Ever since I finished seeing 7th Heaven all the way through, I starting watching The Waltons. I'm a little miffed because I didn't get to tape the two episodes that were on today. One of them is about John-Boy's graduation, which is pretty momentous. (At least he's not the only boy in his class, as was Clay-Boy on Spencer's Mountain.) I set my timer, but my cable box shut off for some reason. And it's not because I haven't paid my bill, since I was able to turn it back on again (only The Waltons were over by that time).
I like Elizabeth, who is the youngest child of the Walton clan. She's so cute! Wikipedia says, "We see Elizabeth grow from a very young child into a young woman, through the course of the series." And so she's kind of like Ruthie on 7th Heaven. But there's a difference: I think Elizabeth will probably grow up to be nicer than Ruthie. I saw a picture of Elizabeth when she was older, and she looked rather pleasant. Ruthie was so moody in her older years! Plus, Elizabeth doesn't exactly look like a glamor girl--she comes across as a regular person. And, in real life, that's what she is. The Waltons was the only show she ever acted on. Right now, she's a schoolteacher. I wonder what her students think about having Elizabeth from The Waltons as their schoolteacher.
One thing about Elizabeth: she's somewhat weird. She doesn't always seem like she's all there. She's spacy, I mean. For example, she asked what "pregnant" means. Sheesh, I'm sure even Ruthie knew what pregnant means when she was a little girl. But Ruthie was weird in her own way: she was a prodigy.
Grandma Walton is rather cranky, but she's a conservative Christian. On an episode I was watching a few days ago, she was bashing President Roosevelt. "We'll all become paupers, the way he's giving out all that money." Amen, Grandma! Of course, the show was making it look like something was wrong with her: she was only speaking out against the exalted President Roosevelt because she didn't like growing old. So I guess being a Republican means something has to be wrong.
I wish I got to see one of the episodes today. It's about the Walton kids playing with a ouija board. I'd like to hear Grandma's comments about that!
In real life, though, the lady who played Grandma was an active practitioner of transcendental meditation. The Grandma Walton I know wouldn't go for New Age stuff! She'd call it "pagan," or something worse.
There's one thing that puzzled me: on one episode, the teacher was blatantly proclaiming evolution in the classroom. And she was pretty heavy-handed about it, too: she acted like things HAD to have happened that way. When asked about Genesis, she just said is was "symbolic." I hate that response. Symbolic of what? But what shocked me was that only one person in the area seemed to care, and he was a drunk who didn't go to church in the first place. Why wasn't Grandma concerned? Heck, Ma Walton is always trying to get her husband to go to church. Why didn't she launch an anti-evolution parents group?
I like 7th Heaven better than The Waltons, but the Waltons are starting to grow on me.