The Lost Ones Part 1

I know alot of you wish James and Cassandra Cooper hadn't been introduced at all.....BUT I for one enjoyed them alot. I do wish we had been given more of Carrie and Grace but I am glad James and Cassandra became part of the Ingalls family.
This epy was on today and its one that I can NEVER stop watching. My heart just goes out to those kids. There were so many kids then who lost parents due to sickness or sudden death. I'm sure orphanages were really full during this time period.
There was one part of this epy that I thought was a bit odd. The night before the accident , Charles , Albert and the Cooper family are sitting around a camp fire enjoying each others company. Mrs. Cooper tells her children to get ready for bed. I noticed that James says "Yes, ma'am. Then just crawls under the wagon and lays down. He never changed clothes or even took off his shoes!! That might have been the only part I laughed at.... Give me your thoughts about this epy and what you might have wanted done different.

I like this episode. It's good. The parts in which Albert depicts how bad average orphanages were are to give you gossembumps, and when Cassandra has nightmares about the accident in which her parent's died, it's a classic tear-jerker.

My only objection about the Cooper's children introduction in LHOTP is that Grace and Carrie seems to be forgotten for writers and they payed more attention to James and Cassandra. I should have developped Grace and Carrie characters, since they were REAL Ingallses and they existed in REAL life. If they had done that, I could even enjoy Cooper's children.

Vanesa.

I agree Vanessa....Albert really had some insight about Orphanges. I love the part where Mrs. Oleson says" Who would want someone elses children?" and Caroline replys..."I would." That is exactly how I would feel. It doesnt matter who they belonged to...they needed a home and alot of love right then. :sillySmiley:

I always woundered why the mother did't jump.I guess she was too scared(i can understand that) but poor kids losing there parents!

Not a favorite episode of mine, because in some ways it's a repeat of "Remember Me", when Charles was searching for homes for the Sanderson children. And like Vanessa said, Carrie and Grace were forgotten as soon as the Cooper children were introduced. If they could have given fair time to Carrie and Grace, then having the Cooper children wouldn't have bothered me.

I think it would have been neat to have seen Carrie scuffle with Nancy instead of Cassandra. It would have given a whole new dimension to her character. In the episode, "A Christmas They Never Forgot" there seems to be some subtle hint that Cassandra and Carrie are close as they sit on the ladder listening to the stories and songs, but it would have been nice if they had an episode that focused only on their relationship, like Albert and James had in "Growin' Pains".

Once again we have a family who must have lived out on the secret prairie, because Charles knew them, but we've never met them before. It also seemed odd that the wife was strong enough to overpower the husband and hang on when they went out of control.

So, here are my not so humble thoughts. My husband tells me I like to hear myself talk. He must be right.

Quote :

I think it would have been neat to have seen Carrie scuffle with Nancy instead of Cassandra.

I agree completely. Also, in "The Reincarnation of Nellie", when Cassandra goes to read to Mrs. Oleson to cheer her up, I thought it should have been Carrie that went to visit with Mrs. Oleson. It's disappointing that Carrie's character wasn't developed. About all we know about her -- she likes to milk the cows, sugar on her berries, to chase butterflies, and make up imaginary friends -- comes from the early seasons. After that, Carrie just seems to be around taking up space but not really doing anything.

jes9 wrote:

After that, Carrie just seems to be around taking up space but not really doing anything.

Exactly!! I really didn't like that. I mean.........they didn't need to give Carrie large dramatic storylines that were beyond the capabilities of the Greenbush twins' acting abilities.........But they could have done better by Carrie.

And I totally agree that Carrie should have been the one to go read to Mrs. Oleson. Mrs. Oleson always had a soft spot for Carrie.......especially when Carrie was a little bitty girl. They could just as easily have stuck a mannequin in Carrie's place for most of the rest of the series.

Savannah wrote:

They could just as easily have stuck a mannequin in Carrie's place for most of the rest of the series.

I almost died laughing when I read this. Would the mannequin whine just like Carrie too?

I agree with you guy's!!.........Carrie should of got more of a storyline!..I would of liked to know more about her

I watched this episode for the first time the other day, and it made me cry! at first I thought, this is really what Little House is supposed to be about, when Albert, Charles, and the Cooper family were traveling across the prairie in the covered wagons. then, I felt so, so sad for James and Cassandra after the death of their parents. it was so awful to watch that scene....but I was happy at the end when Charles and Albert stopped the train and decided not to send James and Cassandra to the orphanage!

I watched this one today for the first time in quite a while. One thing I was wondering about that I don't remember them explaining was why James and Cassandra were sent to the orphanage in Minneapolis instead of going back to the one in Sleepy Eye. Was it because there was no room at the Sleepy Eye orphanage? Of course, if they had gone back to the Sleepy Eye orphanage, that might have been the end of the story, because it was Albert's talking about the conditions at the big orphanages that prompted Charles to stop the train.

Not one of my favorites,but an okay episode

This was okay episode. I agreed with other people. Carrie & Grace should have gotten more story lines. It was like, Carrie & Grace is/was The Lost Ones. Not James & Cassandra.

They started to leave out carrie and grace. Mary and nellie leaves. I didn't like that. nellie was starting to like her. lol

They were cuite kids.Good actors/

Buttercup wrote:

This was okay episode. I agreed with other people. Carrie & Grace should have gotten more story lines. It was like, Carrie & Grace is/was The Lost Ones. Not James & Cassandra.

I agree.......very strange.....Carrie was a big part of the family especially after Mary went blind

I will always wonder if Albert didn't exaggerate the orphanage thing to
Charles knowing full well that he would stop that train. Wouldn't put it
past him! When it came to being clever, nobody topped Albert boy!

I think they could have done without James and Cassandra. Carrie and Grace should have been developed more. When Caroline told Charles it was obvious that James and Cassandra didn't want to go to their new home, Charles said what do you expect they are used to us, Caroline said it's more than being used to us, they've come to love this family and Charles said what do you expect me to do, we can barely take care of our own family without taking on someone else's children, then they ended up taking them after they ran away and even complained about needing more money with two more kids to feed and clothe in part one of Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow.

Good points

I always felt he brought in those 2 characters because he knew he couldn't develop Carrie and Grace anymore. Grace was young and Carrie seemed limited in what she could do, at least they wrote her scripts that way. I felt though that combining scripts to include them all might have been nice.

I have heard a lot of fans say, How could he not take in the Sanderson's and then took them...well 3 would have been way too many and it didn't fit with the storyline at the time. If he changed the Little House too much, it wouldn't be the Little House.

Grace (Wendy and Brenda) were 5 years old when the show went off the air.
And Carrie (Lindsay and Sidney) were not the greatest actors in the world.
They were in some very cute scenes and all of them were very sweet.
But I thinks its obvious why they didn't build a lot of stories around them.
Al in all, I think they did a pretty good job of doing what they were asked to do.

I'll be interested to see what "Cassandra" says in her new book this Fall. She might just gloss over LHOP because she was on it for such a short time and young, but she knows there will be LHOP fans buying it that wouldn't if she wasn't on the show. She also used her picture from then for the cover, a good move by her publisher.

The twins that played Grace looked like they would be little spitfires and although almost 5 as you say, didn't get very many lines. They did seem like props, sometimes just a sentence or two makes a difference.
Carrie spoke better when younger which makes me think they wanted her to talk "young" because it made her seem younger which is what they wanted. If she acted her age, it would have seemed neglectful with the lack of attention given to her. I know the twins felt they were made to look younger, one example having Carrie wet her pants at an age when that wouldn't have happened.

I always smiled when Laura complained about her lack of lines in Little Women...they almost weren't in the play. I thought of the Greenbush twins thinking, "Welcome to my world". : )

Good point, Littlehouselover. Those lines in "Little Women" fits perfectly Greenbush case in the show...

As for people who comented that it should have been Cassandra who went to cheer up Mrs. Oleson, I thnk Charles did the right thing sending her inestead of Carrie. I've always been one of those who wanted Carrie's character more developed, but in this very case, Charles send Cassandra to read to Mrs. Oleson, because she was an adopted girl and he wanted to show Harriet that she was loved the same way than Ingalls children who were not adopted. In a nutshell, Charles send Cassabdra to convince Harriet of adopting a new girl.

Vanesa.

Good point, Vanesa. Although, if Charles had known that the Olesons' adoption of Nancy would be the end result of Cassandra's visit, maybe he wouldn't have sent her!