Customer Reviews

The Waltons: The Complete Second Season

5 star:		(71)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Other reviewers have thoroughly reviewed the details of the Waltons first year on TV with titles and plot descriptions, so I won't elaborate further. Instead, I will tell you why I feel this DVD set is perhaps is the best series that ever aired on TV, and is true family entertainment.

The Waltons first aired in 1972 on CBS. It was considered "hokey" by some of the critics of the day, yet it captured the hearts of the viewers and went on to be one of the finest long-running series on TV. It captured peoples hearts because it told stories of real people, real people in a family that loved and cared for each other. Although many of the stories are of course fictional, the writer, Earl Hamner (who is actually John-boy), weaves fiction with real-life drama and shows how his loving family dealt with the hard times they grew up in, and how they related to each other with love. In essence, the Waltons shows the viewer what all of us would like our families to be like. One cannot help caring about the characters because Hamner does such a great job of developing their unique personalities for us. The actors and actresses that play his family are perfect for the parts, and even though many of them are just children, their realistic acting makes one believe they are actually a real family. The series is carried on the shoulders of three central characters, John-Boy (Richard Thomas), his mother Olivia Walton (Michael Learned), and Father John Walton (played by Ralph Waite). All three are absolutely superb in their respective roles, and earned honors and accolades for their depiction of Hamner's family. When these three characters eventually left ths show in later years, the show itself folded.

If you have never seen The Waltons on TV, my suggestion is that you buy the first season shows before viewing the second season set. Although not entirely necessary, as each show is a complete story, the first season will unveil the general themes and storylines that help you to better understand the characters and their dire economic situation (the Great Depression). You will also learn that although the Waltons had little money, they were not "poor" when it came to their bond of family love for one another. The second season, (24 episodes) is just as good as the first season, with family stories that will capture your heart. The second season won several awards, an emmy for Michael Learned (Olivia Walton) and an emmy for writer Joanna Lee for her script, "The Thanksgiving Story".

I watch the Walton shows with my own 6 children and even in these modern days with so many other distractions, my kids are thrilled with the stories. Each child relates to a particular Walton child, and after finishing an episode, they beg to watch another. I hope that they will learn family values by watching the Walton family interact with each other. I know that I have garnered some parenting tips from John Walton.

Television does not get better than The Waltons. I recommend this series for those viewers who desire more family values and less violence, sex, and questionable language and topics in their tv viewing. This is true family values TV, and I wish we had something like it today. The Waltons will capture your heart, and you will come to love the characters and care about them. Thank you Earl Hamner for sharing your lovely family with us!

Jim "Konedog" Koenig

Great collection of one of my all time favorite shows!
Season two episodes include:

The Journey- Johnboy takes drives an elderly neighbor to see the ocean before she dies.

The Odyssey-Johnboy delivers a baby. (guest star: Sissy Spacek)

The Separation- Grandma & Grandpa have a fight & Grandpa moves out.

The Theft- John is accused of stealing & won't deny that he didn't do it.

The Roots- Verdie Grant meets Harley Foster & asks Johnboy to help keep him on the Mountain.

The Chicken Thief- Johnboy see Yancy Tucker stealing chickens & must decide if he should turn him in to the sheriff.

The Prize- Olivia's old boyfriend, who is running for office, pays a call to the family.

The Braggart- Hobart Shank, an old orphan friend of the family, arrives to stay with the Waltons until a baseball scout shows up.

The Fawn- Johnboy becomes a rent collector, a hated landlord. Erin nurses an orphaned fawn.

The Thanksgiving Story- Johnboy gets a visit from his girlfriend, Jenny & prepares for scholarship exam.

The Substitute- Miss Pollard, a strict teacher from New York, is hired to teach the children.

Th Bequest- Grandma receives a letter stating a $250 inheritance.

The Air-Mail Man- A plane makes an emergency landing in the Walton's meadow.

The Triangle- Johnboy gets jealous when Miss Hunter & Reverend Fordwick become a romantic couple.

The Awakening- Mary Ellen get kissed by a college boy who doesn't know how young she is.

The Honeymoon- While John takes Olivia on a second honeymoon, several mishaps occur at home.

The Heritage- John considers selling to mountain. Zeb & Ester celebrate their 50th anniversary.

The Gift- Jason's friend has a fatal disease and learns he going to die. (Guest star: Ron Howard)

The Cradle- Olivia discovers she is expecting another baby.

The Fullfillment- The Waltons try to convince their neighbor, who can't have children, to adopt an orphan boy who is staying at the Walton home.

The Ghost Story- The children play with a Ouija board & believe they hear from the spirit of a young boy's deceased mother who is trying to warn them her son is in danger.

The Graduation- The family buys Johnboy a suit to wear for his highschool graduation. He must return the suit for the money, when the family cow dies.

The Five-Foot Shelf- Olivia & Johnboy get swindled by a traveling book salemsman.

The Car- Johnboy does work for a man to buy a car for college. Afterward, the man refuses to give it to him because the car belonged to his dead son.

We've had to wait an entire year for the release of season two. I hope this is not the case for future releases. I'm especially looking forward to season 4 which has my all time favorite "Walton" episode in it...."The Burnout"...the episode when the house is gutted by fire in the middle of the night. But, back to season two. I agree with the reviewer below with the tight packaging and the 2 sided disks are a pain with them overlapping and all. But besides that, the quality of the DVDs are wonderful, the show is timeless and the episodes are first rate! My particular favorite is "The Gift" with a young Ron Howard guest starring as Jason's best friend who has leukemia. This episode is a real tearjerker and I cry buckets every time I see it. Its not full of sap sentimentality but honest truth about loss and grief. There are two memorable scenes in this episode. The first is Ron Howard (Seth) running out into the woods after he finds out that he has only a short time to live. He runs out and screams and cries his heart out because of the unfairness of it all. The other scene is the poignant and touching guidance and wisdom to Jason from Grandpa (Will Geer)helping him cope with the grief that is hurting him so much. Jon Walmsley as Jason is outstanding in this episode and the haunting strains of "beautiful dreamer" as he plays it on the flute at the end....well...just have the kleenex handy!! How can you honestly compare the wasteland that television has become today with a program like the Waltons? Its wonderful to see a quality program like this restored with quality! I'll take a program like "The Waltons" and pit it against all the reality crap on TV these days. Do your youngsters and family a favor and "watch" "The Waltons" together as a family! If they don't want to, "make them". My parents did that with me and I turned out o.k. We need to restructure the familial moral fiber in AMERICA today and programs like "The Waltons" are a good place to start!

I have spent the last several nights watching episodes from the 2nd season of this incredible show. What a gift this series was. Good, clean episodes written beautifully with wonderful characters. This show had such a calm pace to its writing. And each episode transports the viewer to a different time when life was more about people than material things. All of the episodes I've watched so far have been excellent. As much as I remembered loving this show, it is still much better than I ever imagined. By all means, revisit Walton's Mountain.

Nominated for 15 Golden Globes and 25 Emmys, including two for Outstanding Drama Series, The Waltons enjoyed nine seasons of high audience ratings and notable critical acclaim. Premiering on CBS in the Fall of 1972, the hour-long drama series chronicled the lives of a tightly-knit mountain family living during the Depression era. Creator Earl Hamner Jr. based The Waltons on his true-to-life story of growing up in the Hamner family. Noted for its family-oriented subject matter (and absence of torrid sex and violence), The Waltons paved the way for the success of the popular TV series Little House On The Prairie (1974). And, in the aftermath of the cancellation of The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) and Green Acres (1965), proved wrong the assertion of some CBS executives that shows with rural settings were becoming unpopular. Celebrated for its raw depiction of the human experience, The Waltons towers above modern day television dramas by laying claim to the added weight today's critics give to "realism" in a series while simultaneously avoiding the bad language, adult content, and gratuitous violence that often accompany those shows which earn such a designation...

The Waltons follows the daily lives of the various members of the Walton family as they make a living working their humble saw mill on Walton's Mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Set in the 1930's, the series unfolds through the eyes of John Boy (Richard Thomas). An aspiring writer, John Boy chronicles life on Walton Mountain where his parents, John Sr. (Ralph Waite) and Olivia (Michael Learned), raise their seven children (John Boy, Jason, Mary Ellen, Erin, Ben, Jim-Bob, and Elizabeth) with the aid of live-in grandparents Esther (Ellen Corby) and Zeb (Will Greer) Walton. A wide array of supporting characters live near the Waltons, including Reverend Fordwick (portrayed by Three's Company star John Ritter), the Godseys, the Baldwins, and various others. As the trials of the Great Depression fade into the tribulations of World War II, the Waltons connect with every facet of the human experience - love, marriage, birth, death, aging, social ills, and the numerous travails of life, making The Waltons one of the most popular shows in television history...

The Waltons (Season 2) DVD features a number of memorable episodes including the season premiere "The Journey" in which Maggie McKenzie would like to see the ocean one last time in her life, and John Boy agrees to take her, although he must miss an important dance in order to do so. Meanwhile, Grandpa Zeb and the kids nurse and injured bird back to health. This episode is also notable because it boasts of being the only show of series in which creator Earl Hamner (playing the role of Maggie's wife) appears... Other notable episodes from Season 2 include "The Fawn" in which Erin nurses an injured fawn back to health while John Boy becomes a collections agent for a notorious landlord, and "The Honeymoon" in which John Sr. and Olivia enjoy a belated honeymoon in Virginia Beach...

Below is a list of episodes included on The Waltons (Season 2) DVD:

Episode 26 (The Journey)
Episode 27 (The Odyssey)
Episode 28 (The Separation)
Episode 29 (The Theft)
Episode 30 (The Roots)
Episode 31 (The Chicken Thief)
Episode 32 (The Prize)
Episode 33 (The Braggart)
Episode 34 (The Fawn)
Episode 35 (The Thanksgiving Story: Part 1)
Episode 36 (The Thanksgiving Story: Part 2)
Episode 37 (The Substitute)
Episode 38 (The Bequest)
Episode 39 (The Air Mail Man)
Episode 40 (The Triangle)
Episode 41 (The Awakening)
Episode 42 (The Honeymoon)
Episode 43 (The Heritage)
Episode 44 (The Gift)
Episode 45 (The Cradle)
Episode 46 (The Fulfillment)
Episode 47 (The Ghost Story)
Episode 48 (The Graduation)
Episode 49 (The Five Foot Shelf)
Episode 50 (The Car)

The DVD Report

I'm a huge fan of Star Trek Next Generation. What I appreciate about that show are the strong values, compelling situations, and the thoughtful exploration [sic] of the process of deciding how to resolve situations, and how to implement those decisions.

The Waltons, however, is an entirely different class.

It is the most compelling television ever.

The quality of the relationships, the strong morality (as distinct from strong "values"), the clear, kind, sensible thinking and interaction that is depicted on the screen is amazing.

This kind of television would not be made today.

- Who would write it?
- Who, even in their imagination, thinks so clearly about "difficult" moral issues?

There is hardly a shared vocabulary in modern society for even talking about moral issues, let alone advancing them.

The people depicted in this program are not perfect, but they are being perfected. They are growing. And most important, that they are supposed to be kind, hard working, long-suffering, patient, that they are to do what's right regardless of the cost, is written firmly on their heart, even when they occassionally stumble in their actions.

Unfortunately, these people are only characters portrayed by actors. But they are portrayed so well, they give us all a model for behavior and thought to aspire to.

That some would aspire, for the benefit of us all.

It's so fun, introducing my children to my favorite childhood t.v. series. I LOVE the Waltons. Highly recommended. Enjoy!!

Excellent quality for a quality family show(except for the very first scene in the very first episode). Boo hoo though to no extras when most of those people are still alive! Love Richard Thomas! Don't love the tight packaging of the discs overlapping one another! Are they trying to save on paper and plastic or what???

I loved the second season as much as the first season of the Walton's. In this day of sitcoms with sarcastic children and selfish parents, it's refreshing to step back to a time when family values meant sincere caring about family members, honesty, and selfless giving. Coming from a large family myself with little money to do with while growing up, it was with nostalgia that I empathized with the Walton's in their struggle to survive. There are so many real things one can learn by having to go without. The family togetherness was so nice. I just really enjoyed every episode and can't wait for the third season to come out!!

I was thrilled to see the release of the 2nd season. It's amazing how different these DVD's are compared to recorded videos from television. No commercials, complete episodes, and crystal clear pictures! I have started rewatching this series episode by episode. Just like being reunited with old friends. Truly one of the best family-friendly series ever produced.