Marathon-Mania

This is probably a good time to mention a few more marathons that are popping up this Labor Day Weekend. In addition to the mini-Bonanza-thon on TV Land (check out my entry here on 8/28) and today's Little House on Hallmark, there's a nice selection still to come. Hallmark continues the launch of their new batch of acquisitions with tomorrow's Matlock marathon from 1p - 8pm. Matlock's hardly cutting-edge or even very interesting at all, really, but if you're a fan this is a nice opportunity to catch a few eps before Hallmark begins to run the series on Tuesday. Normal schedule will be M - F from 11a - 12n and 8p - 10p.

And on Monday, Hallmark has lined up a M*A*S*H marathon from 9am - 1am, celebrating their purchase of this series away from FX. They're running the entire first season, uncut and remastered, along with Memories of M*A*S*H, a clip special hosted by Shelley Long, then the series settles into its regular run weekdays from 3p - 5pm and again from 10p - 12mid. Any show with over 250 episodes certainly needs no introduction or recommendation, and the only negative I can say about Hallmark's purchase is that unfortunately they're only available in 53 million homes, which leaves a lot of American viewers out in the cold. It's time to call your cable company, Hallmark have-nots!

Most exciting -- and best for insomniacs -- is FX's 24 Hours of 24 which begins Sunday night at 12midnight and continues until the same time Monday. I guess you could fill up your TIVO's harddrive with the whole shebang, or pop in a few tapes if you can't handle it straight through. This, of course, will set you up for the new season of 24, which starts in October, so you'll be all up to date on what's been happening with Jack and the gang. Though I love the show I missed so many this year that I'm going to be watching on Monday, for sure.

I love marathons, always have. As I know I've said before sometime, marathons were invented by creative independent stations back when they were the ones fighting the good fight against network domination. There's nothing new under the sun, or on the tube, but that's okay, because a good idea always bears repeating.

Enjoy this weekend's choices, and have a wonderful rest of the holiday weekend!

 
Little House, Big Legacy


On the short list of TV shows that, when all is said and done, can really claim to have helped people -- and I mean deep down, in the heart -- rather than merely entertained them, Little House on the Prairie has got to hover around the top. I know … I know – it’s too sweet, it’s for kids, it’s too family, it’s old-fashioned. Yes, it can be all of those things, but LHOP is also complex, insightful, funny, charming, and will surely stand as a remarkable example of quality television when snazzier, cooler shows have faded into DVD dust.

I’m a big fan of the show, especially the first four or so seasons, before everybody seemed to go blind and cute little girls turned into marriageable (by Old West standards) teenagers. When Little House was good, it was very, very good, and lucky for us, we’ll get the chance to re-appreciate it when The Hallmark Channel adds it to their regular line-up beginning next week. Long a staple of Superstation TBS in its heyday, but recently dumped (except for local Atlanta viewers) in favor of the oh-so-much-more-appealing-to-advertisers Dawson’s Creek, Little House is a natural for The Hallmark Channel, fitting nicely into their cobbled-together yet viewer-friendly cast-off line-up.

One’s networks throwaways are another network’s favorites, and that’s certainly the case here. Though some might find it easy to dismiss a show about a poor and struggling family in the Old West (and maybe you’re one of them) as being naive or passe, Little House is one of those series that has a wide legion of all sorts of fans, and not just the home-school mothers, Sunday school teachers or TV-is-the-Devil nutcase advocacy group members (who’d have us all watching nothing but things fit for five-year-olds) that you’d presume to be devotees. You’ll hardly find a viewer more cranky or profane than I am, and I think Little House is amazing.

You don’t have to believe me, though. Check it out for yourself, and a great place to begin your sampling is Hallmark’s marathon tomorrow, Saturday 8/30, from 6am to 3am. They’re running most of the first season, and there’s just nothing quite like the rather startling and refreshing innocence that LHOP had that year. Michael Landon, not long off his long-running stint as Bonanza’s charismatic Little Joe Cartwright (and after starting his directing career there), starred in the pilot movie for Little House in 1974, then segued into producing and sometimes writing and directing it until it went off the air in 1983. Based on Laura Ingall Wilder’s series of Little House books, longtime children’s favorites (though I confess I never was exposed to them when I was a kid), and naturally taking some liberties with the book’s canon, Little House nevertheless was a fairly authentic and non-Hollywood-ized version of hardscrabble homestead life.

Landon had a wonderful cast to work with: the lovely and sensible Karen Grassle as Charles Ingall’s lovely and sensible wife Caroline, two appealing kids in Melissa Gilbert and Melissa Sue Anderson, and a bevy of talented supporting players who helped him flesh out his vision of Walnut Grove, Minnesota on an NBC backlot. Whatever he did, he made magic out there, and it’s still palpable when you watch the episodes today.

Here are some of my favorites from that first season that will be airing tomorrow, although of course all of them are extremely watchable. You can see the first appearance of the town’s mini-shrew Nellie Oleson (Alison Arngrim), the girl everyone loved to hate, at 7am in “Country Girls.” Nellie’s the town rich kid, the daughter of the prosperous mercantile store owner, and she never lets anybody forget it. One of the constant joys of Little House over the years was the subtle performance of Richard Bull (seen recently as Tom Wilkinson’s father in the HBO TVM Normal) as Nels Oleson, who (I think it’s the storyline) married into money in the form of Mrs. Oleson, played to perfection by the small but mighty Katherine McGregor. Nels was every bit as kind and unassuming as his wife was overbearing and snooty, and their marriage was one of those idiosyncratic unions that perplex onlookers. Nellie was definitely her mother’s daughter, and you’ll see what happens when she makes acquaintance with the Ingall girls.

The sentimental but dead-on “If I Should Die Before I Wake”at 11am weaves a cautionary tale of parental love and offspring inattention that might really hit home as more of us have aging parents of our own. Josephine Hutchinson gives a wonderful and spunky guest-starring performance as Miss Amy, an elderly widow who contrives a way to get her wandering children to come visit her before it’s too late. LHOP wasn’t always concentrated on the Ingalls family, and this is one of those episodes where other townspeople were brought in to expand the storytelling possibilities. There’s just something very sweet about this one.

At 12n, there’s a wonderful female empowerment episode (kind of a Whale Rider on the Prairie), as Olga, a lonely little girl with one leg shorter than the other, is helped when Charles builds her a special shoe, much to the displeasure of her seemingly cruel and unfeeling father. This is a solid episode about being different, about wanting to fit in, about mean kids, and ultimately about being nice to other people. It’s a great one.

Every Western series needs at least one good rabies episode, and Little House did it with 3pm’s “The Raccoon,” where Laura’s pet raccoon Jasper is feared to have contracted the deadly and horrifying disease when he bites Laura and her pet dog Jack, then disappears. Landon no doubt remembered the chilling episode “A Time to Die” from his Bonanza days; Vera Miles played a woman who gets bit by a rabid wolf. The hour ended with her being driven away to suffer a gruesome and prolonged death in an asylum as the rabies eats away her brain, and that’s the same fate faced by little Laura in this gripping entry. This is a scary episode, and shows that LHOP wasn’t just about picking daisies and wearing cute little bonnets.

And for an episode that gave the talented Kevin Hagen’s Doc Baker a chance to shine, catch the 8pm “Doctor’s Lady,” with ravishing guest star Anne Archer. She’s Mrs. Oleson’s spirited and independent visiting niece, and despite the difference in their ages, Doc Baker falls for her. A bittersweet lesson in life, this is a poignant episode that showed off the marvelous supporting players in LHOP, and what a treat to see Anne Archer looking so period-piece lovely.

Again, all the episodes on tomorrow are great; these are just some of which I’ve always been particularly fond. Looking back, I’m kind of appalled at my mushy choices, but Little House does that to you. Steel yourself, my friends: Little House on the Prairie locates that big, soft, sappy spot right in the middle of your heart and makes itself right at home, and you’ll never ever get rid of it, no matter how hard you try.


Little House on the Prairie begins its run on The Hallmark Channel with a marathon on Saturday 8/30, with its regular weekday run beginning on 9/2 at 6pm. Check out their LHOP website for more information.


There are many nice fan-based Little House sites out there, including, among others:

Alex Trenta’s nice page, with its Little House Information Centre –

The Little House Encyclopedia, a wonderful resource –

A nice tribute site to Kevin Hagen, Little House’s Doc Baker

Little Laura – Melissa Gilbert – has her own site, too.

And so does Nellie Oleson, socially-conscious and wry Alison Arngrim

 
Bonanza Bonanza

Wow, anybody pining for the return of the good ol’ TV western should be mighty happy, now that the venerable series Bonanza will be in the somewhat unique position of being simultaneously aired by three different cable networks, namely Pax, Hallmark, and new to the posse TV Land, starting next week. It’s never been too hard to find Bonanza if you needed a Ponderosa fix, but now it’s going to become practically impossible to avoid it if you’re a handy websurfer.

From its premiere episode on September 12, 1959, to its final original network airing in January of 1973, Bonanza was a Sunday night fixture for a generation. This saga of the Cartwright clan weathered the departure of number one son Adam (Pernell Roberts) in 1965 and the addition of several non-family characters, but once the heart of the show was gone – Dan Blocker’s Hoss, who died in mid-1972 – it was just a matter of time before show expired, too. Ben Cartwright might have been ruled the roost, but it was his sweet, sunny and enormous middle son who really captured the audience. When 43-year-old Blocker died unexpectedly from a blood clot after successful gall bladder surgery, it was a shock to the viewers here and abroad, where the show had been an ambassador-at-large for America via plays all over the globe.

Thanks to heavy syndication on the local station level for many years, and now continuing exposure on cable, Bonanza’s an American TV staple, undoubtedly taken for granted by now but still as entertaining as ever. Whereas several black and white comedies from the 1950s and early 1960s continue to ply the airwaves, it’s the infrequent drama that makes it through the long haul with such a strong showing. The reason Bonanza was different? From the moment it went on the air, Bonanza was filmed and shown in color, making it a real rarity back in the early ‘60s where most series didn’t go color until the 1966 season. NBC used Bonanza as a tout for RCA color TV sales (hey, it worked for my family!), and their foresight – an entire run without a black and white episode – helped it become an syndie stalwart.

For those of you who are old enough to remember, and I do because I used to program the series back in my KTLA days, for many years there were only (only!) 310 episodes in syndication, but now the entire run of 430 is out there. I’m not sure what selection the various cable nets are featuring, but I do know that TV Land is launching their run with a couple of short marathons that feature a pair of episodes I highly recommend. On Monday 9/1, “Hoss and the Leprechauns” airs at 3pm; it’s the episode I always programmed on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s all about Hoss, mysterious buried golden treasure, and a troupe of midget acrobats (wearing costumes originally seen in the Danny Kaye medieval comedy The Court Jester – remember “Outfox The Fox”?), all set to a background score with excerpts from Mendelsohn’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." It’s sublimely silly and cute as hell; Dan Blocker is particularly adorable in it, as well as Michael Landon's Little Joe who's terrific and extremely giddy here. Another winning episode runs at 5pm, "The Flapjack Contest," where Little Joe enters Hoss in a pancake-eating contest. Bonanza usually had at least a couple of comedy episodes every season, and I think they really show off the camaraderie and charisma that made America fall in love with the show. If you’ve never watched much of Bonanza, these might be a nice introduction to this real American institution. Of course, if you're looking for standard Western storylines, almost any of the other fine episodes will do.

Sure, maybe it's a little synthetic -- the Cartwright house is clearly on a soundstage -- and perhaps it doesn't do justice to the female quotient in the Old West (although there were some great roles for guest actresses), but the Ponderosa is still a nice place to visit.

TV Land begins Bonanza repeats – from the very first episode – on Monday 9/1 at 1pm, with mini-marathons on Sunday 8/30 and Monday 9/1 from 3pm – 7pm. This is the link to their Bonanza website.

P.S.: I'm not so sure I think Bonaza belongs on TV Land, exactly, but they're branching out -- or as the current crop of TV marketers might say, diluting their brand -- with forays beyond sitcoms and camp hours like Charlie's Angels. Bonanza doesn't need the help of TV Land to rescue it from obscurity (thought that's not their stated mission, it feels like it sometimes). It's doing fine, thanks, and there are lots of other endangered older series that aren't running anywhere anymore. They're the ones that really need the help.

Here's a nice Bonanza fansite with a lot of great information!

And here's another terrific fan-made website!

This one's nice, too, but with a Bonanza theme song loop that's a little obtrusive ...

Bonanza will continue to air on the Hallmark Channel M - F at 6am & 9am, and Saturdays at 7pm.

Pax TV will also be airing Bonanza at 5pm weeknights.