argh. I forgot that Clatterford was set to record. grr. I want them to write some code in tivo that has a special symbol for when you have a lower priority season pass that conflicts so that you can pick which one you want. Clatterford usually reruns at 1, so it records that one, but not last night. grrr.

So I'm not entirely sure this should go here, especially considering it's an experimental thread, but this may also be the best suited thread anyway, and, well, that works for the experiment too.

Anybody else here ever watch the Waltons? I remember my family watched it when I was a kid, and I know it ran for like nine years (the show came up in conversation between S and I this morning, don't ask me how). Anyway, so it's this show about a large family that lives on a mountainside in the 1930's. I'm guessing there wasn't a huge area for them to use as farmland, being a mountainside and all, and S said they didn't really have a lot of neighbors or anything.

What the hell was this show about? Rock tumbles down the mountain and hit somebody in the head? Somebody tumbles down the mountain and hits their head on a rock? "John Boy, stop masturbating in there! We can all hear you doing that!" Somebody, please. Help me out a little here, I'm having a very hard time breaking a story out of this premise. What the hell happened on this show?

I LOVED The Waltons. The show was about family dynamics and neighborhood life and growing up. Intimate stories about little things like getting a crush or playing in a recital or discovering your grandmother actually had an interesting past. When it was well done, it was beautifully written and acted. It ran a long time and got tired by the end, but it could be lovely.

I loved the Waltons. It was one of the tv family's I wanted to be a part of (the other was The Addams Family). The show was about the everyday life of them. There were neighbors -- the Baldwin sisters, the Goddseys, then there were the mountain people.

Some of the story lines I remember are -- a young girl is found who can't speak and they teach her sign language (and I think look for her parents), but in the meantime she and Elizabeth play hide and seek and Elizabeth gets trapped in a trunk. The girl uses sign langauge to tell the family where she was.

There was always stuff about the Baldwin sisters and "the recipe". Then there were the war years where they dealt with one of the boys , Jason, I think, struggling with whether or not to be a contentious objector.

S described it as kind of like Seventh Heaven, but I'm enough of a child of the current era that, even though I can see where the stories come from on Seventh Heaven, I was still having a hard time seeing the stories for the Waltons.

I'm sure the stories were good and compelling, as the show ran for a long time and won awards, but the premise alone left me dumbfounded as to what kind of stories you would tell that anyone would care about.

Here's a fansite for The Waltons - [link] If you click on the episode guide it will give you a brief synopsis of each episode.

There was some interesting casting -- John Ritter was a semi regular for awhile playing a reverend, Sissy Spacek played a love interest of John Boy, Jonathan Frakes played the love interest of Erin or Mary Ellen (I can't remember which).

The Waltons was set during The Depression, so you had people trying to make do however they could, as there was no work and no pay. The Waltons themselves had the mountain, and eventually they built a sawmill and cut and sold their own timber. There was quite a great deal about how small communities worked, especially early on in the series, during hard times. How people were the same, and tended to shut out those who were "different," but would take in and help those in need. There were stories about how important it felt for the elder boy, who wanted to be a writer, to win a newspaper contest for best essay--the prize was something like two dollars, which actually made a difference to his family. But the recognition and validation were immensely important, too.

There were scenes of the family gathered around the radio after supper.

It was a chronicle of a time even our grandparents don't remember today, but it also made connections to the motivations and emotional needs that transcend era.

It did get tired, and also fairly trite, over the last years of the series, but the first several were very good.

The stories in the Waltons were the stories that anyone who grew up in the country during the Depression and WWII could tell. Most of the boys ended up in the service, so there were their stories. Their sisters left at home ended up doing things like working in factories, and resenting it when the jobs went to men when they came back. There were social issues, such as black families and refugees coming to the mountain. I suppose in a sense it's like Seventh Heaven, except that for most of its run it was well written and surprisingly unsappy.

I've never seen Seventh Heaven, but I did see the early Waltons. It was beautifully presented with quality acting. It was a show that just about everybody loved. I watched almost no television for many years, but if the Waltons happened to be on the screen I got sucked in too.

eta: Goodnight John boy