Dean Butler Reveals That This ‘Little House’ Storyline Decided Whether the Show Would Get Cancelled

On a recent episode of The Little House 50 Podcast, Alison Arngrim, Dean Butler and Pamela Bob discussed a particularly interesting episode of Little House on the Prairie. “Days of Sunshine, Days of Shadow” premiered in February 1982 and saw Almanzo Wilder stricken with diphtheria, then a stroke; not long after, Almanzo and Laura’s home was destroyed by a tornado. It was one of the darkest stories in the show’s history, but there was a good reason behind all of the tragedy — Michael Landon himself directed the two-parter as a deliberate experiment to see if Butler and Melissa Gilbert could carry the series without him, as he was ready to leave the series as an actor.