The Little House series is one of my favorites of all time, to the point of obsession. I occasionally watch several episodes at once, or a few episodes over a few days, but I’ve never binged it. Right now, I am. Bingeing. And I’ve noticed something. The continuity of the show–or rather the lack thereof–is a real problem.

Part of the issue is the way shows were written then vs now. Once upon a time, most shows were written in an episodic format. There simply wasn’t any real continuity, but rather stories told in no particular order. Shows like Dallas changed that. Well, I suspect Dallas on the whole did. Nowadays, most shows are told as arcs across a season, or mini-arcs through the season. Continuity is more important now than it was then.

It’s also fair to point out, that in the case of Little House, some lack of continuity is needed. Nearly all the stories take place in the vicinity of the town. When they need town folks for a celebration, or school, or church, they typically use a small group of people that are background in many episodes, and then add some extras and the main guest star(s). Then a special guest for an episode is introduced and they seem to have always lived in the area and attend church every Sunday. No show could afford to add dozens of people each week, or constant cameos of previous guest starts. We must use suspension of disbelief, to understand even when we don’t see them, they are there. So, I get that.

But the show too often takes shortcuts and doesn’t follow up on its own continuity. I can think of multiple examples.

First, the episode with the raccoon in the first season. To summarize for the unfamiliar, Mary gives Laura a baby raccoon she names Jasper, despite Pa’s concerns that he will remain wild. She trains him carefully in a variety of tricks and all seems fine, until he runs away after biting Laura and the dog, Jack. A few nights later, the family is awakened by the shrieks of the chickens, which are being killed by a raccoon, and it turns on Pa, clearly rabid. He kills it, but then the family must wait and see if either dog or girl shows signs of infection. When Jack shows false signs, Pa goes out to kill him, but before he can, he hears cries and turns to see Jasper, alive and doing one of his tricks. The family realizes the one he killed wasn’t Jasper, and he clearly doesn’t have rabies, so dog and child are fine, too. But Jasper is never mentioned again. Not anything in a quick epilogue about turning him loose. Not about keeping him. Not anything. He just disappears from the canon, never to be mentioned again. He served his use for one episode.

Second, when the family is stranded far from home in a blizzard, for three weeks. Leaving aside a three-week blizzard (which were probably a series of 2 or 3 day blizzards à la The Long Winter), there is the problem of their home, which includes the dog, a cow, chickens, and probably other animals (the horses are with them, of course). Who was going to look after them? Couldn’t they mention anyone even in passing? No “Edwards will see to it the animals are fed.,” or something.

Three, the episode with the typhus plague outbreak, where Isaiah Edwards gets sick. If you think his girlfriend (Grace, played by Bonnie Bartlett) ought to be in the episode, concerned he might die, you’d be right. But she isn’t. Nor is Edwards in certain episodes he almost certainly would have been in. Availability can be an issue, but notwithstanding that, there is no excuse.

Four, in the second-season episode where Mary acquires glasses. This is one of the biggest. She gets glasses, is told she must wear them for either two or three weeks straight, and then once her eyes are rested, she need only wear them for reading, which would include school and studying at home. But in the very next episode or two or five, she isn’t wearing them at any point in the episode. And then she suddenly is wearing them again, several episodes later. And then isn’t again.

Five, in the episode “Remember Me” Laura and Mary save 3 puppies from deliberate drowning and must give them away. One Laura gives to the Sanderson family, who are the main subject of the episode. A second one she gives to a fellow student. The third one is referenced as still being at home. She almost gives it to Nellie, but doesn’t. At the end, they are still sitting on the third puppy, but like Jasper the raccoon, the puppy is never mentioned after. We are left to draw our own conclusions.

There are other, smaller examples aplenty. And I’m only into the halfway point of Season Two! How much more will there be in the remaining 7 1/2 seasons? Some of these examples could have been alleviated with a simple line of narrative dialogue by Laura at the end. Others, such as Mary’s magical disappearing and reappearing glasses is just bad memory on behalf of writers or on-set continuity people.

UPDATE: I’m in the middle of the eighth season and while I won’t provide more examples, they are aplenty. The mind boggles out just how often they ignored their own canon (to say nothing of the books, but I’m okay with that).