Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Little House on the Prairie: Season Eight Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 8, 2017

Consumer (and/or viewer) interest can make a difference. I’m old enough to remember begging my father, who had taken me out to dinner that evening, to get me home in time to watch a spring 1968 episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, Season 2, since it had been revealed that an “important announcement” would be broadcast at the episode’s close, and (being the geek I was and having followed the news about one of my favorite shows so closely) which I suspected was a renewal announcement for a third season. That turned out to be the case, though as long time Star Trek fans know, it was only a temporary reprieve, and the Starship Enterprise’s supposed five year journey into worlds unknown came to a premature close at the end of the 1968-69 television season. NBC’s response to a somewhat limited but still very vocal campaign to save the series, one which evidently buried the corporate headquarters in Rockefeller Center under a mountain of fan mail, turned the tide and allowed Gene Roddenberry’s iconic series to live for at least a little while longer. Something at least a little similar has happened with another vaunted NBC property, the beloved Michael Landon adaptation of the equally beloved books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie. Lionsgate started releasing the series in 2014, and brought out new volumes of subsequent seasons every few months thereafter, until suddenly with the advent of the sixth season, no further announcements of upcoming Blu-ray product were made (initial press releases mentioned only DVDs). Once again, a rather rabid (in a good way) fan base kicked into gear, and while the technology had changed (emails instead of snail mail), the result was the laudable decision to release the subsequent seasons as Amazon Exclusives. Interestingly (at least for those of us who work in the reviewing game), Lionsgate didn’t seem to be overly concerned about publicizing these final seasons, and in fact never sent screeners for official review purposes. While fans of this series will no doubt be thrilled that they can complete their collections, sticklers may have at least a quibble or two with some decisions that were made with regard to the final three years of the series.

Our reviews of the previous seasons of the series can be accessed by clicking on the following links:

Little House on the Prairie: Season One Blu-ray review

Little House on the Prairie: Season Two Blu-ray review

Little House on the Prairie: Season Three Blu-ray review

Little House on the Prairie: Season Four Blu-ray review

Little House on the Prairie: Season Five Blu-ray review

Little House on the Prairie: Season Six Blu-ray review

Little House on the Prairie: Season Seven Blu-ray review

You can almost sense the creative crew behind Little House on the Prairie struggling to deal with at least lethargy and perhaps even entropy as the series enters its eighth season. Longtime fans will know this turned out to be the swan song season for both Michael Landon and Karen Grassle, and as such probably for “classic” Little House on the Prairie, but as has been detailed in several reviews of the series’ previous seasons, the writing had already been on the wall for quite some time that this particular house was coming to the end of its shelf life. Are there still pleasures to be had in the eighth season? Of course—for the series never strays very far from its tendency toward heartwarming tales of grace and salvation, and that tendency continues in this year as well. But a lot of this season struggles to attain the same level of emotional immediacy that informed the show’s first few years in particular.

Part of this at least slightly frayed feeling is evident in the fact that this season of Little House on the Prairie doesn’t just spend a lot of time on supposedly supporting characters (including some new folks), but the rather odd tendency to regularly drift away from Walnut Grove. Instead of a “little house” or even “little houses”, the series gets into a number of tangential plotlines which, while at least sometimes factually based (if not outright factual in and of themselves), makes the series suddenly seem less of a family-centric entry than something akin to an anthology outing where a few recurring characters waltz in and out of the proceedings.

With adoptees and other “new kids” in the mix, this season of Little House on the Prairie often simply ignores the core Ingalls and Wilder clans to concentrate on characters like Nancy Oleson (Allison Balson), a kind of over obvious use of a “type” to replace another Oleson (Nellie). Even some of the episodes that do feature the Ingalls seem overwrought (and this in a series which is often fairly yanking at the heartstrings), including some admittedly affecting late episodes dealing with a tragedy confronting Charles (Michael Landon). But too much of this season feels rote, as if the writers were simply recycling old material with a few names and plot elements changed in the hopes that no one would notice. There’s such inherent quality in many of these characters, and a commendable emphasis on morality that has always been one of this show’s hallmarks, that many longtime fans won’t care even if they do notice, but as evidenced by the upcoming last season of Little House on the Prairie, one which jettisoned much of what had gone before, it was obviously long past time for a little remodeling if not outright urban renewal.

This season's episodes are:

• 1. The Reincarnation of Nellie - Part I
• 2. The Reincarnation of Nellie - Part II
• 3. Growin' Pains
• 4. Dark Sage
• 5. Wiser Heart
• 6. Gambini, the Great
• 7. The Legend of Black Jake
• 8. Chicago
• 9. For the Love of Nancy
• 10. Wave of the Future
• 11. A Christmas They Never Forgot
• 12. No Beast So Fierce
• 13. Stone Soup
• 14. The Legacy
• 15. Uncle Jed
• 16. Second Chance
• 17. Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow - Part One
• 18. Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow - Part Two
• 19. A Promise to Keep
• 20. A Faraway Cry
• 21. He Was Only Twelve - Part One
• 22. He Was Only Twelve - Part Two

Little House on the Prairie: Season Eight Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Little House on the Prairie: Season Eight is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.36:1. After the less than stellar look of Little House on the Prairie: Season Seven, I was pleasantly surprised by what is at least a partial return to form of the higher quality seen in previous seasons. (I in fact now wonder if there were known issues with season seven's episodes quality, which may have led to some hesitation to go further with Blu-ray releases.) While the palette here is still occasionally skewed toward the brown side, probably a sign of fading, there's little of the outright odd purplish or bluish tendencies of several episodes in the seventh season, and as a result things look markedly more natural, along with generally more pleasing detail levels. There are still occasional relatively minor signs of age related wear and tear, as well as very transitory instability in elements like episode credits and the like, but this season retains a generally vivid palette while offering similarly generally very good resolution of grain, though as mentioned in the season seven review, occasionally compression encounters some minor hurdles that can add a bit of chunkiness.

Little House on the Prairie: Season Eight Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately, this release continues the disappointing "new and not exactly improved" choice to feature only lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks starting with season seven, instead of previous seasons' DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks. The difference may not be earth shaking, but it's noticeable, with less force in several lower end effects like galloping horses or even some of the underscore. Dialogue is still rendered cleanly, though as with season seven, very minor distortion and clipping attends higher registers at louder volumes.

Little House on the Prairie: Season Eight Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Look Back to Yesterday (1080p; 1:35:19) is a 1983 special that aired during the holiday season and contains the expected dose of heartstring tugging content, this time mostly to do with Albert (Matthew Labyorteaux). Have your Kleenex ready.


• The Final Farewell (1080p; 1:35:18) is kind of an odd choice for this volume, since it offers "spoilers" galore in terms of eventual outcomes of several characters. Both the future and past of Walnut Grove collide in this 1984 special, which does feature both Landon and Grassle.

Little House on the Prairie: Season Eight Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The fact that even the cover of this season's Blu-ray features "the next generation" (with an even next generation of their own) is probably enough of a clue that time had marched on and this Little House on the Prairie was not the same "abode" as the one of the show's first few seasons. That in and of itself wouldn't be that much of a problem, but there's simply a feeling that the writers don't quite know how to shape the material any longer, and so this season tends to tip over either into melodrama or some odd, almost slapstick, comedy elements. It's a melancholic season in any case, with a number of regulars bidding adieu, and even Charles' stalwart faith in a divine order being shaken. Longtime fans will no doubt want to include this season in their collections, and for them technical merits are adequate if never overly impressive, and at least this season's release does offer some supplemental material.