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Show:		5.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		6.0
Extras:		2.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Bernard McEveety • Bob Sweeney • Gabrielle Beaumont • Harry Harris • Harvey S. Laidman • Herbert Herschman • James Sheldon • Lawrence Dobkin • Nell Cox • Philip Leacock • Walt Gilmore
Writer(s):	Rod Petersen, Robert Pirosh, Michael McGreevey, Marion Hargrove, Claire Whitaker,Scott Hammer, Juliet Law Packer, Kathleen Hite, Mary Worrell, Ernie Wallengren, Carol Zeitz, Marjorie Fowler
Starring:	David W. Harper • Earl Hamner Jr. • Eric Scott • Jon Walmsley • Judy Norton-Taylor • Kami Cotler • Leslie Winston • Mary Beth McDonough • Robert Wightman
Genre:	Children & Family • Television
Website:	http://www.thewaltons.com
Release Date:	April 28, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $39.98
Amazon:

If you’re like I was a week ago, you’re not at all familiar with the television show The Waltons. To give you some perspective on the show, George H.W. Bush once famously said, "we are going to keep on trying to strengthen the American family, to make American families a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons," which should give you a pretty good idea of the show’s target audience. In the 1970s and early 1980s it ran for nine seasons, of which this is the last.

The show follows the trials and tribulations of a rural family living outside Charlottesville, Virginia during the Great Depression and World War II. They are led by patriarch John Walton, Sr, (Ralph Waite), who raises the children with a sage and steady hand (there was a mother, Olivia Walton, played by Michael Learned, but she doesn't appear in this season). Those children number seven, being John Boy (Robert Wightman), Jason (Jon Walmsley), Mary Ellen (Judy Norton Taylor), Erin (Mary Elizabeth McDonough), Ben (Eric Scott), Jim-Bob (David W. Harper) and Elizabeth (Kami Cotler).

One thing that became abundantly clear throughout the viewing of this set is just how differently television was programmed during the years that this aired. It would be nearly impossible to detail just what the major story arcs of this season are, primarily because there really aren’t any. Save for the fact that events are bound together by their relative chronological proximity to one another, this show makes no real attempt to build lasting conflicts or create ongoing relationships in the way that Mad Men or The Wire might. Then again, that could just be part of the show’s narrative style. Even though this season is largely spent dealing with the psychological aftermath of World War II, in addition to rural racism and domestic abuse, there doesn’t seem to be a problem going on here that can’t be solved with a simple apology and some good old home-spun advice. In fact, that probably largely contributed to the show’s popularity, and may have helped initiate one of the central myths of the Reagan era: that everybody was happier before the various social revolutions of the 1960s, and that the world would run more efficiently if we would only give up the advancements made then. Did I mention that all of these characters have perfect hair, teeth, and skin despite the fact that they supposedly spend all of their time working on a farm? Considering how they’re all supposed to be getting up at five in the morning for chores (if my memory of Little House on the Prairie serves me well), I don’t see how this could be possible.

That said, this show serves as a nice counterpart to the relentless, meaningless grimness of certain modern television shows (*cough* all of those CSIs *cough*), even if you have to turn off your desire for anything resembling realism to get to the nuggets of rustic charm that made this show as popular as it was. Each episode is bookended with a monologue by a much older John Boy (voiced by Earl Hamner Jr.), in which he intones some bit of ‘common folk’ wisdom in a way not too far removed from Sam Elliott’s opening of The Big Lebowski. At the end of every episode, we are shown an exterior shot of their cabin at night, while various characters wish each other a good night (a bit gloriously parodied by the Animaniacs). In a way, it’s all just sickeningly wholesome, but it never really intended to be anything else, so you kind of have to admire its devotion to its cause and how it kept its audience for as long as it did. The Waltons may seem irrelevant now, but it speaks more to a classic mythos of Americana than it ever did to a particular era or people, so it is perhaps more timeless now than ever. Or perhaps it was never relevant at all.