Sylvia

I thought most were great, but the fires and burning people in them, I felt was also overused...his Dad trying to commit suicide was worse (to me) then Zachariah, but both were disturbing. They had plagues, death, disease, abuse...that was part of the life,.but even if women got raped, and they did, I feel it didn't have a place on a show like LHOP and how he ended it was not "real". No one in real life has everyone die to tie up loose ends.
I didn't like Mr. Edwards having to be so dark, but Michael admitted doing that when he was on the outs with Victor...when they made up, he became nice again. : ) The boys father turned around so it had a good ending.

Overall, that was just a bad show...and I think the most talked about when fans and not such good fans talk about it. Some actually say they stopped watching the show after that, "Jumped the shark" or whatever term they used. I think that's silly, but it was like "If that is the direction it's going, I'm gone". Ratings did slowly drop....you can Monday morning quarterback" until doomsday, but it had a good run and lots of good memories.

Davetucson wrote:

How dare he put anything of a sexual connotation on that show. After all, it was a family show......

I haven't seen that show in a long time, but I remember it having a definite nightmarish quality. Like "May We Make Them Proud." And to be fair, the rape of a young girl goes a bit beyond sex. I can see why a lot of people found it disturbing.

Well I know one thing! I just watched one of the sweetest episodes ever written!
"I Remember, I Remember"! It makes up for ALL the bad ones!

Rob wrote:

Davetucson wrote:

How dare he put anything of a sexual connotation on that show. After all, it was a family show......

I haven't seen that show in a long time, but I remember it having a definite nightmarish quality. Like "May We Make Them Proud." And to be fair, the rape of a young girl goes a bit beyond sex. I can see why a lot of people found it disturbing.

Yes I agree. There it also makes a difference by the age an adult doing that on screen would not bother me well it would but not so much in a way as a 15 year old girl doing it also with out being able to say no. when I was younger I couldn't go to sleep after watching this!

Lisa wrote:

Actually...none of those were favorites of mine.

The fact is, no matter what the show is, no matter how good it is, there will always be at LEAST one episode that someone doesn't like. Michael Landon was human just like the rest of us - albeit an incredibly talented one. He still made mistakes, still had clunkers here and there.....It isn't disrespectful to occasionally discuss the aspects that we didn't like. It isn't like that's the main focus of our forum. Overall, we discuss our love of the show and the characters, but the truth is, there WILL be some parts that we didn't care for. And for me, Sylvia is one of them -and so is having Mary stupidly leave her baby behind in A FIRE. (No mother would do that. I've said this before - Mary lost her sight, not her MIND.) Anyway - yep. There are a few episodes that I disliked - but gosh, out of all of the seasons of Little House, I think that "a few" dislikes can be expected.

Thank you yes I totally agree!

julmer70 wrote:

I hate rap music...so I don't blame Sylvia for wanting to escape the Rapper! I would too!

Sorry...I couldn't resist!

Anyway, I totally get what you're saying.

Oh darn did I make that mistake?!?!
But yer I can Just see it.

Sylvia sleeping in the barn along comes a man in a mask and starts taping his feet and starts to Rap!
Pa and Sylvia pa comes in and thinks

Oh shoot he's Raping again!

I will just shot him!

Sorry I'm over tired and will try to watch my spelling from now on!

Davetucson wrote:

No problem with kids dying of the plaque............

No problem with Edwards getting drunk and darn near killing Albert........

No problem with Edwards abusing his kids in a drunken stupor......

No problem with an alcoholic beating his child.................

No problem with a guy getting killed over gold in front of his kids...........

No problem with a hundred of them dying of the plague when Caroline tries to help........

No problem with Albert puking his brains out because of Morphine..............

No problem that Zacariah burns himself to death along with his dead wife..........

No problem with Alice Garvey being burned to death with a baby in her arms..............

How dare he put anything of a sexual connotation on that show. After all, it was a family show.......

Hang on a second I'v only just got started!

No problem about the spelling! LOL I just thought it was funny!

Yes It was funny!

No matter how you feel about this controversial episode, one of the greatest conversations between Albert and Charles took place in Sylvia, just after Albert tells Charles that he's in love.

Just saw this on You Tube and wow, very dark for a LH episode.

I know that then (as now) young women and children got attacked, but what really added to the creepiness was the clown/mime mask - that seemed to be very 1981 with movies like Friday The 13th, and actually reminded me a bit of the Zodiac killer in late 60s California.

Not really surprised by how Sylvia got treated by most of the adults and children with only Albert being kind to her. Sad that she had to die in the end, though.

I remember when I was 11 in 1977 LH was shown at 4:45pm on Thursdays here in the UK - a childrens' TV time slot, really. I think that by around 1979 or 80 I had stopped watching and only remember some of the later seasons from repeats when I was much older. I can't imagine Sylvia being shown here in 1981 before 9pm unless it was heavily cut - probably the case.

In that respect, May We Make Them Proud also comes to mind.

I remember that parental advisory warning at the beginning of Sylvia when it first aired. It stood out because it was so unusual for LHotP. Now, that episode is shown on Hallmark and INSP with a "TV-G" rating. I also remember an episode of Good Times where J.J. thought he might have an STD (they called it "VD" back then), and that episode also had a parental advisory warning. These days, it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. I think the subject matter of TV shows, just like movies, got worse when they started putting ratings like "TV-G", "TV-PG", "TV-14", etc. on them. I think this opened the door for networks to air raunchier material and push the envelope ever further, and it also gave parents an excuse to let the ratings filter the content for them instead of them taking the time to look into each show to see if it was something they wanted their children to watch. Also, the ratings seem inconsistent to me. For example, the "TV-PG" rating seems to cover a lot of content. Shows for which even the promos seem too raunchy for me, like "Two Broke Girls", fit under the "TV-PG" rating, but so do wholesome shows like "Heartland" and "7th Heaven", which have some mild adult content but it's dealt with in a wholesome way.

Someone commented on Amazon that Michael Landon came on at the end of the original airing of Sylvia and urged younger viewers to tell if they were living this kind of life. If true, that would explain what he was thinking when he made this episode. I always wondered why he had Sylvia die at the end, but he may have wanted to convince abused children that it was imperative that they come forward and tell as opposed to keeping the abuse a secret.

I also think if she didn't die, it would have been very messy with Albert and the baby etc, LHOP wasn't a soap opera, so it kept it simple. (well as simple as it could be)

littlehouselover wrote:

I also think if she didn't die, it would have been very messy with Albert and the baby etc, LHOP wasn't a soap opera, so it kept it simple. (well as simple as it could be)

True!!!

I can honestly say that no other movie of tv show ever got to me the way this episode did.  I couldn't help but feel sorry for Sylvia, and just wanted to give her a big hug and tell her everything is going to be alright.  I think what made it so gut wrenching for me was that no matter what, this poor girl just couldn't catch a break.  And the actress playing Sylvia, at least in my opinion, was so cute and sweet.  Maybe had they cast someone who wasn't so appealing and likable it wouldn't have been so gut wrenching. But this story, along with my wife, inspired me to write my first ever fan fiction. Check it out, it is titled "Sylvia Webb"

This episode is kind of creepy to me. I haven't seen it in a long time.

Was anyone out there able to get an unabridged version of this episode on DVD? On mine, there is dialog from Part 1 left out where Albert convinces Sylvia to go fishing with him after school the next day, and that classic close-up of Mrs. Oleson spreading the gossip at the beginning Part 2 is missing as well.

No, that is little Tyler when he was three months old. It is one of my favorite pictures of him. He turned seven years old last month.

david wrote:

No, that is little Tyler when he was three months old. It is one of my favorite pictures of him. He turned seven years old last month.

NO WAY is he SEVEN!!!