Little House on the Prairie Series-Premiere Recap: Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura

Little House on the Prairie
Independence
Season 1 Episode 1
Editor’s Rating ★★★★★

Hey, no one ever said pioneering was easy. While Charles and Caroline Ingalls were surely aware that deciding to move their little family from the Big Woods of Wisconsin to the prairies of Kansas in the years following the Civil War would be physically taxing, perhaps they could not have imagined it would be this physically taxing. And in no way could they have been prepared for the mental and emotional strain of this situation in which they’ve put themselves and their young daughters, Mary and Laura. But we all should be prepared.

Gird your loins, my little Prairie folk! While this adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book series — season one is inspired by the third book out of the nine, Little House on the Prairie, and isn’t necessarily a reboot of the Michael Landon series, just FYI — gives us plenty of idyllic shots of grass and sky and is imbued with hope and moments of joy, it doesn’t ignore some of the more harrowing details of life on the frontier. For all the whimsical flower crowns and family fiddle dance parties, there are wolves and broken bones, there are the realities of living in poverty and sad men grappling with their demons. So, so many sad men. (This is complimentary.)

We’ll get to those sad men in a bit, but first, if anyone on this show understands harrowing, it’s Caroline Ingalls. Honestly, this poor woman. Sure, Charles is clearly a hottie with a body and is extremely good at chopping wood, which makes him ideal husband material then and now, but dang, Caroline gets put through it. First of all, it becomes quite clear that Caroline and Charles’s families weren’t supportive of their leaving. Caroline says her sister called her a fool for following Charles “into the dark,” when Charles is asked why he has no other family with him his response is a mysterious “it didn’t work out,” and don’t even get me started on how devastating it is when Laura and Mary finally break down about how confused and hurt they are by the fact that no one in their family came to say good-bye when they left. These emotions, and perhaps some questioning of her decision-making skills, are all surely swirling around Caroline’s head during this journey to Kansas.

And then they have to ford the river. 

Even if you don’t know the Little House story, if you’ve played Oregon Trail even once, you know how risky it is to ford a river, okay? And when the Ingalls do it, it does not go well. Caught in chutes, the wagon almost capsizes with Mary and Laura in it, and it’s Caroline who holds onto the reins for dear life while Charles gets in the river to try to lead the horses safely to the other side. Everyone survives — although sweet pup Jack is lost — but Caroline is left with a nasty cut across her hand and probably some rampant PTSD, although who is getting out of frontier living without trauma, let’s be real. She proceeds to vomit her guts up because she is all of us.

That ordeal is immediately followed by some good ol’ fashioned humiliation once the Ingalls reach the small town of Independence, Kansas, and Caroline realizes they can’t afford half the supplies on her list. Though, to be clear, Emily Henderson, who runs the General Store, could not be nicer. You can tell Caroline is both humiliated and mentally confronting their financial situation nonetheless. Then, when Charles goes off to find a piece of land to call home, Caroline is left alone at camp with the girls overnight and has to shoot off wolves who want to eat Laura. On the plus side, this incident does give Caroline a real “not my daughter, you bitch” moment, and honestly, good for her. AND THEN — yeah, there’s more — while Charles and Caroline are building their house, she drops a log right on her foot and breaks that baby into a million pieces. I’d ask if this woman has suffered enough, but immediately following the broken foot incident, we learn that, oh yeah, she’s pregnant, too. Pregnant and terrified. Caroline confides in Dr. Tann that she’s had a lot of miscarriages, and now she’s supposed to have a baby out in the middle of nowhere? Okay, fine, I’m asking: Hasn’t this woman suffered enough?

Thank all the prairie gods for Dr. George Tann. Not only has he already patched Caroline up twice and lent her a kind ear, but he’s not afraid to talk some sense into Charles. It’s not that Charles is oblivious to what he’s putting his wife through — he’s already asked for forgiveness once — but he is a man hellbent on making this big dream he has for his family work, no matter what. Dr. Tann brings him back to earth by dropping the baby news on him and making clear that not only can Caroline not help with physical activities like, you know, building a log cabin, but also that if Charles doesn’t go find some real help, he’s putting his family’s lives at stake. Charles has no money left after the journey, and he’s still waiting for money from mortgage payments on his Wisconsin home — he can’t hire help. But Dr. Tann tells him it is dire that he figures something out. “It’s a myth that men can make it out here alone,” he tells Charles, “It’s a pretty story, nothing more.” 

Enter Mr. John Edwards. Mr. Edwards is sad and broken, and frankly, I would die for this man. Broken men are my kink, leave me alone! Charles arrives at Edwards’s little shed, not too far from the land the Ingalls are building on, to ask him to trade — they can help one another build each other’s homes — but what he finds is not someone willing or able to be of any assistance. Edwards is drunk, and the moment Charles brings up the two little girls in the family picture Edwards has on the wall and how they look to be of similar age as his Laura and Mary, Edwards pulls a rifle on him. 

Charles has another new friend to thank for saving his ass: William Mitchell shows up at the exact right time to help Charles disarm and knock out Edwards. Mitchell is an Osage man Charles and the Ingalls have run into a few times by this point, who lives with his wife, White Sun, and daughter, Good Eagle, not too far from where the Ingalls are. Little House seems to be setting up the Mitchells as almost mirror images of the Ingalls family, giving us another perspective on this Westward expansion of the United States. It won’t be long until Charles learns that he’s been lied to about the area being abundant with free land for the taking — he’s settled on Osage land. The white men who have arrived here because of railroad expansion are simply hoping the government intervenes and forces the Osage out, and in the meantime, acting like this land is for the taking. It’s no wonder that when Charles, full of sincerity and friendliness, tells Mitchell, Oh, hey, they must be neighbors, Mitchell looks like he’s holding back a whole lot of words he’d like to unleash, in order to keep the peace. (And it’s true — in a scene at the Mitchell house, he tells his wife, who wants nothing to do with the people invading their land, that he “doesn’t want to make enemies.”) So, add political and ethical turmoil to the list of items the Ingalls were unprepared for when they set out on this journey.

For now, however, Charles is simply trying to find someone to help put a roof over his family’s heads. With Edwards a dead end, he has failed. But it’s when he returns home and finds Laura crying over feeling to blame for losing Jack, over realizing he’ll never come back, that really breaks Charles. Even Laura, his half pint, his bright star, has given up hope, and it guts the guy. He begs her not to give up on it — “hope is everything. It’s the only thing.” 

Yet, it doesn’t seem like Charles has it in him to hold on to hope anymore. Weepy-eyed, he goes to Caroline to tell her that if she wants to go back home, they’ll go back. And so, on top of everything else, it turns out it’s Caroline who is going to keep this dream of a new, better life alive. She reminds him of how they met, how he could have chosen any girl, they were all so in love with him, but he chose her. “And I knew, in that moment, I would follow you anywhere,” she says. Yes, of course she’s scared, but this was her choice, and she believes in him. He still has his doubts — what if he was wrong about all of this? Her response? “What if this is where we finally become who we were meant to be?” She’s crying. He’s crying. And this, this is the moment that I knew I would follow these two hottie dreamers and their incredible 19th-century tent lighting anywhere.

So, hope is alive! And in the sunrise of the next morning, there are even more signs that the Ingalls can do this. Mr. Edwards appears with Jack at his side. Did I let out a truly ugly sob as Laura reunites with her dog and tells Mary that she always had hope that he’d return to them? Yes! Of course! This is who I am! 

Edwards apologizes to Charles. He wants to make things right, and he wants to help Charles give his family somewhere safe to live. He doesn’t get into details, but he talks in the past tense about his two daughters, one named Laura, and how they would’ve loved it here, and Charles (and we) get that this is a man being pummeled by grief. Charles wants to give him a second chance, and so they agree to help one another. 

In what I suspect will be a recurring theme on Little House, the end of this episode delivers a special emotional blend of equal parts hope and uneasiness. Things are looking up for the Ingalls personally, but Edwards informs Charles that currently the Osage are away on a hunt and they’ll be back home soon. The tensions building on this land in Kansas will have to be confronted eventually. Laura might be sure that the prairie is her family’s “forever,” but Charles knows nothing is settled just yet.

Little Notes

• I’m deeply into how Little House clearly respects Laura and Mary as full-fledged, well-developed characters and has such a reverence for the nuance of sisterhood. Yes, they make each other mad — Mary teases Laura for not being able to read well, Laura makes fun of Mary for crushing on General Store clerk Caleb — but when they’re scared or sad, they hold on to each other for comfort.

• Laura and Good Eagle desperately want to be friends despite what society and their mothers tell them. Please let this happen sooner rather than later. 

• The music on this show is gorgeous. If you, too, are enjoying Dan Romer’s work here, he also scored Station Eleven and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, FYI.

• Okay, I’m sorry, but when Emily tells the Ingalls that George Tann is “a fine doctor,” does she mean he’s a good doctor or a fine doctor? I need more kissing on this show!!