind folk, Mary Ingalls (Melissa Sue Anderson) gets her usual share of unrelenting cataclysms in the sixth season. In "The Third Miracle," Mary and hubby Adam (Malcolm in the Middle creator Linwood Boomer) head to St. Paul so that Adam can accept the coveted Louis Braille Award for his achievements in the education of the blind (you can't make this stuff up), and, naturally, the stagecoach gets into a horrendous accident. Blind Mary has to save Adam, as well as a fellow passenger and her unborn baby. All I have to say is, thank God the blind woman brought along her reading glasses. In "Darkness is My Friend," Laura and Mary are held hostage at the blind school by a trio of convicts (though for Mary, being held hostage by criminals is old hat by now; you may recall that she was kidnapped by no less than Jesse James back in season four). Turn down the volume when you watch this episode; Melissa Sue Anderson's impressive and earsplitting screams will have your neighbors calling Emergency Services. Oh, and maybe I just have a dirty mind, but in a season focused on a young woman's burgeoning sexuality, "Darkness is My Friend" has some of the most blatant Freudian imagery imaginable. Someone could write a thesis on the ceaseless, hackneyed references to locks and keys; Laura's bondage of the wounded convict; the sawed-off shotgun that the handsome head convict braces on his hip and indiscriminately shoots off, splattering the walls with buckshot; and the suggested rape attempt on poor Mary. Family show, indeed! If you're thinking, "I can't believe I'm reading this," watch the show for yourself. It's undeniable, and, I think, naughtily intentional.
After enduring five seasons in which she set the barn on fire, suffered low self-esteem because she was forced to get glasses at an early age, endured a grueling surgery after getting kicked in the head by a horse, had her heart broken by a cheating fiancé, lost her sight, lost a baby, and got lost in a dust storm on her wedding day (to name just a few of her traumas), it was inevitable that Mary would have a complete and total nervous breakdown. It arrives, in blazing glory (no pun intended), in the sixth season's most harrowing episode, "May We Make Them Proud," Parts 1 and 2.
There are several moments from Little House that even the most casual fans remember. The wheelchair scene, for example. Or when Mary went blind. However, "May We Make Them Proud" is almost just as universally remembered. . .albeit for different reasons. This episode gets my award for "Second Most Likely To Be Discussed on a Therapist's Couch" (you'll have to wait a few more months for the top prizewinner in that category). During a picnic at the Harriet Oleson Institute for the Advancement of Blind Children, Albert and a friend swipe an old codger's pipe, and attempt to smoke it in the school's basement. When they are discovered by a deeply suspicious Hester-Sue (Ketty Lester), they wisely throw the pipe into a basket full of rags. Hours later, the basket erupts in flames, and the blind school is soon an inferno. Though Adam and Mary safely evacuate all of the students, Alice Garvey gets trapped while rescuing their infant son. In graphic detail, we watch Mrs. Garvey hysterically struggling to escape from a second-story bedroom, surrounded by fire, while clutching the screaming infant. The engulfed building soon collapses, and both Mrs. Garvey and Mary's long-sought baby perish in the flames. Please keep in mind that Little House is a sickly sweet and saccharine show.
First, I want to clear up a misconception. Mrs. Garvey does NOT use the baby to bust out the windows, as many people mistakenly believe. She is simply holding it (probably a little too tightly) while screaming bloody murder and smashing her bloodied hands through the windowpanes. That's all. As if the fire wasn't bad enough, when the flames have died down, Mary sits under a tree and cuddles her burned-up baby, who (thankfully) is wrapped in a tarp. Shortly thereafter, she pretty much loses her mind, and, screaming once again, smashes her own hands through the windows at Nellie's hotel. She remains in a catatonic state for the rest of the episode, until Albert, crushed under his overwhelming grief and guilt, has his own mini-breakdown and inadvertently manages to punch through into her shattered mind.
There are a few ways to look at this episode. On one hand, it is extremely effective at communicating the heartbreak, tragedy, and consequences of the fire. On the other hand, it is needlessly graphic and genuinely horrifying. It so blatant, obvious, and even obscene that it teeters dangerously close to becoming a campy, Grand Guignol farce. C'mon, people. . .Mary Ingalls sitting under an oak tree, surrounded by smoking ruins, rocking her charred baby's remains while psychotically humming Brahm's "Lullaby"? It is certainly memorable. It is certainly classic Little House. But it blows the top clean off the melodrama Richter-scale.
Admittedly, there are a few clunkers in the sixth season. As in previous years, the writers tend to cannibalize earlier episodes, and present barely reworked versions of them. "The Werewolf of Walnut Grove" is a thinly disguised remake of season five's "The Lake Kezia Monster," in which Albert and Laura attempt to bring down a brutal school bully by disguising Albert as an unconvincing werewolf. "The Angry Heart" is yet another episode focused on child abuse and alcoholic parents, a topic which has been addressed in countless episodes from previous seasons. And "The Halloween Dream," while a stand-out for its big budget production values and expansive cast, is an embarrassingly awkward fantasy episode in which Albert dreams that he and Laura are kidnapped by a band of renegade Sioux on the way to Nellie's Halloween party.
Laura and Almanzo's growing relationship is skillfully peppered throughout many of the season's episodes. In "Annabelle," Laura disguises herself as a clown and humiliates a snobby girl who has her sights set on Almanzo. In "The Werewolf of Walnut Grove," Almanzo comes to Laura's aid when the school bully is beating up Albert. The writers deftly manage to sustain and build the storyline amid all of the other trials and travails. It's never certain when or how the two will get together. And, for most of the season, while Laura is head over heels for Almanzo, he views their relationship as strictly platonic. . .a smart move on the writers' part, as it makes their relationship less distasteful, it enables Laura to be the pursuer, and it gives the audience time to sympathize with her need to "grow up" so quickly.
The Almanzo/Laura romance really heats up in the last quarter of the season. In "Wilder and Wilder," Almanzo's ne'er-do-well brother Perley Day (Charles Bloom) arrives in town, and Pa tries to play matchmaker while Laura impresses Almanzo with her horse training skills. In "Sweet Sixteen," Laura succeeds in passing her teaching exam and takes a temporary position at a school in a neighboring community. This is it, folks. . .the trademark braids vanish, she gets a grown-up dress, and she starts acting more like an adult. In one key moment, while riding to the new school in Almanzo's buggy, Laura realizes, self-consciously, that she's sitting with her feet propped up on the buggy's splashboard in a rather unladylike and childish way. Sheepishly, she tucks her feet under her new dress. The feisty, funny, unruly Laura Ingalls is on her way out, for better or worse, and the series will never be the same. When Laura makes these changes, Almanzo suddenly notices her, much to Pa's growing chagrin. When a church social coincides with Laura's sixteenth birthday, Almanzo presents her with a very grown-up shawl, and they share their first kiss. It must have been the lemon verbena.
In the season finale, the two-part nailbiter "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not," Almanzo proclaims his love for Laura and asks Pa for permission to marry her. Understandably, Pa wants his daughter to wait until she is eighteen. A pissed-off Almanzo insists that he can't and won't wait two years for the wedding, and he asks Laura to choose between her love for him and her love for Pa. Shocking. After some heart-to-hearts with Ma (and there are more of those than you can shake a stick at in this season), Laura informs him that she can't make that decision. Almanzo leaves town in a huff, and Laura is left in floods of tears.
Simultaneously, Mary and Adam are beginning to rebuild the burned-down blind school, using the reward money Pa received when he stopped the phallic intruders in "Darkness is My Friend." Adam is expecting additional money from his father, but, lo and behold, his father, a prominent attorney in New York City, kicks the bucket. In one of the most grossly understated major events of the series, Ma sends Laura off to New York with Adam to help settle his father's affairs (and get her mind off Almanzo). The entire trip is treated with jaw-dropping nonchalance, as if Laura and Adam simply drove the blind school SUV to Minneapolis and hopped on a Jet Blue flight to JFK for the weekend. Not surprisingly, Adam's father died deeply in debt, and the blind school's future is up itshay eekcray.
Meanwhile, back in Walnut Grove, Nellie's restaurant is on the verge of financial collapse, as a direct result of her dreadful cooking and violent approach to customer service. Mrs. Oleson hires Percival Dalton (Steve Tracy), a diminutive frontier-restaurant consultant, to get Nellie up to speed. After Nellie ridicules his height in a classic tirade ("You should write a book. . . Shortcuts to Cooking!"), and bemoans her reluctance to run the restaurant, Percival reveals that he thinks she's pretty. She's amazed. She's touched. She begins to act like a relatively decent person. Uh-oh!
Returning from their brief bop to the Big Apple, Laura discovers an abandoned courthouse in Sleepy Eye that would be perfect, of course, for the displaced and beleaguered blind school. She haggles with the blustery curmudgeon caretaker Houston (Dub Taylor), and secures the building for the new home of the school. There's some question, of course, on where they'll get the money to pay the astronomical rent. Thankfully, however, Percival Dalton recommends that Olesons sign 50% of the restaurant over to Caroline Ingalls, and rename it "Caroline's," since Nellie's name is poison in the community. And, unbeknownst to Laura, Almanzo, who is hiding out with his peeps in Sleepy Eye, takes on a second job to help pay the rent on the courthouse. Everything proceeds swimmingly, until Almanzo catches pneumonia and nearly dies.
Soon enough, Laura realizes that Almanzo never stopped loving her. Pa realizes that Almanzo is not the seedy child molester that he once presumed him to be, and that he's a pretty decent guy. Laura rushes to Sleepy Eye to be by his side, and Almanzo emerges from his delirium beneath a favorite Little House remedy: the fever-breaking patchwork quilt heaped with chunks of ice. He proclaims his love to her. She proclaims her love to him. She kisses his germy lips as his teeth chatter under the icy quilt. Now that's true love.
Soon afterwards, the happy couple journeys back to the Grove. Adam, Mary, and their severely traumatized students are established in the Sleepy Eye Blind School. Nellie proclaims her love to Percival, and he insists they marry immediately. The wedding is officiated by Dr. Baker because, much to Mrs. Oleson's horror, Percival is Jewish. Pa finally relents, and tells Laura and Almanzo that he has changed his mind: they can get married in one year instead of two. At the end of her wedding, the decidedly less-nasty Nellie throws her bouquet, and Laura catches it. It seems that more wedding bells will be ringing once season seven begins.
The twenty-four episodes that comprise the sixth season are divided onto six DVDs. The DVDs are housed in a foldout digipak case, which fits into a cardboard slipcover. The slipcover features Pa, Ma, Mr. Garvey, Almanzo, and a very grown-up looking Laura.
Opening the digipak, each panel features photographs of characters from the series. The disc holder area of the digipak is adorned with a beautiful panoramic photograph of white clouds sailing over a golden, wheat-covered prairie. Each disc also features the prairie backdrop, and individual photographs of characters: Pa, Mary, Mr. Garvey, Adam, Reverend Alden, and Mrs. Craig (the reverend's one-episode wife). While a disc dedicated to Mrs. Craig is nice, you would think that the distributor could have selected a photograph of one of the other, more integral characters.
The menu designs on the DVDs are simple and functional. Episodes on each disc are listed, while a montage of memorable Little House moments plays in a window, accompanied by the show's theme music. Like the Seasons 3, 4, and 5 box sets, the episodes are divided into chapters. There is a "play all" feature. Included in the packaging is a booklet containing brief summaries of each episode, as well as a postcard advertising Laura Ingalls Wilder's original Little House books and the excellent recently released audiobook versions, featuring the masterful Cherry Jones. If you haven't ever read the original books, turn off your computer right now, put away your DVDs, and get busy.
