Forget the blow jobs of the new 90210 or the “I killed someone” shocker on Gossip Girl. Little House used to go really dark! And not just horribly embarrassing dark, like the time Laura/Half-Pint stuffed her dress with apples-as-boobs and they fell out at the blackboard, or when Nellie Olsen (who could out-bitch any so-called mean girl today) secretly taped Laura talking about her crush on a boy using her newfangled “talking machine” and then played it for everyone at school. Anyone else remember the time Albert’s (the dreamy Matthew Laborteaux) girlfriend was raped in the barn by that dude in the mask? This episode was referred to in my house as “Little Rape on the Prairie.”

But the horrors didn’t stop there. Last night we watched the one where Caroline Ingalls almost sawed her own damn leg off to save herself from infection. Last week, we saw the two-parter where Jason Bateman (as adopted kid James) get shot in Sleepy Eye during a bank robbery (and then Charles Ingalls went nuts and grew a beard and built an altar to Jesus!). Coming up this week, we see we have the infamous Runaway Caboose episode, and also the whole explosive mining one where someone, if memory serves, actually blows up. We don’t think we’ll even be able to watch the one where the blind school burns down and poor Mrs. Garvey and Mary’s baby are trapped in the upstairs window. Could an 8-year-old watch this today without someone, somewhere protesting? All we know is this: it sure wasn’t easy living out there on the frontier.