Anachronisms Plus

Between chores today sat down to rest my aching back and watched both eps on the "Little House on the Prairie Christmas" DVD. As I'd mentioned before, the original "Christmas at Plum Creek" has one small anachronism in it, but otherwise is a charming, heart-tugging episode.

I watched "A Christmas They Never Forgot" for the first time in a long time and it's actually worse than I remembered. The characters in "Plum Creek" that seemed so natural are forced here; Melissa Gilbert was such a charming performer in the first story but her lines, as well as too many of the other characters' lines, seemed fake and false, and that hurts the entire story worst of all.

The premise of "Forgot" is that the Ingalls family, including the fictitious adopted Albert, James and Cassandra, and Laura and her new husband Almanzo are gathered at the Ingalls home on Christmas Eve. Hester Sue, the family's African-American friend, shows up with a surprise: Mary and her husband Adam. Lo and behold, as they celebrate, a blizzard blows up and traps them all in the little house on Plum Creek.

As one by one the children go to bed, the adults talk about memorable Christmases: Ma about her first Christmas with her new stepfather, Almanzo about the Christmas his brother told him there was no Santa Claus, a flashback to the Ingalls' Christmas in Kansas (from the Little House on the Prairie pilot movie), and finally Hester's memory of Christmas as a slave child.

The flashback scene is the best: it's taken directly from the Little House on the Prairie novel, and Victor French is delightful as the occasionally uncouth Mr. Edwards. Of the newer segments, only Hester Sue's is vaguely interesting: other black children have told her Santa Claus is a white man and doesn't care about her; her father borrows a Santa Claus suit and delivers an angel doll to her (sent by the plantation owner's daughter) to prove to her that Santa comes in all colors. Carefully skirted, of course, is the fact that Hester Sue and her parents are slaves.

For someone who has read the books, the first two stories are ludicrous. Young Caroline misses her father so much that she hates her stepfather and talks back to both her mother and stepfather; kindly Mr. Holbrook responds to this disrespect by being nice to her--giving her something her father had given him and then sending up a totally bathotic prayer in an embarrassing sequence. Oh, please. First, althought Caroline and her brothers and sisters were unsure of Frederick Holbrook, the fact he married their mother was a great relief to the family, who were having a problem making ends meet. And no child of that era would sass an adult in that manner, even if they were having problems with the relationship.

Even sillier, the package Holbrook gives to Caroline--the scene takes place in around 1840 or so--is wrapped in clearly modern printed Christmas paper with a modern bow! Christmas presents at that time were commonly wrapped, if they were wrapped at all, in white tissue paper tied with red string, but apparently someone figured no one could guess it was a Christmas present if it didn't have Christmas wrap on it. Sheesh. In "Plum Creek," the packages are more accurately wrapped either in tissue or brown paper. It didn't seem to spoil anything.

(Not to mention that Caroline comments that she was sad because it was raining on Christmas instead of snowing. Coincidentally, just as she decides to open her stepfather's gift, it starts to snow. Oh, geez.)

The Almanzo story is equally annoying. Almanzo mentions how strict his parents are and how the children spent all of December 24 cleaning house and are so tired they want to go right to bed after supper: instead Father Wilder sends the boys out to feed the stock and Mother sets the girls to cleaning the table.

Yet five minutes later, when Almanzo doesn't come in from the barn, Father goes out there and does an indulgent song-and-dance to explain why there are presents hidden in the barn, as if Mr. Wilder undergoes some type of conversion between the house and the stable.

It's a shame, because the early episodes of Little House, although they wildly veered from the books, were actually well-acted and had decent scripts. The later shows show none of the loving craftsmanship of the earlier seasons--it's not just "A Christmas They Never Forgot," but the remainder of the season as well. A few months back, I happened to catch the episode where Almanzo is paralyzed after diphtheria. The hand-wringing bathos of the story made a bad romance novel look clever in comparison.