"When you're young and first married, you expect to be happy all the time" - Ma (Karen Grassle) soothing her newly high-strung daughter Laura (Melissa Gilbert)
Little House on the Prairie: Season 7 DVD Review
By Christopher W. Czajka
When Little House on the Prairie's seventh season began on September 22, 1980, the series was at a challenging crossroads. For six years, audiences across America had followed the trials and travails of the Ingalls family as they struggled to eke out an existence on the western frontier, all the while learning important life lessons about family, community, and faith. The show's heart and soul was the central story of the family in the little house on the banks of Plum Creek. Regardless of the assorted catastrophes, disasters, and heartrending traumas the Ingalls and their friends constantly faced, the series' anchor was the domestic drama of Pa, Ma, Laura, Mary, and, on certain rare occasions, Carrie. However, by the time season seven started, this anchor was seriously compromised. Laura (Melissa Gilbert), the primary protagonist and narrator of the series, was on the verge of leaving the little house to marry sodbuster Almanzo Wilder (Dean Butler). Daughter Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson) was off running the calamity-prone blind school in Sleepy Eye with her husband Adam (Malcolm in the Middle creator Linwood Boomer). Adopted son Albert (Matthew Laborteaux) was lurching through puberty, daughter Carrie (twins "Lindsay" Robin and "Sidney" Rachel Greenbush) had essentially been reduced to a prop, and Baby Grace (twins Wendi and Brenda Turnbaugh) was just beginning to master one or two-syllable lines of dialogue. Even perennial villainess Nellie Oleson (Alison Arngrim) had been married off to Percival Dalton (Steve Tracy), and her character had been drastically softened. The producers, directors, writers, and actors faced a number of daunting tasks in season seven: to keep the series' momentum going when its basic core had shifted, to maintain a balance between being a primetime drama and a kid-friendly show, and to adapt to the fact that the show's primary stars were no longer children. Unfortunately, they didn't rise to the challenge. While season seven has some strong episodes and memorable moments (it even cracked the Nielsen Top Ten for the last time in the series' run), it truly - and sadly - represents the beginning of the end for Little House.
The season begins with the oddly constructed "Laura Ingalls Wilder" Parts 1 and 2. Several months have passed since the end of season six, and there are six months left until Laura turns seventeen and will be allowed by Pa (Michael Landon) to marry Almanzo. One would think - in a series which has followed her from the age of eight - that there would be a great deal of focus on Laura's character in the episodes which culminate in her wedding. However, like a lot of the season, these episodes are curiously off-kilter: much of "Laura Ingalls Wilder" Parts 1 and 2 focuses on Almanzo's sister, Eliza Jane (Lucy Lee Flippin). Eliza Jane is smitten with a friend of Almanzo's named Harve Miller (played with amiable likeability and good humor by the great James Cromwell). What you would expect to be exciting and romantic times on the prairie turn into a plodding, stilted waste of time. For most of season six, the bespectacled, birdlike Eliza Jane was primarily a comedic character; to hear her rather pitifully proclaiming her unrequited love for Harve Miller to her diary in a series of undending voiceovers is rather sad. Lucy Lee Flippin gives an intelligent, heartbreaking performance, but as you watch, you can't help wondering why the episodes are focusing on her.
After all of the season six Sturm und Drang that built up Laura and Almanzo's relationship, the writers throw up even more needless roadblocks and obstacles to their marriage. Almanzo buys a farm whose unscrupulous previous owner dams up his only water source, thereby turning his first crop to dust. Financially ruined, he decides to postpone the wedding. Laura, eager to contribute to the couple's dire finances, accepts a teaching job in a nearby community, until Almanzo forbids her to do so. The lovebirds bicker, argue, and brawl their way through the last few months of their engagement, and at one point, Laura yanks off her ring and throws it back in his face.
Luckily, lazy, lousy Liza Jane has a solution: she will leave Walnut Grove under the pretense that she is going to St. Louis to marry Harve Miller (who's made it abundantly clear that he's just not that into her). Eliza Jane's little fib will enable Laura to move into the house that she shares with Almanzo, and to take over her position at the Walnut Grove school. With everything suddenly snapping into place, the warring Laura and Almanzo get married in a bare-bones ceremony in a classroom at the Sleepy Eye Blind School. The wedding itself is so rushed and odd - Laura getting married by a strange reverend in a classroom, with no heartfelt advice from Ma, blubbery embraces from Pa, or big sister talks with Mary - that it feels incredibly anticlimactic. And for a series that ends umpteen episodes with Laura intoning, "If I had a remembrance book. . ." "Laura Ingalls Wilder" Part 2 ends with Eliza Jane - who is getting written out of the show - writing in her remembrance book. Huh?
After waiting so long to get married, you'd think that Laura and Almanzo would settle into a blissful wedded life. Not so. Throughout the season, Laura treats Almanzo like an annoying rube, and Dean Butler's hayseed take on the character leaves you wondering what the two see in each other. Shortly after their blessed day, Laura suspects Almanzo of having an affair with a pretty young thang named Brenda Sue Longworth (Tisch Raye) in "Divorce, Walnut Grove Style." The Three's Company-esque misunderstanding in this episode - along with a weak humorous plotline involving Pa's new picture window - only serves to showcase Laura as a crabby, emotional nag. In "The Nephews," before Almanzo's nephews-from-hell come for a visit, the happy honeymooners quarrel about whether or not the time is right to have children. And in "The In-Laws," when Pa and Almanzo make a bet on who can get to Sleepy Eye fastest, Laura treats her husband as though he were a partially brain-damaged child.
One of the most consistently frustrating aspects of watching season seven is that the writers didn't manage to transition Laura (or Melissa Gilbert's portrayal of her) into adulthood with any sort of continuity or build. It's almost as though the Laura Ingalls of the first six seasons has been forgotten. The little girl who we watched coming up with get-rich-quick schemes, punching out schoolyard bullies, and shoving mud up Nellie Oleson's nose has been replaced with a shrill whiner, whose bitchy tongue, constantly furrowed brow, and quick temper are thoroughly inconsistent with the character viewers had come to know and love. The adult Laura is almost completely humorless, and seems to thrive on bitterly complaining. At one point in "Divorce, Walnut Grove Style," Laura lashes out, "I don't need an excuse to be angry!" Oh, but you do, Half-Pint, you do. Did all those years at Ma's knee teach you nothing?
Meanwhile, over in Sleepy Eye, Mary and Adam are largely up the creek without a subplot, until life takes a sudden turn in "To See the Light" Parts 1 and 2. While stumbling about in Jonathan Garvey's freight warehouse - Jonathan (Merlin Oleson) and son Andy (Patrick Laborteaux) have moved to Sleepy Eye for a new beginning, and are on the verge of being written out of the show - Adam knocks over a case of dangerous explosives. His little accident creates a huge explosion that blasts the walls off the warehouse, and simultaneously gives him his sight back. That's right. A huge explosion, which should have blown the hottie blind school teacher to bits, instead gives him a tiny bruise or two on his high cheekbones and miraculously allows him to see again. Adam's vision loss, you see, was originally caused by a blow to the head. . .so it's only sensible, as the doctor explains, that another blow to the head would bring it back. Perhaps if Mary got scarlet fever again, it would restore her sight as well. Ya think?
Once Adam has fully recovered, he begins to imagine all of the possibilities life holds for him. It's a wonder that Linwood Boomer hasn't tracked down and destroyed all copies of the episode, which features a slow-mo montage of him running across the prairie screaming about how much he loves the world and how beautiful it is. Adam soon sets his sights (so to speak) on attending law school, and gets involved with a hoity-toity group of lawyers. Poor blind Mary, naturally, edges toward a nervous breakdown as she realizes how different their life is going to become. Be on the lookout for one of the most glaring mistakes (or rather, lapses in judgment) in the series: while playing badminton at what appears to be the Edwardian estate of his rich lawyer friend, Adam's opponent is the rich lawyer's wife, who apparently didn't see the need to wear any undergarments beneath her period costume. As she bats the birdie back and forth, the bodice of her dress rides up several times, exposing a not-too-taut, fish-belly white tummy.
With breathtaking speed, Adam soon completes his studies and becomes a lawyer. The trouble is that there are no available positions in Sleepy Eye. In "Blind Justice," he and Mary decide to abandon Hester Sue (Ketty Lester) at the blind school and open up a law office in the litigation capital of the Midwest, Walnut Grove. Quite coincidentally, at the exact same moment, a would-be land speculator is arrested after attempting to bilk the good people of Hero Township out of their hard-earned cash, and Adam decides to take the case. This episode is yet another season seven example of how the series was desperately trying to redefine itself. . .for whatever else Little House might be, it decidedly ISN'T a riveting courtroom drama, and its efforts to be one come across as both boring and clumsy. Adam, however, does so well with the case that the Sleepy Eye law firm decides to hire him on permanently. Adam and Mary move back to the city, where they will be written out of the show as soon as season eight begins. Ouch.
By far, the most memorable episode of the seventh season - and one of the most memorable in the series - is the two-part prairie snuff film titled "Sylvia." Sylvia Webb (Olivia Barash) is the prettiest teenybopper in Walnut Grove. She is so pretty that all the boys in Hero Township try to peek in her windows for a fleeting glimpse of her budding, perky breasts. She is so pretty that Mrs. Oleson proclaims her "a wicked temptress." She is so pretty that her craggy father (Royal Dano) forces her to bind her chest, and growls "You're a wanton thing, Sylvie" at her. She is so pretty that Albert Ingalls falls in love with her. Oh, and she is so pretty that a psychopath in a terrifying clown mask follows her every movement, and ultimately drags her into the woods to rape her silly. As if that weren't bad enough, the wretchedly suffering Sylvia ends up pregnant with the rapist's child, and everyone thinks the baby is Albert's. Noble Albert, of course, steps up to the plate, proclaims his unyielding love to Sylvia, and declares that the two will run away and begin a new life together. Everything goes like clockwork, until the rapist learns Sylvia's whereabouts and tracks her down in an abandoned barn. The pregnant Sylvia, blubbering and in hysterics, struggles to escape the rapist by climbing a rickety ladder into the hayloft. Said ladder breaks, Pa shows up to kill the rapist, and Sylvia takes a nasty spill to the barn floor. She dies soon afterward, while a barely pubescent Albert keens over her lifeless body. The end.
Plainly and simply, there are not enough bad things to say about this episode. It is so wildly inappropriate it's almost hallucinatory. Imagine an episode of Friends where Phoebe discovers she has an inoperable brain tumor. Or an episode of Smallville where the dad reveals he's leaving the family because he's been having a secret, long-running affair with a drag queen. That's about how well this episode fits into the Little House canon. For a series that rarely - if ever - even hints at sex and sexuality, it's embarrassing and awkward to watch Pa questioning Albert about whether or not he impregnated Sylvia. You honestly feel queasy and dirty watching it - especially since both Albert and Sylvia come across more like children than teens. It's hard to accept Sylvia as the town siren, when she looks about fourteen and speaks with a lisp. Not only is the plot an aberration, though: "Sylvia" is filmed in a way that is completely foreign to Little House. Audiences are treated to extreme close-ups of the clown-rapist's tiny pupils staring at Sylvia's winsome form, disturbing POV shots from the rapist's perspective, and conventions that seem to be directly lifted from John Carpenter's Halloween. Even with Little House's penchant for melodrama and occasionally tackling of issues that would make the After School Special blush, "Sylvia" takes top honors for the episode most likely to be discussed on a therapist's couch. If Michael Landon's goal here was prove that the series was not the sugary-sweet family fare it was thought to be, he certainly succeeded. He also succeeded in creating an episode that nearly derails the heart and spirit of Little House.
Thankfully, amidst all of these less-than-stellar episodes and performances, the Olesons provide much-needed comic relief. For half the season, Nellie is pregnant, and Mrs. Oleson's (Katherine MacGregor's) handling of her daughter - liberally peppered through a variety of episodes - is hilarious and fun. Mrs. Oleson is deeply suspicious of Percival's Judaism (wait till you hear her say "kreplach". . . she remarks "it sounds as though the person who named it was gagging on it"), and her suspicions come to a hilt in "Come, Let Us Reason Together," when Percival's parents arrive for the birth of their grandchild. Percival's parents, portrayed by character actors E.M. Margolese and Bea Silvern, are so broadly stereotypical that they seem to have escaped from a Borscht Belt comedy club. Much to Mrs. Oleson's horror, the Cohens (remember, Percival's real name is "Isaac Cohen"), expect their grandchild to be raised Jewish. A war of wills ensues, until Nellie gives birth to twins, and it's decided that the boy (Benny) will be raised Jewish, and the girl (Jenny) will be raised Christian. Apparently Doc Baker (Kevin Hagen), though he can identify anthrax in his anachronistic office microscope, can't pick out two heartbeats when a mother is expecting. Admittedly, the episode is silly and corny, but it's a lot of fun.
Season seven also features an almost pathological fascination with orphans. Whether Michael Landon was struggling to work out his personal abandonment issues, or the writers were tapped out of ideas, there are plainly and simply too many orphans running about in 1880s Minnesota. In "The Silent Cry," two young boys run away from the Sleepy Eye Orphanage (which is busier than the lunch rush at Nellie's restaurant this season), and hide out in the blind school, where they are soon discovered by the gruff caretaker Houston (Dub Taylor). Houston's harsh exterior melts away as he struggles to convince some potential parents for the boys not to split up the little shavers. And in "Portrait of Love," originally broadcast one week later, a young blind girl with a knack for painting (The Last of the Mohican's Madeline Stowe) goes into an emotional tailspin when her biological mother, who abandoned her as a toddler at (where else?) the Sleepy Eye Orphanage, shows up in hopes of reconciliation.
However, the most egregious and disappointing use of orphans comes in the two-part season finale "The Lost Ones." No matter how you slice it, and no matter how much you love Little House, this episode is undeniably the crack of doom for the series and provides its definitive shark-jumping moment. In a desperate attempt to equalize the show and pull a younger audience back in, Michael Landon and the producers decided that the Ingalls family needed more children, especially since the Greenbush twins were not the. . .strongest. . .actors and Matthew Laborteaux was a quickly-maturing teenager. So writers whipped up Cassandra and James Cooper (Missy Francis and Arrested Development's Jason Bateman), two charming ragamuffins from Michigan whose parents are efficiently dispatched in a horrifically graphic wagon accident. After the children witness their parents' quick trip to the bottom of a big hill, Pa takes them under his wing, and tries to deposit them at the Sleepy Eye Orphanage (natch). But after Albert regales him with tales of the miseries of orphanage life, Pa brings the children back to Walnut Grove to look for some proper adoptive parents. He eventually finds some, who end up working the children late into the evening with farm chores, beating James for crimes he didn't commit, and forcing the two to run away. When Pa discovers the truth (and after James gets caught in a bear trap. . . just don't ask), he decides that James and Cassandra will come and live in the little house on the banks of Plum Creek. To their credit, Jason Bateman and Missy Francis deliver earnest, heart-tugging performances; Francis, in particular, is skilled at producing buckets of tears, though she scrooges her face into the most ghastly grimaces to do it.
Once James and Cassandra arrive on the scene, the orphan dam is officially broken, and a ridiculously steady stream of adoptions will plague the floundering series until its cancellation. It will continue, as soon as season eight begins, with the introduction of a hateful little girl named Nancy.
The eighteen episodes that comprise the seventh 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, Mary, Adam, and Nellie.
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, Laura, Carrie, James, and Cassandra.
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, 5, and 6 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.
