Duxford Girl

I've been watching Arrested Development the last week or so and I couldn't help but think of my youth of watching Little House on the Prairie. For those of you who don't know or remember, Jason Bateman played young James Cooper, an orphaned boy who watches his parents die in a horrific waggon accident.

“No, no, no!” You're saying. “Little House on the Prairie was a gentle, lovely family show. Stuff like that never happened.” Really? Go to this link and start the video at the 3-minute mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=ew6PJ-svR8k&NR=1
I've noticed that when it comes to this show, people conveniently forget how much bad shit happened in it all the time. I mean honestly, that damn show gave me nightmares through most of my youth because if it wasn't a tornado wiping out the family farm it was dead babies. People drowned, puppies drowned and Walnut Grove had more than its share of severely mentally ill citizens.

Now, I'm not denying that it was a good show and that many of the things that happened on it were true during the era the show was filmed in. However, it wasn't really a kids' show, just because it had kids in it.

This particular episode always made it hard for me to sleep (my anxiety issues started early in life):



THIS IS WHAT I WATCHED AFTER SCHOOL. I'm just saying that it would be the equivalent of letting an elementary kid today sit down after school and watch CSI. The only difference being, CSI isn't billed as “family entertainment”.

The worst of the worst though, the episode that people think I'm making up is “Sylvia”. Sylvia is a girl at the local school who lives with a controlling father and is developing early so that the local school boys tease her. However, someone else has also noticed this and Sylvia get raped by a guy in a creepy mask. Now, you're outraged, “that NEVER happened on LHOTP. I don't remember that at all.” Yeah, probably because you suppressed the horrible memory:



Her father, in biblical splendour, basically blames her for the rape because she was leading the molester on (clearly, her father was a Republican). Later on, we find out that Sylvia is pregnant. Albert vows to marry her and be a father to her child but alas, because of her young age Sylvia dies from a miscarriage:



If these clips don't convince you. Feel free to watch full episodes on You Tube. Or you can watch the Coles Notes version:



Either way, thanks to You Tube, now when anybody claims that I'm the loopy one about Little House, I can point them to the inter-tubes and I can show them exactly what I'm talking about. My thanks to: http://www.youtube.com/user/timmcd566?feature=watch for the brilliant 30-second recaps.