The "You Don't Say!" Department

I see that there's a new TV-movie version of Little House on the Prairie debuting on ABC tonight, and yes, we do plan to watch, since The Wife and I both grew up on the books (on which the new version is said to be more faithful), and we both enjoyed the long-running NBC TV-series (with which the new version is said to have little similarity). I was doing a bit of Googling for reviews of the new version, and I found this article, bearing what must be the dopiest headline of all time:

New 'Little House' returns to the prairie without Landon

Well, I'm certainly glad they managed to make that clear. I was wondering if Michael Landon would be in the newly-filmed Little House, despite the fact that the guy's been dead for sixteen years or so. Yeesh. So yeah, I know that Landon's not going to be there. And I'm fine with it. I just hope they found a bit part for Victor French.

BTW, while I enjoyed the original TV series, I'm looking forward to a version more faithful to the books, where there's no adopted brother named Albert; where Mr. Edwards doesn't come along and marry the town widow and adopt three kids; where Mary doesn't marry a blind guy who gets his sight back and then loses her baby to a gruesome fire (that scene, with Alice Garvey shrieking from the second-floor window of the School for the Blind as she cradles the baby in her arms and the flames engulf her, is one of the more gruesome things I've ever seen in a family-oriented network TV show); where Charles and Caroline don't lose an infant son and Half-Pint, thinking that she caused the little baby's death, runs away and goes on top of the area's highest mountain so she can be closer to God and find a mysterious and kindly guy up there who looks a lot like Ernest Borgnine who gives her the spiritual lesson of a lifetime; where the townsfolk of Walnut Grove band together in the face of corporate America (such as it existed back in 1876 or whenever) and dynamite every building in their town rather then see it swiped by the local railroad or coal mine or whatever.

(Yes, I know that Victor French is dead, too.)

(And hey, was anybody else excited to recognize the guy who played the Tom Hanks character as an old man in The Green Mile as Dabs Greer, who played Reverend Alden on the original NBC incarnation of Little House? That was a nice bit of casting.)