Con "Little House on the Prairie Michael Landon culminó otra etapa en su dilatada vida. Una vida que en el tiempo fue corta, más en el Amor es Eterna. Michael nos muestra claramente que dónde hay un final ahí mismo está el nuevo comienzo. Ls miembros básicos del equipo se reagrupan para abrir una nueva expresión. Las personas que forman el equipo se transforman, se renuevan, algunas se van y otras llegan para que las nueva ideas puedan ser expresadas en la forma. El Amor Incondicionado reagrupa formas y sigue su Expresión Enterna:¡sempre somos amor compartido!.
La Familia Ingalls
El sorprendente cierre de "La casa de la Pradera o Little House on the Prairie.
Michael Landon propuso a sus compañeros dinamitar los espacios más significativos del decorado de la serie. sus compañeros entendieron con más o menos amplitud su decisicón, pero lo permitieron.
La Familia Ingalls - "El Último Adiós" 1/12 (The Last Farewell)
Death comes to all things, including successful television
series. When the inevitable occurs, most popular series like to go out with a
bang, figuratively speaking. The bang, however, was literal when the cast and
crew of NBC-TV's ''Little House on the Prairie'' filmed their last episode a
few weeks ago.
''The Last Farewell'' will be seen tonight. It concludes
with perhaps the most apocalyptic valedictory to any television series in
history: the townspeople of the fictional hamlet Walnut Grove decide to blow
their town to smithereens. And so the entire set that the company had inhabited
for the last 10 years was actually dynamited for this finale.
During its first seven years on the air, ''Little House on
the Prairie'' consistently scored in the top 10 in the Nielsen ratings. It was
one of the rare family shows to continue to hold an audience in prime time. So
the show's creators wanted to provide a memorable ending for its fans. A
Ruthless Buyer
There were a couple of reasons for the fireworks, according
to Michael Landon, the star of the show, who also wrote and directed the final
episode. Ten years ago, NBC leased a large parcel of land in the Simi Valley,
north of Los Angeles, from the Getty Oil Company and the Newhall Land and
Development Corporation. Their agreement with the owners was that when they
were through with the location they would restore it to its original state. So
when Mr. Landon and the network jointly decided to cancel the show, they knew
the elaborate sets would have to be destroyed. It was Mr. Landon's idea to
incorporate that contractual obligation into the story and dismantle the sets
on camera.
The plot he concocted has a ruthless robber-baron buying up
the town; the only protest the residents can make is to destroy their own
property rather than see it taken over by this unscrupulous rogue. ''I think it
makes for a good strong pioneer ending,'' Mr. Landon said of this violent
conflagration. ''It was also a nice catharsis for the cast and crew. There were
lots of tears when we finally blew up the town. The actors had all become very
attached to their own buildings, so it was very emotional.''
The idea that a program advocating violent destruction of
property is an affirmation of American values may raise some eyebrows, but Mr.
Landon was given a chance to realize his anarchic vision. Filming the sequence
was logistically complicated. ''We did quite a few tests first to make sure
nobody would get hurt,'' Mr. Landon explained. ''So when we finally blew
everything up, it went off like clockwork. We did it all in one day.'' Pilot
for New Series Written
Today, a visitor to the Simi Valley location would have no
idea that this sleepy cow pasture was just a few weeks ago a thriving center of
the Old West. But this reversion to a pristine state of nature is only
temporary. The combine that owns the land plans to turn it into a large
development of houses and condominiums. ''So people who want to live in Walnut
Grove will be able to do so,'' Mr. Landon said with a chuckle.
Now that his work on this series is over, Mr. Landon has
written a pilot for a new television series which he hopes to sell, and he has
also completed a feature film called ''Sam's Son,'' which is scheduled to open
in the summer, which he describes as ''a semi-autobiographical piece about my
day as a javelin thrower in high school.''
He said he felt that ''Little House on the Prairie'' had run
its course, partly because ratings were declining in the last season, and also
because Melissa Gilbert, who played his daughter on the series, had grown from
a young girl to a woman. ''I didn't think a married woman should still be
coming to her father for advice,'' Mr. Landon explained. ''But when we started
this show, we never imagined it would last this long.''
Although Walnut Grove has been destroyed, it will reappear
one last time, thanks to the capriciousness of television programmers. An
episode filmed earlier, when the town was still intact, will be shown next
Christmas. At the last minute, NBC decided to reverse the order in which the
shows were to have been shown. And how will they explain the town's
resurrection? ''Mike will probably do a voice-over for the Christmas show,''
according to Bill Kiley, a publicity agent for NBC, ''saying that this happened
a few weeks before the destruction of the town.''
