This moving, tear inducing two part feature walks the veiwer through the hills and valleys that life often presents to otherwise good, hard-working, honest people. A realistic depiction of how life can be normal one day and challenged by unforeseen circumstances the next. How we get through the bad times is all in how we confront our challenges, as the Wilders must learn to do throughout the episode.
In part one of Days of Sunshine Days of Shadow, Laura and Almanzo face difficult times in their marriage after he catches diptheria and is on bedrest. During this time, he can't tend the fields and therefore worries about their wheat crop and their future. Laura is pregnant and can't teach at the school. They fall into the terrifying prospect of financial hardship. He pushes himself too hard one evening during a hailstorm after his recovery and ends up suffering from a debilitating stroke that puts him down indefinitely.
Left partially incapacitated, he loses the will to try to walk again. His sister, Eliza Jane Wilder, travels from Minneonapolis to help care for him. She does more harm than good, enabling him to rely on other people to eat, get around, make decisions, etc. He stops thinking for himself, giving his sister the reins to his life as he sits around in a wheelchair wallowing in self pity. Laura sees what's happening and tries to encourage her husband to be more self sufficient to no avail.
In part two of this episode, the days of shadow continue for the Wilders. A damaging twister, future uncertainty, disagreements, and Almanzo's continued downward spiral into defeat persist. Baby Rose is born, offering a small ray of sunshine amidst the darkness. Laura begins to lose hope herself following a devastating loss that threatens everything she and Manly worked so hard for.
After self reflection, Almanzo begins to think for himself again. With the love, kindness and support of Charles, he finds a newfound sense of perserverence and faith inside himself, and together the two men set out on rebuilding his life with Laura.
While everyone does a fine job,with this dark-themed material, the acting by the two main leads is phenomenal. At the end of the episode, the sunshine peeks through again reminding us that while life isn't always easy, the shadows don't last forever. The message I get from the content is that we shouldn't give up even when things seem hopeless. Keep plowing ahead, and in the end, the good outweighs the bad.
Enjoy! ๐