EXTRA: Independence (Netflix Little House)

How Can We Compare This Without Seeing Pa Shirtless?

(a recap by Will Kaiser)

Title: Independence

Release date: July 9, 2026

Written by Rebecca Sonnenshine

Directed by Sarah Adina Smith

SUMMARY IN A NUTSHELL: Surprisingly good!

RECAP: All right, let’s do this. Some of you have asked for a Groovy-style recap of the new Netflix series. 

I’ll tell you I’ve been nervous about this. The last thing I need is the combined forces of Netflix and Friendly Family Productions coming after us for unlicensed image use and other Walnut Groovy atrocities. 

Well, never mind, we begin. A title sequence in gold font tells us that co-conspirators on this project include CBS (!) and Anonymous Content, whose other TV projects have included True Detective, 13 Reasons Why, and The OA. (Dagny hated that last one, though I thought it was all right.)

Then we get the title, which appears on a proper buckram-bound book cover. Under the title, little gold-leaf, well, leaves magically “grow.” 

It’s quite beautiful. But don’t you wish they’d recreated one of the HarperTrophy set covers we all have at home instead?

There’s also a content warning. 

ROMAN: Ooh, mild themes.

Next we get a tight closeup of Young Netflix Laura’s face as she says in voiceover, “Once upon a time.” (No “if I had a remembrance book” crap this time around, apparently.)

Interestingly, Laura Ingalls Wilder did begin Little House in the Big Woods with “once upon a time.” (As a reminder, and for anyone who may be just joining us, I haven’t actually read the books. As always, corrections and comments are encouraged.)

Netfix Laura is stalking a rabbit with a slingshot. But Stupid Netflix Mary ruins her kill, of course.

WILL: [as ART GARFUNKEL, singing]: “Bright eyes! Burning like fire . . .”

Laura, who’s wearing a nice brown dress and a man’s hat, True Grit–style, sniffs at her sister.

Netflix Mary is wearing a big floppy bonnet and has some sort of colorful debris braided into her hair.

To the gentle minimalist music that’s been popular on class TV dramas since Downton Abbey, Netflix Voiceover Laura continues her narration.

WILL: This sounds like Akhnaten. Philip Glass should sue for royalties.

Netflix Voiceover Laura’s words are loosely but not unrecognizably adapted from the opening of Little House on the Prairie (“The Book”), and a brief travel montage establishes the characters.

DAGNY: My God, they really DID film this in Manitoba! It looks just like it.

(The series was filmed in Canada’s (in-)famous “prairie province” of Manitoba.)

(Dags is a Winnipeg native and has traveled extensively in the province, so it’s possible she once did come upon a grove of trees there. There must be at least one.) 

Laura frolics with Netflix Jack in the weeds. She’s now festooned with rabbit corpses, so she must be a decent shot.

WILL: Notice how they made Jack look like Bandit.

DAGNY: Well, that’s cuz Bandit’s a much better dog. 

(Actually, in real life Jack didn’t look like either dog from the Landon show.)

For fun, Netflix Pa and the girls play town ball, or stickball, or Old Cat, or whatever the hell you call it, using what appears to be an old table leg.

Mary, who, while young, is already addicted to weaving crap into people’s hair, puts some purple flowers into Netflix Ma’s.

Meanwhile, Netflix Pa plays his fiddle as the Ing-Gals sing. 

DAGNY: How’s his fiddle playing?

WILL: Equally fake as Landon’s, wouldn’t you say?

AMELIA: Yeah. But you can tell it’s somebody really playing in the closeups.

Literary Bonnetheads will recognize the Scots song “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad” as one sung by Laura to Almanzo in These Happy Golden Years.

Us crude TV fans, however, know it as the tune the siren Molly Rierdon sang to steal Nels Oleson’s heart in “Second Spring”! 

As the sun goes down, Pa looks over a flyer advertising “free land in the west.” (Details are scant- but we’ll get to that in a bit.)

Pa whispers optimistically to Laura, calling her “Half-Pint” for the first time.

AMELIA: He might be too handsome.

Here followed a debate about whether Luke Bracey is more handsome than Michael Landon. Evidence inconclusive. (Your thoughts?)

Luke Bracey is an Australian actor who starred on an Australian soap called Home and Away.

He acted on the series Little Fires Everywhere and in the Elvis movie with Austin Butler.

And he played Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

(Please forgive any inadequate reporting of people’s credits in this one. Remember, I haven’t followed pop culture since 2002, when Amelia was born, so when I see a list of movie and TV titles made after that, I have no idea what’s significant and what isn’t. With things like Love Boat, Sheriff Lobo, Just the Ten of Us or whatever, it was always easy to tell.)

With other prominent Australian entertainers, Luke Bracey appeared in a trailer for a new Crocodile Dundee movie, but it turned out to be a gag for the 2018 Super Bowl.

The only thing I’d add, I think, is how much he resembles his late countryman, Andy Gibb.

Next we see the family tromping across field and plain. Ma is leading the girls singing “the Ingalls are coming” to the tune of another Eighteenth-Century Scottish song, “The Campbells are Coming.”

(Apparently some viewers are complaining about Netflix Ma’s red hair and Celticky features, but the real Caroline Quiner’s maternal grandparents were both Scottish-born, so nyah nyah to them.)   

“The Campbells are Coming” is also mentioned by Laura Ingalls Wilder as being played by Pa on his fiddle in a deleted scene from By the Shores of Silver Lake. 

The tune is memorably featured, on the march, in Bonnie Scotland, in which Laurel and Hardy join a Highland regiment in colonial India.

Well, the family approaches a swollen river, with the intent to cross. Little House fans will be chomping at the bit/creaming their jeans (depending on stripe or sensibility) when they recognize this as the famous set-piece from both the novel and the 1974 NBC Pilot. (!)

(The river, while not named in the book or The Pilot, is thought to be the Verdigris in Kansas.)

Before we begin, though, and quite out of nowhere, Mary and Ma make a surreal discovery: an abandoned piano by the water’s edge. (If this is from the book, it’s news to me.)

DAGNY: Oh, it’s just like The Piano! Does Laura start screaming “NOT WITHOUT MY MOTHER’S PIANO, NOT WITHOUT MY MOTHER’S PIANO!”

(R.I.P. Sam Neill, by the way.)

Curiously, neither Ing-Gal touches the keyboard. (Do they not know what it is?)

Well, Laura submits a request for Jack to join them in the wagon for the crossing. Approved.

So they begin.

The horses are named Pet and Patty, if you recall, and are both female in the book, though Pet became a male “Pat” on the original show. 

Pet/Pat and Patty start out fine but soon find the water deeper than expected. (One of them makes a great honking noise rather than neighing like a horse – I think it’s a mule, in fact. At least in this shot, where it seems to be a different animal from the one that stepped into the water.)

Well, who cares, right? Realizing P & P are free-floatin’, Pa plunges in, followed by Jack, as Caroline grapples with the reins. (She also gets to scream “CHAAAAAAARLES!!!”, I expect not for the last time on this series.)

This is maybe a good opportunity to say the purpose of recapping this new story with comparisons to our beloved old NBC show isn’t to establish which version is “better.” That’s probably an impossible task, certainly at this early phase of things, and more importantly it’s a subjective judgment.

Plus we all have our individual preferences and loyalties, for a lot of us developed over several decades. “Which is better?” is a question that simply will never make sense to many of us. Choosing between Little Houses is like going to a dinner party and being asked if the soup is better than your grandma’s.

I will say that this sequence is well-handled in both versions, though they’re quite different in approach. 

The Landon/Friendly Pilot, you’ll recall, was shot from across the river in nearly real time and without music, punctuating the crossing only with Pa’s urgent/terrified “Hyah! Hyah! Hyah! Hyah!”

“Independence,” on the other hand, brings in tense but not overblown music, and shoots from multiple angles (bird’s-eye view, underwater, etc.) to depict a drifting and nearly capsizing wagon in thrilling, Titanicky spectacle. 

DAGNY: On my first date with the boys’ dad, this same thing happened. We were listening to Matthew Sweet and we got stuck under Osborne Bridge in heavy rain.

In NBC’s original, it’s Charles’s life mostly that seemed at risk, but the new staging presents all four Ingallses as equally in jeopardy.

(Carrie, as you may have noticed by now, is absent.)

Well, they all drown. Ha! Just kidding, they make it across, of course.

The first thing Ma does is run behind a tree to puke.

WILL: Do you think that’s foreshadowing?

DAGNY: Foreshadowing?

WILL: Albert.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever revealed this, but whenever Dagny and I are watching TV and somebody vomits, we give it a grade for believability. (Vomits on the show we’re watching, I mean! If somebody vomits in our rumpus room, we generally get cleaning supplies before evaluating their form.)

Most TV and movie vomiting is terrible, of course. There’s more to it than coughing out a handful of chewed-up oatmeal, which is what you get half the time.

Actually, what comes out of the performer’s mouth, and how much of it there is, is largely immaterial. It is generally the actor’s retching that sells it, sometimes but not necessarily complemented by a healthy splash from the sound team.

The gold standard of movie vomiting is probably Irene Dailey as Sister Helena in The Amityville Horror. There’s no visual element whatsoever (the vomiting is obscured by a car door), and no splash – just pure, perfect voice acting.

Ma’s vomiting here, hidden behind a tree, while not as intense, is similarly accomplished. We both gave her a B-plus.

Who is this capable fake-vomiter, you ask? Well, Ma is played by Crosby Fitzgerald, who was in a 2017 Funny or Die sketch called “Is There Anything Nick Lachey Can’t Do?” I won’t spoil the plot for you, but interestingly, it did predict the entire AI phenomenon as it’s played out over the past decade.

Crosby Fitzgerald starred in a web series called Educated Fleas and had recurring roles on Palm Royale and The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.

She also appeared on Abbott Elementary and a show called Awkwafina is Nora From Queens. I don’t know the latter at all, but Awkwafina did a voice of a Skeksis on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, so she’s okay by me.

Anyways, Ma has scarcely finished ralphing when an elegantly dressed Black man on a horse appears.

DAGNY: I’m so delighted the new Little House on the Prairie is woke. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me.

The man introduces himself as “Dr. George Tann” and asks, “May I take a look?”

ALEXANDER: Take a look at what, the vomit?

Included under woke pretenses or not, Dr. Tann was a real person, a “doctor with the Indians” who’s depicted as treating the Ingallses for “fever ’n’ ague” in the Little House novel.

Readers will recall we met Dr. Tann on the old show as well. In “The Wisdom of Solomon,” he’s called Dr. Tane, a good friend of Doc Baker’s and a kindly if cynical physician who shares his observations on race with young Solomon Henry.

Anyways, this Dr. Tann treats Ma for rope burns on her palms.

Pa has joined them, and mutters about how it seemed like a good place to cross to him. (Landon’s Chuck makes his share of mistakes, but Luke Bracey’s Pa is considerably more uncertain in his attitude, and possibly more in keeping with the The Historical Charles, who some have argued was a royal fuckup.)

If Ma and Pa think there’s anything weird about Dr. Tann being Black, they don’t say it. (Maybe they wouldn’t until after he was gone, though.)

Dr. Tann says the whole “free land” thing’s a bit up in the air, but says he should look up an “Eli James at the Judson Hotel” for help in that area.

Dr. Tann expresses surprise that the Ingallses aren’t part of a larger Donner-Party-style wagon train. (Paraphrase.)

Pa says well you see, I’m an idiot. (Paraphrase.)

The handsome actor playing Dr. Tann is Jocko Sims. His resume is distinguished; he had leading or recurring roles on Crash, Masters of Sex (Dags and I liked that one) and New Amsterdam, and also acted on Cold Case, The Shield, NYPD Blue, Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, NCIS, Castle, and many others.

And he appeared in the movies Dreamgirls and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Next we see Ma and Pa going through their stuff, a lot of which, including much of their food, was ruined in the crossing.

Tucked into a Bible is what appears to be a merging of a couple famous photos of the real Charles and Caroline – albeit with Luke Bracey not looking like an insane evil preacher from a horror movie like Charles Ingalls did in real life.

Netflix Charles so far is vulnerable, “soft” Pa. He looks at Ma’s hands and apologizes to her for endangering/ruining their lives. (Paraphrase.)

Meanwhile, Laura has been calling for for Jack. But instead, she finds a little Indigenous girl in the bushes.

Laura waves at her. (Original Groovester Raja wrote, “I’m glad they kept Laura’s front teeth consistent between adaptations.”)

The girl goes back to her parents, with the show translating their language for us. (A technique that dissuades us from identifying solely with the Ingallses.)

AMELIA: Yep, this show has a Prettiness Problem. Everybody’s WAY too good-looking.

DAGNY: I guess a lot of people have been saying that, especially about Ma and Pa.

WILL: Oh, I don’t know that that’s fair. Landon and Grassle were incredibly good-looking, it’s just we were kids when we watched and didn’t realize they were hot.

AMELIA: That’s true. But EVERYBODY has been amazing-looking so far, and we’re only eight minutes in.

We don’t get to know this Native family right away, but certainly, they are all supremely good-looking.

DAGNY: Even the horses are pretty.

That night, in a spot that looks like a magical glade from a fairytale, everybody catches some well-earned shuteye.

The next morning, Laura sulks by the river. Netflix Jack has not returned. 

Nevertheless, the Ingallses drive deeper into Manitoba, passing the only tree for probably the next three hundred kilometers.

Laura crumbles up a corn dodger, dispersing the crumbs as a trail for Jack to follow.

I like dogs, as you know, but I have a horror of being followed by them. When characters are pursued by baying hounds in things like The Fugitive or something like that, it gives me the heebie-jeebies. That and plane crashes (shudder).

Anyways, if Netflix Jack is anything like our Nyssa, the cornbread crumbs won’t be of much help. We thought getting a dog would mean our kitchen floor would always be clean. Ha! Nyssa won’t touch any foodstuff that isn’t meat. We’d be likelier to catch her eating a stapler as any starch.

AMELIA: What the hell kind of hats are those?

DAGNY: I don’t know. They’re beautiful, though.

They are. The Ing-Gals are wearing straw or wicker bonnets of a type I’ve not seen before. (Well, I guess I do have a Panama hat that’s similar. It doesn’t keep the sun off my bald head very well. Why else do people wear straw hats?)

DAGNY: Laura looks like Ma, but not like Pa. And Mary looks like neither.

I think that’s a fair observation, though it’s interesting to me that the girls’ faces do resemble those of the Ing-Gals on the Graham Williams book cover. In fact, the whole shot does!

(Excuse me, Garth Williams! Graham Williams was the showrunner of Doctor Who from 1977 to 1980. A television contemporary of Landon’s, you know. I mean, on different continents.) 

And on that note, let’s get to the actors playing L and M. 

Mary is Skywalker Hughes. (If I were to name a child after a Star Wars character it would be Bib Fortuna, but it’s all good.)

Young Skywalker (I couldn’t resist) is Canadian-born and was a regular on a show called Joe Pickett. She also did appearances on PAW Patrol and Blue’s Clues.

She posted a lovely tribute to the amazingly brilliant Sam Neill upon his passing. (How they knew each other is a bit mysterious.)

And Laura is Alice Halsey.

WILL [as PAUL McCARTNEY, singing]: “Alice Halsey notified me/She had to have a berth or she couldn’t get to sea. . . .”

Halsey did voices for a show called Kindergarten: The Musical and appeared on an episode of Night Court.

She also joins the honorable ranks of Little House actors who also appeared on Days of Our Lives (indisputably the finest of the daytime soaps, full stop), including Ketty Lester, Kyle Richards, Suzanne Rogers, Frank Parker, Clint Lilley, Gil Gerard, Virginia Kiser, Sam Edwards, Bill Quinn, Corrine Camacho, Cliff Emmich, Ivor Francis, John Zaremba, Kay Peters, Dick DeCoit, Ivan Bonar, John Bennett Perry, Dan Priest, George Murdock, Sandy McPeak, Rance Howard, Charles Cioffi, William Traylor, Jodean Lawrence, Madie Norman, Katherine Woodville, Barbara Beckley, Charles Alvin Bell, Lew Brown, Vivian Brown, Alan Decker, Gene Dynarski, Jeanne Howell, Herbert Nelson, Martha Nix, Hal Riddle, George D. Wallace, and no doubt many others I’ve missed. 

Now we see Independence itself unfolding before us. Dr. Tann’s office is visible to the south and Henderson’s General Store to the north, roughly. The townspeople are racially diverse, but not so much so that it seems bizarre.

(Apparently this Independence was new-built. Great info on the production here.)

Triple-it, triple-it, triple-it! Now the Downton Abbey music starts going crazy. 

The composer is Dan Romer, who wrote music for a zillion things, though the only one I’m really familiar with is The Little Hours, a hilarious comedy about medieval nuns directed by the late Jeff Baena.

Romer also did the music for Station Eleven and for a movie called Horsegirls – not to be confused with Netflix’s Horse Girl. (Another Jeff Baena creation, coincidentally!)

Pa helps Ma down from the wagon.

ALEXANDER: Does she throw up again? 

ROMAN: That should be Netflix Ma’s trademark.

The Ing-Gals head to the store, the sights along the way including a piglet (a reference to “Wilder and Wilder”???) as well as the little Indigenous girl from the woods (and her dad).

At the shop, they’re greeted by the friendly proprietress, Emily Henderson. (Also Black, and also gorgeous.)

(Miss Henderson is played by Minneapolis-born Barrett Doss, known for a recurring role on Grey’s Anatomy and its spinoff Station 19. (Not to be confused with Station Eleven. We’re really running out of titles for things, aren’t we?)

Barrett Doss also appeared on Girls and 30 Rock.

Emily H informs Caroline that there’s no post office, church or school in town.

Meanwhile, Charles looks at a notice board of “free land” flyers promising a “new El Dorado” in Kansas and Nebraska, then enters a saloon bar, presumably at the Judson Hotel. (A real business, constructed in 1869 – the year in which this story is set.)

The place is a little rootin’-tootin’, but there are women and children there, so it’s not exactly Deadwood.

It’s decorated with whole wolves on the wall, and there’s fake ragtime music playing on a piano. (Ragtime wasn’t really popular till the 1890s; the arrangement sounds even later than that to me, but what do I know.)

Pa is immediately harassed by some grizzled beardies drinking at a table. 

(They’re quite clean-looking grizzled beardies, though, as clean as the place. Everything on the show is strangely clean, actually. In a scene like this, it gives it a slightly stagey effect, like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, or something.)

A chubby man with arm garters, introducing himself as Eli James, tells the meanest beardie to be quiet. 

(He addresses the meanest B as “Mr. Kind,” though whether that’s his name or a withering irony remains to be seen. Probably the former.)

(“Mr. Kind” is Ryan Robbins, a chameleon-like Canadian actor who appeared on The Chris Isaak Show, Smallville, Supernatural, The L Word, Stargate: Atlantis, The Killing, The X-Files, Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone and the Skywalker Hughes vehicle Joe Pickett, as well as the movies Catwoman (with Halle Berry), Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, and Horsey. (That last one is not to be confused with Horse Girl or Horsegirls.)

(And I’m pleased to say that Robbins played three separate characters in the Battlestar Galactica franchise. Very Little House, that!).

(Mr. James is Michael Hough, who was on Game of Thrones, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, What We Do in the Shadows and Cross and in the movie The Apprentice, which I haven’t seen.)

Mr. James is quite friendly, but “Mr. Kind” scoffs when he learns Charles is planning to homestead alone. “No brothers? No sons?” he says.

AMELIA: Is this the precise moment Pa becomes obsessed with having a son?

Another bearded drinker is standing with this little cocktail group, but looking out the window. It’s unclear if he’s even listening.

DAGNY: Those windows are real-looking! You know how when you go to a historical site the glass can look kind of cloudy and wobbly?

Mr. James says Charles should talk to a Sam Parker about staking a claim, but Mr. Un-Kind and his asshole friend (another Indigenous guy, possibly?) laugh that it’ll be slim pickins.

Credited as Mr. Hahn (German for “cock” – ha!), the asshole friend is played by the series’ location manager, Cliff Sumter!

Sumter has done location scouting for many, many productions, but the one that caught my eye was The Saddest Music in the World, another bizarre masterpiece from the brilliant and insane Winnipeg auteur Guy Maddin.

The guy at the window mutters for them all to shut up already.

Back at the store, Laura is taking stock of the candy offerings whilst Mary fiddles with some ribbon.

ROMAN: Foreshadowing: Olesons.

Laura then says she’d rather have a newspaper than stupid girl stuff. (The one she picks up is Harper’s Weekly, a real publication of the time.)

(I’m not sure if the cover, depicting a group of American Indians, is a real one – it lists its publisher as “H.R. Oxridge,” who seems to be fictional – but it’s certainly similar to others I found.)

(Here’s another Harper’s pic I found – this one from 1869:)

Mary mocks Laura for a number of things – downright Nellie-ishly.

AMELIA: So, Mary’s a bitch in both, huh.

Laura gives Mary a hard shove, downright Laura-ishly, and a blond boy of about Mary’s age appears.

AMELIA: Oh, is that Manly?

He gives Mary back her ribbon, which she dropped in the scuffle.

DAGNY: Look at his apron! It’s attached to his clothes with a button!

WILL: I know, you love that, just like you love underwear that attaches with buttons.

AMELIA/ALEXANDER/ROMAN: Oh my God, guys!/Please!/[gagging noises]

Addressing this person as “Caleb,” Miss Henderson tells him to get back to work.

Meanwhile, Caroline is befriended by fussy proto-Harriet townswoman.

DAGNY: I wish that was Sarah Paulson.

This person, later to be revealed as the wife of Mr. James, is played by Mary Holland, who is more than satisfactory in the part and who has an amazing resume: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, New Girl, Veep, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Between Two Ferns, The Mindy Project, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Beavis and Butt-Head, Harley Quinn, History of the World: Part II, and Parks & Rec.

She warns Ma about wolves and lust-filled men.

WILL: Oh my God . . . it’s Janet!

DAGNY: Janet who?

WILL: JANET!!!

(Janet is the doll Laura broke in “The Racoon [sic]”, who’s made cameo appearances on the old show a few times since.)

Emily Henderson waves these concerns away, leaving the Independence-ster woman to cluck and make a grimacey smile. (Grimacey like a facial grimace, not the beloved McDonald’s character.)

Miss H hands Ma the bill, which is weightier than she expected.

DAGNY: How old is Ma? Like, twenty-three?

Crosby Fitzgerald’s age is apparently 36. (Karen Grassle was 32 in The Old Pilot.)

(The Historical Caroline Ingalls turned 30 in December of 1869.)

Noting Ma’s surprise, Miss H offers to extend credit, but Ma refuses.

ALL [as MA, dejectedly]: “Cash on the barrel.”

AMELIA: She should offer to buy the girls’ hair.

WILL: Yes! “It’s worth a centime, my dear. . . .”

Embarrassed, Ma opts to leave behind several items I’d think essential in those times – bacon, eggs, sugar, and coffee.

That night, Laura and Mary bicker, Laura mentioning that Mary apparently had a boyfriend back in Wisconsin named Charlie Stone.

ROMAN: How do you think HE would react when she goes blind?

ALEXANDER: Yeah. [shrugging:] “Guess I bought a lemon.”

Mary then says Laura was a loser who didn’t have any friends. She’s actually quite a bit meaner than Ol’ Mare on our old show. Anyways, I think we can count this as a Go The Fuck To Sleep conversation, don’t you?

Later, Ma washes the table leg in the stream whilst Laura pees in the water.

Just kidding. She actually finds a little Indian doll floating by.

ALEXANDER: Does it turn out to be cursed?

That night, Pa has not returned to camp, worrying the Gals.

WILL: She looks like whatserface from Stranger Things.

AMELIA: Oh, Sadie Sink?

WILL: No, not Ma, Mary. She looks like Number Eleven.

[AMELIA and ROMAN giggle.]

WILL: What? Isn’t that her name?

AMELIA: Well, they just call her “Eleven,” not “Number Eleven.”

WILL: Oh, yeah, but I don’t know her personally.

That night, Laura sneaks out of her tent to play with the doll.

She hears some canine yipping in the dark, but it isn’t dogs.

That’s right, Jonathan Garvey, they is wolves. 

The wolves have glowing eyes and scary mean faces. 

DAGNY: That one’s a little too Narnia-y.

But Ma screams and drives them off with Pa’s gun, which he conveniently left behind. (As we noted in “The Wolves,” the wolf’s reputation as a terrifying stalker of humans is overstated, but certainly they killed livestock and were very bothersome to settlers in the Olden Days.) 

Well, the next morning Pa returns, and Ma nearly shoots him, first on accident, then on purpose.

He makes some wiffle-wuffly comments, and Ma tells him off.

ROMAN: Charles doesn’t have much of a personality in this one.

WILL: Well, I think they’re playing against the old trope of him always being perfect.

AMELIA: Yeah. Plus we haven’t seen him shirtless in the barn yet, so how can we compare?

Well, foolhardy Pa takes them to a big patch of nothing and says this is it, we’re home!

Ma says her sister (Eliza Ann?) said this adventure was a terrible idea; but she’s cool with it.

Then we get a musical “work” montage, like when The Electric Mayhem paints the car in The Muppet Movie.

This montage is set to the Ing-Gals singing (and Pa fiddling) “Roll On, Silver Moon” (aka “Sail On, Silver Moon” and “The Bonny Moon”).

This is a song actually mentioned in the book (Pa sings it), but the melody here seems to be an invention rather than the traditional folk tune.

(The new version is on Spotify already, if you want to hear it.)

“As the hart on the mountain, my lover was brave,” the girls sing, “So noble and manly and clever.”

AMELIA: Manly.

(The manly lover in this song is named Edwin, not Almanzo.)

Next we get a kissing scene – not a popcorn scene, exactly, but more an indication that popcorn is already an essential part of Ma and Pa’s lives and they will be having much more of it soon.

One morning, Mary finds a little love note with a flower and the ribbon she liked from the store. “From Caleb” – the flunky from Henderson’s. (Did he add it to their cart in the store? How have they not found it yet?)

(Somebody’s reading Barnaby Rudge, an early novel by Charles Dickens. Not one of his greatest hits.)

On a water break, Laura sees the little Native girl again.

ALEXANDER: Is she a ghost or something? Can other people see her?

Seeing the doll, the girl seizes it and runs to her father, who emerges from the woods on horseback.

In their own language (the subtitles tell us it’s Osage), the girl complains that Laura is a thief, but her dad says cut her some slack, Stupid. (Paraphrase.)

Laura says of course she’ll give the doll back. (Echoes of the Janet subplot in “Freedom Flight“!)

Laura introduces herself friendlily, and Pa comes to join them. “Maybe we’re neighbors!” he says.

The Osage dad gives him a dry look – “Maybe we’re neighbors!” isn’t the best thing to say when you get caught building a house in somebody’s backyard. But he tells the little girl to thank Laura for finding her doll, which she does.

Back at camp, Laura tells Ma she’s made friends with the Indians, but Ma says, “We don’t need to know them.” (This is in keeping with Ma’s attitude in The Old Pilot.)

Laura makes a woke speech about how can there be any option but friendship?, but Ma makes a dark allusion to “having been through enough war.” I presume she’s referring to the Sioux Wars and the terrible U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. That wasn’t fought in Wisconsin, but troops were summoned from there.

Of course, she may also be thinking of the Civil War, in which the real Caroline Quiner’s brother Joseph was killed.

Pa says this is a ridiculous thing to worry about, and tells Laura that yes, absolutely they can be best friends with the Indians.

Next we see the little Osage girl’s gorgeous family having dinner. They live in a regular house, and there’s a delicious-looking pie on the table (that no one eats).

The family is actually having the same conversation, with the father thinking there’s no reason they can’t be friends with the settlers.

(My God, I hope the War Secretary never sees this. He’d get very worked up hearing such namby-pamby-isms expressed by MEN!)

The little girl’s mom is more cynical than her husband.

Credited as White Sun, the mom is played by Alyssa Wapanatâhk. (Alyssa!) 

A member of the Cree Nation from Canada, she had a recurring role on Riverdale and played Tiger Lily in a live-action version of Peter Pan that I didn’t know existed.

The little girl, whose name is Good Eagle, has jumped aboard the Good Ship Friendship. She also speaks in English. (Good Eagle is played by Wren Zhawenim Gotts, who appeared on a series called Echo.)

There’s another man at the table, whom White Sun addresses (also in English) as “Cousin.” 

This cousin, named Louis, observes dryly that Good Eagle is “open-hearted – like her big sister was.”

Upset, White Sun leaves.

But Good Eagle’s dad, who clearly is trying to win a Classic Charles lookalike contest (stripey shirt, check; shock of black hair, check), says don’t worry about it, bruh.

Cousin Louis is Thosh Collins, of Pima/Seneca/Osage descent. He was also on Echo, plus on the PBS history show American Experience – I always thought it was “THE American Experience,” but I guess not – and on IT: Welcome to Derry, the Madeleine Stowe vehicle.

But Collins is not merely an actor. (I mean, no offense to any mere actors out there.) He also is a community organizer and health educator who cofounded an Indigenous wellness initiative called Well For Culture.

And the dad, whose name is William Mitchell, is played by Meegwun Fairbrother (Ojibwe), who has been in many things I haven’t heard of. (Murdoch Mysteries and Avatar: The Last Airbender are two I have.)

Mr. Mitchell says he’s done a site visit to the proposed land the U.S. government is “offering” for them to live on, and says it’s pretty shitty.

But not to worry, he implies, because he’s quite happy where he is and isn’t planning to go anywhere.

Next we see the Ingallses family working on their house again, Ma doing her fair share and then some.

DAGNY: Does Ma have a prosthetic arm, like Dr. Claw?

Mary looks like she’s shuckin’ peas or something, and Laura doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all except plotting to annoy Mary.

WILL: They’re totally Alexander and Roman.

Well, everything’s fine until Ma drops a log on her foot, breaking it. (Her foot, not the log.)

“We need to stop the bleeding,” Pa says urgently. (Can you bleed to death from your foot? Or is he worried about attracting wolves?) 

ALL [ecstatically]: OH MY GOD SHE’S GONNA CUT OFF HER LEG!!!!!

Pa sets off to find Dr. Tann, and now comes a part I liked. Since everybody’s upset now, Ma asks Laura to “tell us one of her stories.”

So Laura makes up a little story about visiting their grandma’s house in the Big Woods. Presumably this is Charles’s mother Laura Colby Ingalls, as Laura’s other grandmother didn’t live there in real life, though she did on the old show. (See “‘Author! Author!’”)

The story’s not actually all that entertaining, but that scarcely matters. Laura The Storyteller/Writer was pretty much absent from the old show. Oh, we get voiceovers often enough – but almost never do we see her show any aspirations towards writing. Mary was always the brainiac in school, with Laura content to go bang her head against trees with lunkhead friends like Andy Garvey. And yet, of course, she would grow up to be one of the most famous writers in history.

As I said, Laura’s story isn’t much of a story, but that’s no excuse for Mary interrupting to whine that they never should have left Wisconsin.

ALL: Classic Mary.

Mary mentions Ma’s sister Eliza Ann and Pa’s brother Peter, whom we know from the old show (and from reality) are married.

Mary brings up Jack again. For whatever reason, I keep forgetting him. Not sure they’re doing such a great job making his disappearance a suspenseful part of the narrative.

Then we get some interesting revisionism, with the Gals suggesting that some dispute or disagreement led to Pa taking the family away in a huff. “No one came to say goodbye,” Laura mopes – quite the opposite of what’s depicted in the book and The Old Pilot.

“Why didn’t anyone come to say goodbye?” Laura continues.

WILL [as MA]: “Well, first of all, your Grandpa Lansford is fucking insane.”

Mary snivels and whimpers and half-collapses, but Laura just looks bummed, probably because her story was ruined.

ROMAN [as LAURA, darkly]: “So . . . I wonder what kind of plot developments I should come up with for YOU, Mary.”

AMELIA [as MARY]: “Oh, nothing bad ever happens to me.”

Dr. Tann arrives, and in private consultation with Caroline recognizes that she’s with child. (Quite Doc-Bakerishly, in fact.)

ALEXANDER: She’s pregnant?

ROMAN: Yeah, with twins. Carrie One and Carrie Two!

Caroline says Charles doesn’t know yet, and admits that yes, her main purpose in wanting to get pregnant was Pa’s Quest For A Son.

Well, the first thing Dr. Tann does is tell Charles. (Again just like Doc Baker, he can’t keep his mouth shut.)

He also offers the opinion that it’s insane to try to live as a small family out on the prairie.

Pa joins Ma in their tent with a Landonish chicken-crap grin.

Ma mentions that she’s miscarried before, “so many” times.

“I’ll fix this,” Charles Ingalls says idiotically.

Since Doc Tann stressed the family’s need to hire help (I’m not sure why that’s a higher priority than, say, leaving), Charles goes trotting around to see if he can find some. (On a horse.)

He comes upon a decrepit shack in the wilderness.

DAGNY: Oh, is it Kezia?

ROMAN: No! [sings:] “Ol’ Dan Tucker was a fine old man!”

We shall see. Apart from some weird cats, though, the place seems abandoned.

On the table, there’s a framed photo of a man in a Confederate uniform with his wife and two daughters.

Suddenly the surly beardie from the Judson saloon appears. He’s totin’ a gun and speaks warily (and slowly), but doesn’t seem threatening, exactly.

He acknowledges the cats, but Charles says, “I’m more of a dog person,” a sentence I’m pretty confident was never spoken by any human on Earth during the Nineteenth Century.

The beardie introduces himself, and yes, as you’ve guessed, he’s Mr. Edwards.

He gives his first name as John, not Isaiah, but while Mr. Edwards is a real character from the book, LIW doesn’t give him a first name.

Mr. Edwards says he’s from Tennessee, but in fact, Mr. Ed may have been inspired in whole or in part by an Englishman named Edmund Mason. Always a fan favorite no matter the medium, he is described in the book as being fairly wacky and fun, and he does help Pa with constructing the house in Kansas.

Well, he doesn’t seem wacky and fun here. You maybe can guess why.

Jolly, stupid Chuck says, wow, our kids look the same age, they’ll probably be best friends!

Not looking at him, Mr. Edwards, who has a big nasty bruise on his nose that I don’t think was there in the bar scene, says he’s not sure if he’s stickin’ around these hyar parts.

Chuck pitches his idea that first they build his house, then they’ll build one for the Edwards family!

He gushes gooily about how isn’t it GREAT to be a HUSBAND AND DAD??? 

Mr. Edwards clenches his teeth through the speech, then suddenly turns the gun on Charles.

I think Mr. Ed is supposed to be drunk in this scene, but the actor’s delivery is subtle. Well, subtler than You Know Who’s, anyways.

Warren Christie, another actor who’s so good-looking people reacted in disbelief when his casting was announced, actually looks the part rather well, I think.

Born in Northern Ireland, U.K., Christie was in some of the projects already mentioned above (including a recurring part on Galactica) as well as Andromeda, Once Upon a Time, and Arrow. (Also in a lot of things I don’t know.)

Charles is understandably alarmed at the gunplay, but William Johnson (Martin Williams? Mitchell Williams?) appears and tries to deescalate the situation (in English).

(Oh, it’s William Mitchell. Sorry about that.)

Mr. Mitchell distracts Mr. Edwards with talk of persimmons (perhaps Mr. Ed’s favorite fruit???), then Charles jumps him. (Mr. Ed, that is, not Mr. Mitchell.)

Mr. Edwards is knocked out as easily as a Doctor Who character, and the other two men apparently carry him to bed.

Mr. Mitchell tells Charles that Edwards is all right, despite being a drunk, then says with some distaste that Kansas scrub land doesn’t draw pioneers of the finest quality. (Paraphrase.)

Mr. Mitchell makes a little anthropological speech about the factors which turn men into losers, burnouts and drunks.

Charles, who doesn’t seem that upset about the whole situation, shakes Mr. Mitchell’s hand.

Pa crosses a stream, heading home, presumably.

DAGNY: Now, that looks like Beausejour.

WILL: It probably IS Beausejour.

Laura looks very upset, and Pa sits next to her on a log.

AMELIA: Her clothes are completely clean. Like, COMPLETELY.

DAGNY: In this new one, their relationship reminds me of Inspector Gadget and Penny.

WILL: Speaking of Dr. Claw.

Laura is crying because Ma told her Jack is gone for good.

WILL [as Pa, gravely]: “Laura . . . your ma has never liked Jack.”

ROMAN: They should just get a raccoon.

Pa says, “Don’t give up on us.” (A David Soul reference, to acknowledge the original show’s seventies origins??)

That night in their tent, Pa says to Ma, hey, if you want, we can go home. Putting it all on her, the way men sometimes do.

But Ma says that’s impossible when they’re broke and stranded in Bugger-All, Kansas.

DAGNY: I might love this show. No, I do love it.

Pa fantasizes that they could move in with Ma’s brother. (Henry, who we met in “‘I Remember, I Remember’”? Or Thomas, who we didn’t?)

Ma and Pa now reminisce about meeting at the “harvest dance” at the “Anderson farm” (presumably in Concord, Wis.).

On the old show, we’ve heard a few variations on Ma and Pa’s origin story, but this one’s not far off from them: “‘IR,IR’” depicts their first date as being at a “haying dance” (sort of). 

Ma’s tone softens as they remember how they fell in love, and how she’d still follow him anywhere. She touches on the American Dream, how Pa’s an unrealistic dreamer, blah blah blah.

WILL: Now, this dialogue is right out of the old show.

And the next thing you know, Ma is talking Pa into staying. “What if this is where your son is finally born?” she says.

WILL: We should hear a voice from inside her belly say “I want molasses!”

ROMAN: Yeah, or “Oh, damn!”

Ma says they can just sell some of their treasured possessions like Pa’s fiddle (shades of “‘As Long as We’re Together’”) and they’ll be fine.

WILL [as MA]: “But not my Little Bo Peep figurine, that is OFF the table.”

No doubt depressed at the prospect of losing Ol’ Fiddly, Pa goes out and fake-plays.

Well, the next morning, Jack comes back!

He would have had to travel about thirty miles, but I suppose it’s not impossible. Probably left a trail of foxtails behind him as he went.

And apparently, Mr. Edwards was his rescuer.

Laura is stranger-wary, but Mr. Ed is charming and not drunk. (Not very, anyways.)

Pa comes running out with his gun. (Edwards is unarmed this time.)

Pa is initially hostile, but Mr. Ed apologizes, and, without going into his whole story, implies that the rest of his family (including daughters Laura and Abigail) are dead. 

(Apart from being from Tennessee, Mr. Edwards’s origins are left a mystery in the novel; this backstory about his dead family seems plucked from the old show.)

Mr. Ed’s eyes are very sad, and his line readings are not unlike Victor French’s if you ask me. Warren Christie’s performance has been singled out as a standout in reviews, it seems, and I think that’s deserved.

Charles doesn’t dissolve into a blubbering wreck like Classic Chuck would have, but he agrees and they shake hands.

Changing the subject, Mr. Edwards says there’s a problem, and that’s that they don’t legitimately own any of this land yet. 

Chuck says that’s dumb, he read about the free land in a flyer, hello???

Edwards says until Uncle Sam makes the Osage an offer they can’t refuse, nothing’s for certain.

“Hey, no risk, no reward,” he adds, fairly cheerfully.

WILL: Sing it! SING IT!!!

Well, Pa comes back to the tent, but does not tell the family the bad news. Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum! (Actually, there’s no “Bum-Bum-Ba-Dum,” of course, but you may sing it yourself if you wish.)

(Oh! And the writer and showrunner, by the way, is Rebecca Sonnenshine, known for writing and producing The Boys and The Vampire Diaries.)

(She also dedicated this episode in the credits to her late mother, Barbara.)

(And the director of this episode was Sarah Adina Smith, who’s directed episodes of Legion, Room 104, and the Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.)

STYLE WATCH: Scads of great clothes.

William Mitchell might be the best dressed of the men.

Laura wears an interesting white pinafore that looks like it might be bulletproof. (Not a bad idea, on this show.)

A lot of the men wear cravats/ascots, which I feel personally responsible for bringing back into fashion in this century.

THE VERDICT: 

DAGNY: A-plus-plus! I loved it.

ROMAN: Well, the whole thing’s like Rob Zombie’s Halloween – different, but the same.

I don’t know that I’d go so far as an A++, but it was enormously watchable, woke if you must but completely in the spirit of the old show, and quite involving and enjoyable.

You know, approaching it reminded me of going to the opera (or Rob Zombie’s Halloween), where you already know the characters and arcs and the fun is in looking at the performances and details and little differences, all of which are immensely enjoyable in this case.

There really aren’t any weak performances, but Halsey, Crosby, Hughes, and Christie in particular nail the characters. Fairbrother and Holland also stand out, and Luke Bracey deserves big applause for his brave, very different and well-considered take on Charles.

The nuanced rereading of Pa’s character as the dreamy, irresponsible, even foolish person he may have been in real life brings something new to the story. It’s more than just a Little House puppet show.

Not every hardcore fan will find it worth their time, but we did. If you’re worried you might not like it as much as the old show, give it a try! As I put it to some of our Original Groovesters in a chat we have, there’s almost nothing to complain about!

Anyways, sorry this one took so long. In addition to trying to figure out a unique angle for talking about the new series (as you can tell, I failed and just did it the same way I always do), we were traveling, and our hot water heater cracked and spilled all over our basement floor.

This recap was a one-and-done, but I hope you liked it. Back to Classic Little House next time! I’m quite surprised to find there’s room enough in my heart for both. See you soon.

UP NEXT (AGAIN): Portrait of Love