EXTRA: AI Little House

Posted bywillkaiserPosted inExtrasTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Good morning and happy Sunday. I went on vacation this month; I took Olive on a little trip to celebrate her high-school graduation! It was a hoot and a half, but as a result, I’m a little behind where I’d normally be with the next recap.

You’re in luck, though! For fun, I recently fed some Little House-themed prompts into Stable Diffusion, the AI image generator.

I’ve included the precise language of my requests, in case you have trouble recognizing any of the characters; but believe me, you won’t. The results are eerily accurate. (Better than my own feeble Microsoft Paint efforts, at any rate.)

Hope you enjoy these, and do forgive this post of pure filler. “The Music Box” is coming soon. Stay tuned, as we used to say in the good old Twentieth Century! – WK

“Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls”
“Karen Grassle as Caroline Ingalls, sitting in a rocking chair and holding a carving knife”
“Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls”
“Melissa Sue Anderson as Mary Ingalls, wearing wire-rimmed glasses”
“Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush as Carrie Ingalls”
“Victor French as Mr. Edwards”
“Charlotte Stewart as Miss Beadle”
“Kevin Hagen as Doc Baker”
“Dabbs Greer as Reverend Alden”
“Katherine MacGregor as Mrs. Harriet Oleson”
“Richard Bull as Nels Oleson”
“Alison Arngrim as Nellie Oleson, rolling down a hill in a wheelchair”
“Bonnie Bartlett as Grace Snider”
“Dabbs Greer and Johnny Cash, dressed as priests”
“Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls, shirtless, standing in a swamp and holding a raccoon”

Published by willkaiser

I live in Minnesota. My name's not really Will Kaiser, but he and I have essentially the same personality.

75 thoughts on “EXTRA: AI Little House”

  2. OK here’s my thoughts. The only one that creeps me out a bit would’ve been Nelly Olson in the wheelchair. Although it looked friendly, it still was kind of offputting. I thought Nels Oleson resembled the actor who played the football coach who was the cause of Albert fracturing a rib. That may have been in the seventh season of LHOTP. I hope you & your family had a wonderful vacation. Looking forward to your music box entry since it’s one of my favorite episodes. Then again, I feel like I say that all the time! 😆🎶

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    1. Thank you, Maryann. I can definitely relate about trying to pick a favorite, especially from Season Three! I was just thinking how hard it’ll be to do the Walnut Groovies this year, since there are so many good stories and performances. I love “The Music Box” too – coming soon!

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  3. Most of these pics look like people wearing poorly-asjusted masks of the actors 😳😁.
    Did you pick this IA knowing the impending result, or was it a pure coincidence that tge outcome was this unique?

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  4. Yikes! Amusing and creepy all at the same time! Is Caroline missing her left leg!? And the twins look they have extra fingers!

    I’m very unfamiliar with the whole AI thing, so don’t understand how these get generated. At least your pictures have the actual actors. Still fun and a much-needed laugh!

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  5. I remember a few years ago on social media there was this app that let everybody turn their faces into cartoons. It became very popular because people really don’t like seeing their faces in all of their flawed complexity. The app allowed them to signal a rough outline of their faces as what the Internet considers “good looking.” It seemed like everybody wanted to be a cartoon.

    Fast forward a few years and AI is becoming more sophisticated (yet still horribly primitive). Your AI self is no longer a very rough draft that allows you to imagine yourself as Internet good looking. It’s starting to looking like a machine’s conception of what you really like and in general the results are pretty bad, a bit like the old women who ruined the Elias Garcia Martinez fresco of Jesus by “correcting” it. The question is, do we really want machines made by man to be ‘correcting’ the very makers of those machines (whether its good or natural selection)?

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  6. You really need to review the “The Wolves” episode. In Season 4 the show is starting to depart from the original formula and playing around with tropes from other genres. The demonic pack of wild dogs is just bizarre.

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      1. What did you think of the Chicago episode?

        Charles gets chosen to represent all of the farmers in his district even though he’s never successfully brought in a crop. He reveals himself to be a traditional big government left populist willing to stand up to the railroads and corrupt newspapers, and their attempts to bribe him to vote down government regulation.

        William Jennings Bryan might even chose him for the VP spot.

        “I’m only a dumb farmer” isn’t quite as memorable as “Cross of Gold” but it does have promise.

        John Sanderson Edwards finally reveals himself to be a cheating snake.

        Charles: “Thank God your my best friend’s step son or I’d kick your ass.”

        But Mary has two prospective beaus. Bobby Brady. And the little guy at the University of Chicago who genuinely seems to like her but seems destined for a life in the friend zone listening to John Sanderson Edwards’ castoffs complain about the bad boy who dumped them.

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      2. You’re right, there’s a WHOLE lot to unpack in that one. I agree with your assessment of Charles’s main storyline – Charles seems to approach the trip thinking of the Grange as a farmers’ union, only to realize it’s a chamber of commerce instead.

        As for John, well, I view him quite differently than you do. I like the early John quite a bit. “His Father’s Son” is maybe the story that reminds me the most of myself, since I was also a wannabe aesthete who felt stuck in an Aldean-ian small town. (Aldean, not Alden!) I find “HFS” quite moving, and see much of my relationship with my own dad (which is pretty good these days) reflected in it.

        Given that personal investment, I kind of view “Chicago” as character assassination . . . but it’s also quite believable. John is hardly the first person, either in fiction or reality, to try on a different persona (or, viewing it less charitably, to become a rake) and forget his promises to loved ones upon entering university.

        It may interest you to know, the official line on John’s departure has more to do with Victor French leaving the show and the termination of the Sanderson family’s story. That said . . .

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      3. I read where they wrote John Sanderson Edwards out of the series because Melissa Sue Anderson hated Radames Pera. The new dog is an improvement, a smart Border Collie.

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  7. “Victor French leaving the show”

    That’s funny. Victor French left Little House for Carter Country, which I remember watching occasionally as a child, but have no memory of French being a part of.

    I certainly don’t remember the KKK subplot.

    “Richard Paul as Mayor Teddy Burnside, Harvey Vernon as racist officer Jasper DeWitt, and Barbara Cason as town employee Cloris Phebus rounded out the cast. DeWitt was shown to be a member of the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan and he often made disparaging comments against minorities, but was still a loyal and honest law enforcement officer.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Country

    “Given that personal investment, I kind of view “Chicago” as character assassination”

    It definitely is. Landon draws a clear parallel between the corruption of The Grange and John’s treatment of Mary. He also very strongly hints that John has no problems going along with the newspaper’s covering for the railroads and even hints that it might even be the reason John got the job in the first place.

    Landon also hints that John’s writing is fake and disconnected from reality. He wrote romantic letters to Mary because he didn’t expect to see her and took up with his “professor” (who doesn’t seem to think very highly of him either).

    John’s certainly not a villain but his treatment of the two women seems to come out of the same weakness that wouldn’t let him shoot the bear attacking Mr. Edwards. He has no inner fire or beliefs. He just goes with the flow. He tries to juggle both women/girls because he’s too weak to make a decision.

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  8. “a wannabe aesthete who felt stuck in an Aldean-ian small town. (Aldean, not Alden!)”

    That’s funny. I’ve been following the viral controversy over that music video and when I watched Charles confront John in the hotel I imagined him grabbing him by the lapels and saying “the way you’re treating my daughter. TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN BUDDY.”

    Landon grew up in Collingswood, New Jersey. It’s a suburb of Philadelphia with a very strong Quaker tradition that’s morphed into a leftist/socialist subculture. Half the people I knew in college who were leftists of some sort were from that town.

    Interestingly enough, upper-middle-class suburban North Jersey has a real cult of the small town. You get these towns where you can see the NYC skyline in the background thinking of themselves as Walnut Grove of Mayberry. You get middle-aged dads who work on Wall Street coming home to their Ford F-150s and gun collections.

    Michael Landon definitely comes out of that kind of tradition, guy from suburbia who idolized small-town Protestant American. Only difference is in his case he really seems to have pulled it off and never took the kind of reactionary turn a lot of other people thinking along the same lines think

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  9. To Run and Hide:

    Stanley the dumb Polish American fell off the roof and made his pregnant wife a widow. Doc Baker felt guilty and retired AND THE NEW DOCTOR IS A QUACK. On the other hand, alcohol is just as good as anything else for gas.

    Looking forward to your review.

    My Ellen was tragic and scary. This is both comic and tragic.

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    1. Under the Doc Baker regime, Walnut Grove effectively has socialized medicine.

      “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

      It’s only a basic form of socialized medicine. For advanced surgery you have to reenter the capitalist world and pay market rates. But for basic healthcare, it works very well.

      Dr. Asa T. Logan is what the British are going to get if they let the NHS die because it’s not perfect.

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      1. The reverend Alden is an idiot. A 50 year old man with decades of teaching experience wouldn’t have been able to deal with that dungeon of ignorance, hostility and superstition. Sending a teenage girl was just setting her up to fail.

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      1. When you think about it, trying to explain what a telephone is to a group of insane fundamentalists in 1880 would be about as challenging a problem as you can imagine. You’d need to assume some basic knowledge of electricity and physics and these people can barely add 2 + 2.

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  14. The Stranger:

    Farmer Chuck’s Redemption Academy. Do you have a sissified rich kid who needs some teaching in the arts of Christian manliness? Then Farmer Chuck’s Redemption Academy is for you. Sign up now before your youngin becomes another Willie Olson or John Sanderson Edwards.

    note: Peter’s hands got sore because he didn’t wear work gloves. Charles should have shared how he learned that lesson the hard way in 100 Mile Walk.

    It’s interesting that Peter Lundstrom (Little House really does have a lot of actual Scandinavian Americans in the cast) and Matthew Labyorteaux in the movie Deadly Friend, which is almost a Little House spinoff. Kristy Swanson as far as I know was never in Little House but she is another Scandinavian American.

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  15. Ha! Have you seen Deadly Friend? The guy chasing Todd Bridges down at the beginning of “The Wisdom of Solomon” is also in it. Talk about a bonkers movie. It has one of the most ludicrous deaths in the history of horror movies, but it’s too gory to share on Walnut Groovy. I do have some standards, you know! If you’re not squeamish, google “Anne Ramsey Deadly Friend,” though.

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    2. And Anne Ramsey also appeared in Little House, especifically in Albert’s debut on Season 5 premiere, as the awful cook Caroline replaces at the Winoka Hotel. So that makes three LHOTP actors in “Deadly Friend”.

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  16. Oh no. Mary’s going blind.

    Scarlett Fever. The reason why so many actors died in their 30s and 40s back in the 30s and 40s. It weakens the heart muscle as much as it weakens the eyes.

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    1. The greatest sonnet in the English language was written by a blind man.

      When I consider how my light is spent,
      Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
      And that one Talent which is death to hide
      Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
      To serve therewith my Maker, and present
      My true account, lest he returning chide;
      “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
      I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
      That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
      Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
      Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
      Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
      And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
      They also serve who only stand and wait.”

      In college, I was taught that John Milton was a very bad man indeed, a sexist, because he taught his daughters to read Greek and Latin but not to understand Greek and Latin.

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  17. Interesting that for all the episodes in Season 4 condemning Christian fundamentalism, the actor who plays Seth was only in one other movie, a biopic about Charles Colson (who became an evangelical after Watergate and pretty much got the monopoly on religious education in prison outside of the Nation of Islam). It has Billy Graham as a member of the case so I’m assume it’s positive.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077261/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk

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  18. Interesting. The episode where Mary and Adam go off to North Dakota was supposed to be the last episode. Mr. Edwards was gone. Miss Beadle was leaving. Charles and Caroline were going off to the big city because the railroads were strangling the farmers (Charles was right about government regulation). But the show was so popular they decided to continue it.

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  20. In my life, the only prize I ever won for my writing was for a paper on Milton. I’m sure the judges would be horrified to know my only work of substance since then is Walnut Groovy! 😀

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    1. Personally I think reading Milton is good preparation for writing about Little House on the Prairie.

      Charles and Caroline are a kind of Adam and Eve and the whole series resembles Milton’s ode to “wedded love.”

      Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
      Of purity, and place, and innocence,
      Defaming as impure what God declares
      Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
      Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain
      But our destroyer, foe to God and Man?
      Hail, wedded Love, mysterious law, true source
      Of human offspring, sole propriety
      In Paradise, of all things common else!
      By thee adult’rous love was driven from men
      Among the bestial herds to range; by thee,
      Founded in reason, loyal, just and pure,
      Relations dear, and all the charities
      Of father, son, and brother, first were known.
      Far be it that I should write thee sin or blame,
      Or think the unbefitting holiest place
      Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,
      Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced,
      Present or past, as saints and patriarchs used!

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  21. Charles working for the tyrannical hotel boss with the piggish bouncer who sexually harasses both Caroline and Mary. Seems a replay of the Gallender episode but it’s in the town and not the country. So Charles takes a swing at one of them and gets his ass kicked. But it always pays to have a 6’5″ man mountain as a friend.

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  23. I’m up to Season 6.

    Albert as mastermind/genius. His use of proto-click-bait to get Harriet to buy his grandfather’s memoir was a stroke of genius. I can almost imagine it on the internet. “See Caroline Ingalls Naked.” Grainy thumbnail that when clicked goes to something totally unrelated to Caroline Ingalls and puts 1000 cookies on your computer it takes forever to get rid of.

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      1. I’m seeing a parallel construction here.

        Laura: Can’t teach if she marries Almanzo (who’s gone from a perfect dreamboat to a closed minded sexist loser).

        Eliza Jane: Has Laura’s dream job. In her 30s and has never kissed a man.

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      3. This show is very progressive as far as race goes (Joe Kagan not wanting to join a lynch mob against a racist was the best moment). But I don’t think they’re giving Hester Sue enough character development. She had the most traumatic experience during the fire (she’s the one who had to see Alice Garvey burn to death as she tried to break open the window with an actual baby) but never got a moment to deal with it.

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      1. I also see the disfunction of the Wilder family playing out in the Wilders as adults.

        Eliza Jane sacrifices herself for the favored eldest son. The jerk younger brother also seems less horrible in light of Almanzo’s character development. He’s been running away just like Eliza Jane decided to do herself.

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  29. I’m really hoping to see Merlin Olson go full hulk on the local thugs in A New Beginning.

    Funny. One of the young thugs is Michael Dukakis’s son.

    Speaking of Dukakis, I think the American people owe him an apology before he dies. He was right about the death penalty in 1988. He stood his ground and the pro-Bush CIA Mockingbird media crucified him for it. Dukakis wasn’t all that inspiring. He was a dull neoliberal centrist but he did have some integrity and didn’t deserve what he got from CNN.

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  30. Looking for your review of the Sylvia episode.

    Jesus Christ.

    Personally I think pulling Irv Hartwig out of the hat at the end gutless.

    The father was the real villain. It would have made sense for him to have been the man in the clown mask.

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  31. Oh yes, “Sylvia” – in some ways the Little House story to end all Little House stories. Everybody who watches it thinks it’s the dad, don’t they? I guess that was one line Landon was unwilling to cross.

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    1. Essentially Landon managed to suggest strongly it was the dad (Royal Dano who’s actually not the father of the Paul Dano who got the bowling pin to the head at the end of There Will Be Blood) even though he pulled his punch at the end. It would have been a landmark moment in TV had he gone through with it. I suppose he didn’t want to alienate the show’s conservative viewer base.

      Then again, the Caroline menopause episode shows he’s really getting sick of doing the show. It’s not really about Charles anymore. He’s gone from working class farmer struggling to make a living to generic TV dad with no visible means of support. The show is also getting anachronistically modern. There’s no way a backward old man like Sylvia’s father would have had a phone in the early 1800s, especially one you just picked up and said “hello” into without first going through Harriet Olson.

      Distances in the show also seem to have shrunk. Back in Season 2 going to Minneapolis required the whole town pitching in for a train ticket. Now it’s just “Adam’s been mugged. Let’s jump into the SUV and head to Minneapolis.”

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      1. I was curious about the first law school in Minneapolis (the one Adam graduated from in one episode). The University of Minnesota’s was founded in 1888. Back then I don’t think you even had to go to law school. Adam would have just “read law” under that guy who welched on the job offer and taken the bar.

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      1. Dark Sage

        Currently watching the episode where Laura is taking a summer course with Eliza Jane.

        Eliza Jane is ignoring the nice friendly guy and developing a crush on her asshole professor who propositions guess who……

        Emerson died in 1881 and stopped lecturing in 1879 so this episode is taking some poetic liberties.

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    1. It’s a really good episode. Dr. Tane was a reservation doctor. Perhaps something deep down inside Doc Baker doesn’t let him trust a black man to treat white people. It’s always more interesting when a basically good person acts badly than when a cartoon villain does. Charles of course is completely free from racial bias and sets the scene for Doc Baker’s ultimate redemption.

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  35. I’ll check it out. I agree with you 100 percent about the “good” characters being obviously good and the “bad” ones obviously evil on Little House.

    For instance, I was somewhat surprised at Mr. Edwards’s lack of bigotry in “The Long Road Home” – after all, he is from the South originally. What if the conflict in that one had been Charles vs. EDWARDS rather than Charles/Edwards vs. the evil Richard Jaeckell? Though, I guess we do sort of get that later in “To Live With Fear” 2 – with CHARLES as the villain!

    Ultimately, though, it’s a kids’ show, so I understand why there isn’t much moral complexity, even if it would make it more satisfying for grown-ups. (“The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” – Oscar Wilde)

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    1. “the evil Richard Jaekell”

      I forget the rapist in Sylvia played the racist in The Long Road Home.

      “after all, he is from the South originally”

      It’s Mary who turns out to be the Confederate Sympathizer with a crush on Jesse James.

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