Ahead of the premiere of Netflix’s new take on “Little House,” we’re looking back on the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of the beloved original series.

The 10 best and worst moments from the original Little House on the Prairie

Ahead of the premiere of Netflix's new take on "Little House," we're looking back on the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of the beloved original series.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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July 3, 2026 9:00 a.m. ET

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Melissa Gilbert, Michael Landon, Karen Grassle, Sidney Greenbush, and Melissa Sue Anderson on 'Little House on the Prairie'. Credit:

NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

- EW is rounding up our picks for the 10 best and worst moments from the original *Little House on the Prairie*.

- The best moments include the season 3 episode "Blizzard" and Mary's heartrending blindness arc, while the worst can't get any worse than the infamous season 7 two-parter, "Sylvia."

- Netflix is bringing *Little House on the Prairie *back with a new vision of the classic books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, created by Rebecca Sonnenshine and slated for a July 9 premiere.

There's no place like home.

The classic Western period serial *Little House on the Prairie *raised an entire generation. And now, thanks to streaming, it's helping raise that original crop of fans' children, and their children's children too.

The feel-good historical drama about a tight-knit family making a hardscrabble life for themselves on the edge of the American frontier ran from 1974 to 1983 on NBC. Created by and starring Michael Landon as the stalwart patriarch Pa Ingalls, *Little House *made stars of each member of its core family, from plucky protagonist Laura (Melissa Gilbert), to her often unlucky sister Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson), to their fair and wise mother Caroline (Karen Grassle). Though the series is remembered for its wholesome family values and peachy-keen lessons of the week, it just as often veered into the strange, the terrifying, and the downright repulsive.

As Netflix gears up to premiere its new adaptation of pioneer icon Laura Ingalls Wilder's coming-of-age-novels, we're revisiting the very best and worst moments of the original series.

The cast of 'Little House on the Prairie' in the 1974 episode 'Country Girls'.

NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

Best: Country Girls

Any list of *Little House on the Prairie*'s best and worth moments worth its mettle would kick off with a Nellie moment as the captial-W worst. But not this list, because a memorable season 1 line from Alison Arngrim's notorious antagonist Nellie Oleson so perfectly set forth the stakes of the series that it deserves its spot as the first best.

In the series' second episode, "Country Girls," Laura and Mary are sent from their humble shack near Plum Creek to their first day at school in the nearby town of Walnut Grove, Minn. There the whole family encounters their corresponding foils from the well-off Oleson family, but Laura and Mary's encounter with young Nellie proves the most explosive.

Upon first meeting the scrappy young Ingalls, the prim and proper Nellie looks them up and down once and derisively mutters, "Country girls." With these words, Nellie sews a field's worth of dramatic tension that the series reaps for seasons to come. Nellie may be a city girl, but she's headed for a country-style humbling, and the Ingalls girls' country roots are the only things strong enough to anchor the show for close to a decade.

Worst: Sylvia

Thousands of words have been dedicated to understanding the horrific, inexplicably cruel, and unfailingly shocking season 7 two-parter, "Sylvia." EW contributed its own share in a 2023 oral history featuring actress Olivia Barash, who shouldered the brunt of this grim tale of violence, exile, and the absence of redemption at only 16 years old.

"Sylvia" makes for compelling television, if you have the stomach to survive it. But many did not, as the 1981 episodes tell the grim tale of a young girl named Sylvia (Barash), who is raped by a stranger wearing a horrifying clown mask. Sylvia is then cast out of Walnut Grove's polite society when she gives birth to her attacker's child, even after he's revealed to be the friendly blacksmith, Irv (Richard Jaeckel). And the trauma doesn't end there. In part 2, Irv goes after Sylvia again, sending her fleeing up a ladder, from which she plummets to her death.

The enduring power of "Sylvia" to upset is beyond the pale, but at least Barash told EW that it was a great vehicle for the actress to "show my chops," even leading to her receiving a "letter from the Academy, and it said I was being considered" for an Emmy.

Olivia Barash and Richard Jaeckel in the 'Little House on the Prairie' episode 'Sylvia'. NBC

Best: Walnut Grove’s White Christmas

*Little House on the Prairie *had more than its fair share of heartwarming Christmas episodes — but season 3's "Blizzard" is not one of them.

"Christmas at Plum Creek," which aired on Christmas Day 1974, during the series' first season, set the template for the bulk of holiday episodes to come, with its pastoral scenes of snow-crested slopes, humble bounty of wrapped gifts, and literal chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

By season 3, however, *Little House *had confidently tread into the darker, less savory aspects of frontier life, so the series creatives decided to show that sometimes, not even Christmas was sacred. That's exactly what makes "Blizzard" so special.

Inspired by the "Schoolhouse Blizzard" of Jan. 12, 1888, also known as the "Children's Blizzard," the 1976 episode sees schoolteacher Miss Beadle (Charlotte Stewart) send children home early on Christmas Eve during a light snowstorm that soon turns into a full-on maelstrom. The normally prickly and unsympathetic Harriet Oleson (Katherine MacGregor) switches gears into hero mode, rounding up the town's men to scour the countryside for the children who've become trapped. "Blizzard" is one of the best examples of a classic *Little House on the Prairie *theme: the power of community.

Worst: The Godsister

This odd, super-sized season 5 episode clocks in at 90 minutes, and you feel every single one. Despite the *Little House on the Prairie *creative team's repeated attempts to make baby Carrie Ingalls happen, "The Godsister" proves that some residents of Walnut Grove are better left to tinker in the background.

Twins Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush played Carrie throughout the series' run, and rarely were they offered the opportunity to take up as much space as "The Godsister" allowed them. In the episode, Carrie is nearly crushed after Matthew Labyorteaux's Albert Quinn nearly drops a pile of lumber clean on her head. The near-death experience forces her to confront her sense of isolation out in the prairie, where life is defined by subsistence.

So she does what little kids often do in such situations, she conjures up an imaginary friend — her angelic "godsister" Alyssa. And what ensues is an hour and a half of aimless, frictionless, inert, and cloying sentimentality without purpose. Rumors have persisted for years that "The Godsister" was Landon's unsubtle attempt to answer fan demand for more Carrie content with definitive proof that he alone knew what was best for the show, and that was an absence of Carrie. Others have offered the more charitable theory that Landon hoped to groom one of the twins into a Laura replacement, as Gilbert neared the end of her time on the show, but "The Godsister" proved such a clunker that plans were scrapped.

A still from the 'Little House on the Prairie' episode 'Blizzard'.

NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

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Best: Mary’s blindness

Mary Ingalls had one of the roughest arcs across her eight seasons on *Little House*. From barely surviving a gruesome wagon wreck, to the tragic miscarriage episode "The Sound of Children," the eldest Ingalls daughter seemed always to be going through it.

But nothing competes with the painful deterioration of her sight after contracting scarlet fever. Mary's descent into total blindness came to a head in season 4's poignant two-part "I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away," one of the very best episodes of the series.

"I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away" sees Mary awake with a bone-chilling scream to discover she has, at last, completely lost her sight. The Ingalls send her to a school for the blind in Iowa, and though Mary struggles with the separation, she meets young Adam Kendall (Linwood Boomer, the future creator of *Malcolm in the Middle*), who helps her adjust to her new reality.

Anderson gives one of the series' best performances in the episode. The actress was nominated for an Emmy for the turn in 1978, but lost to Sada Thompson for *Family*.

Melissa Sue Anderson in the 'Little House on the Prairie' episode 'I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away'.

Bruce Birmelin/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

Worst: The Wild Boy

Another two-parter, season 9's "The Wild Boy" presents a conundrum that will be familiar to most modern *Little House *viewers: good message, poor execution.

The 1982 episode suffered from what all season 9 episodes lacked — the gravitas and anchoring charisma of Michael Landon and Karen Grassle, who both left after season 8. Season 9 refocused the series around Laura and Dean Butler's Almanzo Wilder, and "The Wild Boy" followed their kids to a traveling sideshow that rolls through Walnut Grove. Exploring its strange nooks and crannies, the kids come across an unfortunately costumed "freak" named Matthew Rogers. The poor wretch is all dirt smears and unkempt hair — the result of neglect — and ragefully delivers on the promise of his name — the result of forced morphine injections.

Jonathan Hall Kovacs portrays the "wild boy" with sympathetic aplomb, but there's only so much empathy you can inject into a story that teeters with such abandon on the line between moralizing and ridicule.

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Best: The Ingalls tackle racism

*Little House*'s tendency to moralize wasn't a weakness or unwelcome foible during its original run, and incredibly, it holds up today as one of the show's enduring strengths. That's because the series' head creatives, including Landon, writer Blanche Hanalis, director William F. Claxton, and original developer Ed Friendly weren't afraid to delve into the tough topics that make up the stuff of everyday immiseration.

Case in point, season 8's "Dark Sage," which stands as the series' most powerful condemnation of racism. In the 1981 episode, the fan-favorite town doctor Hiram "Doc" Baker hires a new, university-trained assistant named Caleb Ledoux sight unseen. But when Ledoux arrives, Doc and the residents of Walnut Grove alike are shocked to learn the doctor is Black.

Don Marshall, known for his core role on the ABC sci-fi series *Land of the Giants*, plays the hard-working young professional, who is subjected to an unseemly outpouring of prejudice that the Ingalls family is alone in rebuking. Ledoux is on the verge of leaving Walnut Grove for good when he's called on to save a struggling mother through a disastrous birth. His ability to perform a cesarean section — something Doc couldn't dream of — forces the town to reckon with an ugly part of their collective conscience.

Michael Landon in the 'Little House on the Prairie' episode 'May We Make Them Proud'.

Worst: The double death

Life on the frontier during the great westward expansion was full of death, and as a result, so was *Little House on the Prairie*. By the time season 6 rolled around, plenty of characters — major and minor — had met their untimely ends. But the two-parter (this show *loved *to drag things out) "May We Make Them Proud" packed a nauseating gut punch when it killed off not one, but *two *characters — one of them an infant.

Hersha Parady joined the cast as the warm yet resilient Alice Garvey in season 4, quickly becoming a core member of the Walnut Grove community. She proves herself a hero in "May We Make Them Proud" by rushing into action when a school for the blind catches fire. Alice successfully saves many children, but becomes trapped in the blaze holding Adam and Mary's infant son.

The worst part of "May We Make Them Proud" is the unforgettable sight of Parady banging against an upstairs window, surrounded by flames, drowned out by the screams of her friends and family outside. Prairie living was tough, but did it have to be so cruel?

Still from the final episode of 'Little House on the Prairie'.

NBCU Photo Bank via Getty

Best: The explosive finale

It will take an act of God to move the 1984 *Little House on the Prairie *finale out of the history books as one of the best series enders of all time. After so much joy, loss, hope, and heartbreak in Walnut Grove, what else was there to do but burn it all down?

Landon wrote the movie-length "The Last Farewell," and it is the apotheosis of his creative vision for the show. At once pugnaciously combative and unreservedly sentimental, Landon chose to take the series out with a commentary on class revolt. A wealthy tycoon named Nathan Lassiter (James Karen) moves in on Walnut Grove, acquiring the title to the full circumference of land and everything therein contained. But rather than cede ground to an outsider, the town's residents plant TNT in every single structure, blowing them up before Lassiter can get his hands on them.

Gilbert told EW in 2025 that "The Last Farewell" was in a way a work of autobiography for Landon, who was "so angry that NBC never called him to tell him the show was officially canceled" that he "wanted to demolish everything." She continued, "I do remember reading the script and going, 'Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho, *okay*. Wow!' For me personally, that whole experience from reading the script until the last day was the longest funeral I'd ever attended."

Worst: Albert’s cringeworthy nightmare

*Little House on the Prairie *had a, shall we say, complicated relationship with the representation of Indigenous Americans. Season 3's "Injun Kid" is a powerful look at relations between white settlers like the Ingalls and Indigenous families being forced off their land by the U.S. government. But not all looks at the original residents of Walnut Grove hold up so well today.

Season 6's "Halloween Dream" is often cited as the single lowest point *Little House *ever reached. It centers on a dream Albert has in which he and Laura are kidnapped by a local tribe after being mistaken for members of a rival tribe. The episode is replete with racist tropes and stereotypes, made all the worse by the fact that it's all presented as an unserious Halloween treat.

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