Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

From the 1974 TV Series Little House on the Prairie

(First aired 1981, Season 08, Episode 11)

Whenever the theme song for Little House on the Prairie came on at my childhood home, an involuntary audible groan would escape my face. What IS THIS CRAP!?! It wasn’t cartoons! Michael Landon with his weird shirt and cheesy grin! And that little girl who falls down the hill EVERYTIME! Learn to walk!

I later  married someone who grew up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Part of me was thinking “could we include in our vows that I never have to watch the show?” But as luck would have it, she HATED the show. Why? Because Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls didn’t sport a beard and according to the books he was supposed to have one. Hmmm, in retrospect maybe I should have sported a beard. Hmmm, upon further retrospect I’m glad I didn’t.

A huge part of my movie collection came from my ex-wife’s brother and he happened to have a vhs copy of this one episode: A Christmas They Never Forgot.

Meh, it’s not going to kill me to watch it.

Dang it! It was great. I’ve spent so much time hating on the show because it looked super boring when I was a kid. I don’t know who I am anymore!

Research revealed a bunch of facts I didn’t care to know like this is the only episode that has the entire extended Ingalls family in one room. Pardon me while I do a backflip out of pure joy from now having to store that information indefinitely.

It was actually difficult to find the name of this specific episode because of another Christmas episode from Season 03 of the show. Blizzard it was called and it’s reportedly one of the dreariest Christmas episodes ever made from ANY show. The Christmas episode from What We Do in the Shadows had more cheer. Not to mention the glaring lack of logic in the Blizzard episode. It’s Christmas Eve in Minnesota! Why are the children at school!?! Why are they walking ANYWHERE!?!

I almost feel like “A Christmas They Never Forgot” was created so as to actually forget the “Blizzard” episode.

Craziest thing though? I think “A Christmas They Never Forgot” is a clip show! You know those episodes of shows where the production company is trying to save a little money so they trap the actors in a walk-in freezer or at the bottom of a well or there’s a cave-in at the old mine. So the characters have no choice but to sit and reminisce about past episodes. Very little new footage, minimal actors on set. Half the crew goes home. Five minutes of film stock and WHAMO! You got a whole extra episode made from other episodes that cost very little. It’s a great technique for saving money or if it’s animated you can just run a repeated cycle of frames where the character bangs his knee and holds it for 22 minutes going “Ahhhh, hssssssss, Ahhh, hsssssss, Ahhh, hsssssss!” Economy comedy!

So the Ingalls family and friends are trapped in the Ingalls house during another blizzard on Christmas and what else is there to do but reminisce. Strangely no school on this Christmas Eve. I guess the local schoolmarm decided on some leniency after seven people froze to death five seasons ago.

Okay so having the entire cast and then some doesn’t quite match the clip show mold exactly but most of them were children so maybe they were working for extra graham crackers that day.

I know there’s some footage from the LHotP movie crammed into this episode. Good god! There was a movie!?!

The vignettes are actually pretty sweet and I enjoyed them even as a non-fan of the show. Does it inspire me to watch the whole show? I probably won’t go out of my way to obtain it but if I happen to find it in my astronomically vast collection I might give it a chance… even if it is follically inaccurate from the books.