Reviewing Movies

I just finished watching Season 9 of The Waltons. Having passed through the neighbourhood where this show is set it has special significance for me. Finishing the series makes me feel like I lost a group of friends I've known for years. In this last season a great many people are missing.

Richard Thomas disappeared from the series a couple seasons ago and given that he represents the narrator onscreen putting a new face, however more handsome, to his character strikes a jarring note. Grandpa and Grandma are long gone, Olivia was removed from the scene by sending her off to a sanatorium where she fails to recover and in this last season even John Sr. leaves to join her. With that mountain of flesh that was Rose off on her honeymoon the kitchen looks rather spacious and the third generation of Waltons are left to fend for themselves.

What we get here are the lives and loves of this new generation of Waltons. John-Boy's struggle to escape the sophomore jinks of his second novel. Mary-Ellen's determination to overcome the challenges of being a single widowed mother to study medicine. Jason takes over the Dew Drop Inn and shocks the family with the revelation that his girl friend is Jewish. Ben, having returned from the war with a new-found sense of independence finds himself drawn back to his father's mill. Erin struggles to find love and assert her autonomy as JD Picket's right-hand-man. Jim-Bob returns from war determined to party hearty and make up for lost time until he and his buddy find fulfillment starting a garage. Erin finds herself on the cusp of adulthood discovering that she is too old for childish games and too young to join her older siblings in more adult pursuits and lacking the opportunity to confide in her mother. The Baldwin sisters begin to confront their mortality while the miss-matched pair of Ike and Cora-Beth Godsey continue their battle of the sexes.

As folksy and down-home as this series has always been we have always been confronted with an ideal to which we can all wish our own families had aspired. When this series ruled the airwaves a more rural society made it wildly popular and one wanders how it would fare today. The writing on this show was always fresh and original and that quality was maintained to the very end. The show ends with little sense of closure when the series was not renewed. We are left wondering about John-Boy's next novel, whether Mary-Ellen ever becomes a doctor, will Jason marry his Jewish Sweetheart and will he be satisfied to remain a publican, will Erin strike out on her own and leave Pickets and find a suitable husband, what will Erin become. In the end I suppose it is better that a show ends with its audience wanting more rather than that they abandon it in boredom.