The Golden Girls can be kinda dark....so is Little House on the Prairie, wth

[slowlane3]

Highly unrealistic for a prairie village in the 1880s:

1. Nellie Olsons recording machine. They had barely been patented, and experimented with in large eastern cities at that time.

2. The doctor having a telephone. Phones had barely been invented then, and only the very richest people in large eastern cities were just starting to get them. Not for several decades later in Walnut Grove.

3. Jonathan's Mountain, home of the hermit played by Ernest Borgnine. Mountains do not exist in southern Minnesota.

4. Alonzo's sister, the homely teacher, going to Arizona to take a university class, and meeting Ralph Waldo Emerson there. Arizona was wild frontier country and train travel there would probably take a whole week and be very expensive. Any university there would have been primitive/ rudimentary.

Unrealistic for The Waltons:

1. Ike Godseys wartime air.raid alarm. Theres no way that a country store would be a German air.raid target.

2. "The television" (the shows very last episode), presumably 1945 or 46. TV in rural mountain areas like that would be at least another decade away.

Unrealistic for Leave it to Beaver:

Very last episode where Beavers parents wanted to send him on a several weeks bus tour over the entire country, coast.to.coast. What were they thinking? Trusting a 13.year old boy with carrying cash money with strangers, rooming with a stranger, letting him conceivably roam in N.Y. City, likely getting separated from the tour group, in the days before cell phones existed?

[OzzyRules]

Originally Posted by slowlane3

Unrealistic for Leave it to Beaver:

Very last episode where Beavers parents wanted to send him on a several weeks bus tour over the entire country, coast.to.coast. What were they thinking? Trusting a 13.year old boy with carrying cash money with strangers, rooming with a stranger, letting him conceivably roam in N.Y. City, likely getting separated from the tour group, in the days before cell phones existed?

Maybe the 1950's-early 1960's were a safer time like that.

[charlygal]

Originally Posted by slowlane3

Very last episode where Beavers parents wanted to send him on a several weeks bus tour over the entire country, coast.to.coast. What were they thinking? Trusting a 13.year old boy with carrying cash money with strangers, rooming with a stranger, letting him conceivably roam in N.Y. City, likely getting separated from the tour group, in the days before cell phones existed?

Parents allowed children to play outside by themselves from early morning to sundown. Child were sent on airplanes and trains by themselves.

So, yeah, parents without cell phones allowed their children all types of latitude and opportunities for maturity, responsibility and growth.

The world wasn't necessarily safer as there is nothing new under the sun.