The Saddest ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Episode Fans Still Talk About Today

Little House on the Prairie is gaining a whole new audience this year, as a freshly imagined series streams on Netflix, and the original series, which aired from 1974 to 1983, makes its Peacock debut.

While the show may have seemed like a wholesome family feel-good show for much of its nine-year run, it certainly had its share of heartbreaking and unforgettable episodes that still leave fans talking all these years later. In 1980, Little House aired a two-part story, featuring a fire at a school for the blind that claimed two lives.

Little House Hits Fans’ Hearts with Tragedy

In a pair of season 6 episodes titled “May We Make Them Proud,” Mary Ingalls‘ (Melissa Sue Anderson) adopted brother, Albert (Matthew Labyorteaux), was playing with a pipe with some friends in the basement of the blind school. They hid the lit pipe when they heard someone coming, but the pipe later caught fire on some rags, with the flames raging through the school late at night.

Mary and the other adults evacuated the children from the school, but Alice Garvey (Hersha Parady) never made it out alive with Mary’s infant son. Alice and the baby tragically died, leaving Mary in a catatonic state over the loss of her child and Albert wracked with guilt over the tragedy he and his friends caused. Jonathan Garvey (Merlin Olson), Alice’s husband, was so distraught over the loss of his wife that he turned to alcohol to numb the pain, according to IMDb.

The fallout changed the series, with Mary eventually leaving Walnut Grove with her husband, Adam (Linwood Boomer), and Jonathan leaving town to start life anew with his son, Andy (Patrick Labyorteaux).

More than four decades later, fans can use the magic of the internet to talk about how dark and tragic this episode was, while still acknowledging some plot holes. As one Reddit user put it: “I’ll never understand the writing choice that had Mary and Adam just forget about the baby. Especially since Mary was literally sitting with it. They could’ve come up with another way for Alice to get trapped and die in the fire.”

Despite that one aspect of the story that leaves fans scratching their heads, most agree that these two episodes left them with lumps in their throats.

“I can still see the scene where Alice is screaming and holding the baby while breaking the window with the fire raging behind her. I’m 48 years-old and saw that episode for the first time when I was in elementary school. Not traumatizing at all,” another Reddit user chimed in.

Yet another Little House fan agreed, claiming the episode with the fire was one of the most difficult moments to view during the show’s long run: “It’s hard to watch. When Alice starts breaking the windows. The most disturbing episode in the whole show in my opinion.”