History YMMV / LittleHouseOnThePrairie

** To be fair with Almanzo, the Little House books and even the historical sources described him as a dashing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almanzo_Wilder#/media/File:Almanzo_Wilder_sepia_cropped_squared2.jpg]] , low-key, hard working gentleman farmer from a well-off family and during his time in De Smet, owned two homesteads and the best team of horses. For a frontier town of less than 100 people at that time, this would have ranked him amongst (if we also count his brother, Royal), if not the most, eligible bachelor any parent would want to set up their daughters with. Plus, he's also a friend of Pa so Pa must have known that Almanzo is a financially independent good guy. On top of that he is also the one-half of the BigDamnHeroes who saved their town from starvation during the Long Winter and he didn't even bragged nor charged a cent for it!

** The blackface minstrel show -- complete with jaunty assurance that "These darkies can't be beat!" -- in ''Little Town on the Prairie'', in which Pa takes part. Not precisely intentional; while the real Laura's experience with actual people of colour was severely limited, it seems to have been amicable. Back in that era, one didn't need to be overtly racist to find that kind of thing hilarious. The UnfortunateImplications didn't show up until several decades after the books were written.

** Season 9. While interest in the show had been decaying, the Ingalls' departure was the final blow to the ratings, causing the plams to a 10th season to be overruled, andbthe show cancelled, relying on three TV movies to finish its story.

** Some of the kids' interactions with adults would raise red flags. The Ingalls girls are often left alone with male strangers, some of them have no qualms about complimenting on their appearance or getting too close for comfort, in ways that, while meant to be inocuous and innocent, can sometimes scream "stranger danger".

** Season 9. While interest in the show had been decaying, the Ingalls' departure wasthe final blow to the ratings, causing the plams to a 10th season to be overruled, andbthe show cancelled, relying on three TV movies to finish its story.

* FanonDiscontinuity: Some fans ignore the three TV movies which conclude the story, due to some events considered contradictory (Albert having a terminal disease even though the end of one episode informed he'd return to Walnut Grove as a doctor, the town being destroyed a few years after the final season despite other episodes implying otherwise and the fact that the real Walnut Grove still exsits to this day).

* SeasonalRot: Season 7, just by itself. It was full of some really crummy episodes, including the opener itself, which was dragged down by the minimal fanfare given to Almanzo and Laura's wedding and the BittersweetEnding where Eliza Jane learned she misread the signals of an engaged man and abandoned her homestead and teaching job just to keep the soon-to-be newlyweds together, an hour-long story where Laura was TheChewToy of an ApronMatron and Eliza Jane carried the IdiotBall ''very'' hard about Laura's warnings her new beau was a two-timer (Eliza's luck with men is not so good!), the season finale which pulled a double dose of CousinOliver (although the two-parter itself was quite engaging).

* TheScrappy: ''Albert''. He's not despised ''all'' the time, but he is credited with being used as the show's first use of artificial extension to force out new stories by due to his role as their first CousinOliver (Season 5 was sort of a PostScriptSeason when Michael Landon was unsure if his show would go past Season 4) in the wake of Mary becoming all grown up and on the way to being married due to the events of Season 4's finale.

*** In short, Laura Ingalls may be an innocent, wholesome protagonist--or she may be a brat with a hot temper and an ElectraComplex who, in particular, can't stand to have any important man in her life, not just her father, show kindness toward another female.

* ValuesDissonance: Laura's youth at the beginning of her and Almanzo's courtship wasn't at all unusual in the 1880s. (She was 15 and he 25, which would garner a visit from Chris Hansen in today's world, but back then many, many women were married before the age of 20; if you were still single at 25 odds are people called you a spinster. The blunt truth is that Laura ''was'', in fact, of marrying age in those days, regardless of modern views on the matter -- not that this helps some people.) FridgeLogic can hit that with a potential case of SurpriseCreepy, though, when you consider he first met her when she was thirteen, and wonder just how much of a conscious JailBaitWait went on there. ''Laura'' [[FailedASpotCheck failed her spot check]] when he first started courting her, but Ma definitely wasn't happy about it, precisely because Laura was only fifteen. Fortunately for Almanzo, Pa didn't seem to have any problem with it, but read from an adult 21st century perspective (especially a parental perspective), it can seem unintentionally creepy.

* BewareTheQuietOnes: Caroline largely seems to go along with Charles' schemes, even when it takes her further and further from her idea of civilized life--but whenever Ma finally puts her foot down, it's notable that Pa immediately drops whatever he's doing and listens to her. A notable example is when Ma tells him point-blank that he will ''not'' go chasing after wheat that might not exist during ''The Long Winter,'' but a more subtle example is when Pa agrees to finally settle the family down based on Ma's wish for the girls to have an education
* CoolBigSis: Laura, to Carrie and Grace. Alice to Almanzo.
** Eliza Jane had her Cool Big Sis moment after Almanzo threw the blacking brush at her, missed and hit a wall in the parlour room. He was terrified that he'll be whipped for what he's done but she saved him by patching the stain over with a leftover wallpaper and their parents never found out about the stain.
** Gender-flipped in Royal's case. He's supportive of Almanzo and volunteered to accompany him find the rumoured wheat supply in "The Long Winter" ([[spoiler:they eventually agreed that Almanzo take Cap Garland instead in case the one who goes gets caught in the blizzard and one must survive for their parents' sake]]) and years later, took care of Almanzo and Laura when they became ill with diphtheria in "The First Four Years".
* CoolUncle: Aunt Lottie, Aunt Docia, and Uncle George are this in Laura's POV, and later Uncle Tom, who shows up in De Smet with a dramatic story about traveling through the Badlands looking for gold. Eliza Jane and Mary became this to Rose.

* {{Irony}}: The entire premise of the series is that Pa is constantly convinced that if they can just find the right homestead, he'll be able to make a prosperous, independent living as a farmer, and then there'll be silk dresses, glass windows, and all the candy they can eat. In fact, as the series progresses, the family ends up living in worse and worse conditions while sinking ever deeper into debt. They only achieve any level of success and stability after Pa finally gives up, settles in town, and gains steady employment as a hired carpenter. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that Laura became the only truly wealthy member of the Ingalls family...by publishing novels about her childhood poverty.

** Right before the end of Season 9, the last season, Laura is gifted a ''gorgeous'' estate by a dying widow who wants hers and her husband's dream home to be kept alive. Come ''The Last Farewell'', not three stories later, and the GrandFinale of the series, She and Alamanzo decide to ''blow it up''- because they realize it's going to fall into the seedy hands of a land baron no matter what they do and the best thing for it is [[MercyKill to let the dream die mercifully.]] Guess you're going to be haunted by their angry ghosts!!

* HilariousInHindsight: Creator/JasonBateman debuts here as the adoptive son of Charles, whose actor's StarMakingRole was ''Film/IWasATeenageWerewolf''. Bateman's breakout role in film [[Film/TeenWolfToo would also be as a teenage lycantrope]].
* HoYay: Dr. Baker and Lars Hanson are awfully close to each other, with a LikeAnOldMarriedCouple dynamic. When Doc Baker is enamorated with a much younger woman, Mr. Hanson is the most critical to their relationship, and Baker understands that his engagement is spoiling ''their'' quality time. Also, when the town goes bankrupt and everyone leaves, Dr. Baker is the only citizen to stay by and tend for Hansin when the latter falls gravely ill.

*** Almanzo also courted Laura for three years before he asked her to marry him, which would have been considered a snail's pace in those days. To put things in perspective, Laura's friend Ida gets engaged to her beau Elmer after only courting for a few months. It's implied that it was because of Laura's age that Almanzo decided to take things as slow as he did.

* HilariousInHindsight: Creator/JasonBateman debuts here as the adoptive son of Charles, whose actor's StarMakingRole was ''Film/IWasATeenageWerewolf''. Bateman's breakout role in film [[Film/TeenWolfToo would also beas a teenage lycantrope]].
* HoYay: Dr. Baker and Lars Hanson are awfully close to each other, with a LikeAbOldMarriedCouple dynamic. When Doc Baker is enamorated with a much younger woman, Mr. Hanson is the most critical to their relationship, and Baker understands that his engagement is spoiling ''their'' quality time. Also, when the town goes bankrupt and everyone leaves, Dr. Baker is the only citizen to stay by and tend for Hansin when the latter falls gravely ill.

* HilariousInHindsight: Creator/JasonBateman debuts here as the adoptive son of Charles, whose actor's BreakthroughRole was ''Film/IWasATeenageWerewolf''. Bateman's breakout role in film [[Film/TeenWolfToo as another teenage lycantrope]].

* StrawmanHasAPoint: In Season 1's "School Mom," Mrs. Oleson is very harsh and even cruel when she humiliates Abel, effectively undoing all the educational progress Caroline has made with him. But as the parent of a significant percentage of the student body and a member of the school board, she is right to object when a temporary substitute teacher unilaterally decides to put the curriculum serving a dozen students over several grade levels on indefinite hold so that everyone can devote multiple entire school days to remediating a single student who had voluntarily opted out of the opportunities available to him until effectively an adult himself.

*** In short, Laura Ingalls may be an innocent, wholesome protagonist--or she may be a brat with a hot temper and an [[OedipusComplex Electra complex]] who, in particular, can't stand to have any important man in her life, not just her father, show kindness toward another female.

*** In short, Laura Ingalls may be an innocent, wholesome protagonist--or she may be a brat with a hot temper and an ElectraComplex who, in particular, can't stand to have any important man in her life, not just her father, show kindness toward another female.

** Laura's run as as a sixteen- to seventeen-year-old teacher at the Walnut Grove schoolhouse is pretty rough. She seems to struggle with the demands of her role as an authority figure, often failing to maintain order in her classroom or find an appropriate professional balance in relationships that predated her employment. Only Mr. Applewood and Mrs. Oleson have less successful stints in the job, and then only because their clear unsuitability is the theme of those episodes.

* TastesLikeDiabetes: Mrs. Thayer's teaching style... oy vey.