La famille des collines

Ten years ago, I was working in private home healthcare for an elderly woman in her nineties. Every day at three o'clock, she would sit down and watch an episode of this show, which also happened to be what time my breaktime rolled around. I was enthralled with television shows like Breaking Bad and Lost at the time and my initial thought of this wholesome countryside yarn about a large family doing their best to get by was... Well, I just assumed it wouldn't be my cup of tea. But every time I'd sit down with my snack on her afghan-encased sofa, I found myself getting drawn more and more into the show, until one day she insisted I use the entire hour as a break so we could enjoy the episodes together. Her daughter, my boss, wasn't exactly keen on the idea of me being paid to literally watch television for an hour instead of taking a customary twenty-minute break, but her insistence persevered. She was old and lonely and told her daughter that having a guest to watch television with was worth the eight bucks. I worked there for about two and a half years, watching an episode of The Waltons with her everyday up until the day before her passing.

I still tune in once in a blue moon if I happen to catch a rerun, but it's never quite the same. This show opened my mind and broadened my viewing horizons and I couldn't be more thankful. Wild, out of sight action-dramas can be great, and so can terrifying horror flicks, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying something tethered to strong family values. You can learn a lot from this show. Yes, you. Everyone. Give it a chance.

Television has been going to the dogs over the past few years. I recently picked up the DVD set of the first season of The Waltons and have been engrossed with every episode. Each episode is like a miniature movie, with good acting and stories. And what people used to make fun of (the syrupy quality of the show) now is a welcome relief. I'd watch this over 99.9% of the junk on TV these days. One could have a field day writing about this show and comparing/contrasting it to The Sopranos. The Sopranos, a show that I enjoy equally for other reasons (I'm not counting HBO's shows as regular TV shows), is the polar opposite. That family is rich, profane, powerful, violent, confrontational, unhappy--while the Waltons are struggling (not exactly poor, despite the fact that it takes place during the Depression), wholesome, spiritual, loving, and HAPPY. The only thing I can quibble about The Waltons is the outdoor scenery. The tall mountains and pine trees are clearly in California, not Piedmont Virginia. The real Waltons mountain and home is not too far from where I live. There are signs off U.S. Route 29 directing tourists to the home, which I believe is now a museum. It may be worth a visit. All in all an excellent program. Definitely a collector's item.

This was one of the most popular series on CBS in the mid-1970's and it is one of the most ironic. This show came one year after CBS's infamous purge of all of its rural comedies. In 1971 hugely popular shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Mayberry RFD, Green Acres, He Haw and The Ed Sullivan show were all canceled because of the perception that they didn't appeal to urban dwellers or young people. Ironically all these shows were still in the top-10 at the time they were canceled. The next year The Waltons debuted and quickly became one of the most popular shows in the network's history, it even was responsible, in part, for the cancellation of the hugely popular Flip Wilson Show on NBC. I wonder how Fred Silverman, the man responsible for the purge, felt after this show became a hit.

Both my parents are dead and gone, but where raised in the Southwest mountains of Virginia during the depression, as Baptists, they along with myself and other members of our family watched this show every week. Several of us still watch it every morning, it comes on here at 7 am, it's a great start to my day. Every episode may not be exactly as some remember, that lived during that era, but it's a lot more true to life than most of what is on TV today. It would be nice if there were shows that even came close to this one, made now. Children and grown-ups alike could benefit from acting a little more like the Waltons, than a lot of people they try to imitate from TV in this day and time.

The Walton's series and specials really helped so many people to realize that real families do exist and that one can create the love and caring in their own lives that we saw lived on the screen. My family was a good family, but did not have the love and warmth that the Walton's did. But because of the effect the series had on me, I was able to marry and have children, and raise them to have that bond and that love that I did not know was possible until I saw The Walton's. The acting was wonderful and I watch anything that stars Richard Thomas. He can play an evil man just as realistically as the well-loved John Boy,