Lorimar executives constructed the series to emphasize both the locale (the Blue Ridge Mountains) and the historical period (the Great Depression), hoping to evoke a nostalgia for the recent past. They proposed to walk that fine line between "excessive sentimentality and believable human warmth" and took care not to caricature the mountain culture of the family, desiring to portray them as descendants of pioneer stock rather than stereotypical "hillbillies." Production notes in the Hamner papers emphasize the respect to be afforded the family and its culture: "That the Waltons are poor should be obvious, but there should be no hint of squalor or debased living conditions usually associated with poverty." Producers also stressed that The Wal­tons would not be like earlier wholesome family series Father Knows Best or I Remember Mama transplanted to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but instead would be "the continuing story of a seventeen-year-old boy who wants to be a writer, growing up during the Depression in a large and loving family."

     Premiering in the fall of 1972, the hour-long dra­ matic series was scheduled in what was considered a "suicidal" time slot against two popular Thursday­ night shows. ABC's The Mod Squad and NBC's top­ rated The Flip Wilson Show. By its second season, The Waltons achieved the valedictory rank in the overall ratings and stayed in the top 20 shows for the next several years. During its first season, the series garnered Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series, Best Dramatic Actor (Richard Thomas) and Actress (Michael Learned), Best Supporting Actress (Ellen Corby), and Best Dramatic Writing (John Mc­Greevey). and it continued to receive Emmys for acting and/or writing for the next half a decade. The series endured until 1981, with the extended family maturing and changing, surviving the loss of some characters, the addition of new supporting characters, and the so­ciohistorical changes as the community weathered the Depression era and entered that of World War II. The cast has reunited for a number of holiday and wedding specials in the nearly 15 years since the series ended. and the Walton family has endured in the United States' mythic imagination as well as in ratings popularity.

     The Walton family was portrayed as a cohesive and nearly self-sufficient social world. The family members operated as a team. full of collective wisdom and insight, yet always finding narrative (and physical) space for their individuality. In addition to the continuing narrative development of each regular character and of the family dynamics over the course of the series, each episode frequently dealt with a conflict or tension introduced by an outsider who happened into the community (Robert E. Ziegler described these characters as "foreigners, drifters, fugitives, orphans, and others just passing through"), bringing their own problems, which were potentially disruptive influences on the harmony and equilibrium of the Walton's Mountain community. The narrative of each episode worked through the resolution of these tensions within the household, as well as the healing or spiritual uplift achieved by the outsider characters as they assimilated the values of the family and learned their lessons of love and morality.

     The series was critically praised as being bitter­sweet, "wholesome," emotion-laden viewing. Reviewers noted that the series conveyed a vivid authenticity of both historical time and cultural place, as well as an emotional verisimilitude regarding the portrayal of a certain type of family life rooted in that time and place. Devoted viewers besieged the network. producers, and cast members with fan letters praising the show and expressing their degree of emotional identification with many aspects of the series. Many considered the series to be the epitome of television's capacity for romantic, effective, and moving storytelling in its evocation of childhood and its ability to tap into a deep desire for a mythicized community and family intimacy.

     Yet the series also had its detractors, who complained that The Wa/tons was too sweet, sappily sentimental, and exploitative of viewers' emotions. Hal Crowther remarked that its "homey wisdom and Sun­ day school platitudes have been known to make me gag"; others labeled it an "obviously corny, totally un­ real family" with characters too good to be true. Many recognized in the show an "intolerable wistfulness" for a romanticized past constructed through the creation of false memory and hopeless longing. Some critics noted that such a romanticized image of the era could make viewers forget the real nature of rural poverty. "The Depression was not a time for the making of strong souls" or healthy, well-nourished bodies, ac­ cording to Anne Roiphe, who criticized the series for associating poverty with elevated moral values and neutralizing the social, economic, and political upheavals of the 1930s "behind a wall of tradition, good­ ness and good fortune." Roiphe noted how skillfully the media producers were able to design and articulate myths of American happiness and innocence during the historical period the series portrayed; however, the viewers who admired the series also eagerly participated in that construction of a mythical past. Other critics have noted that despite its embrace of liberal humanitarian values (against racism, etc.), The Wal­ tons' inherent conservatism has made it ripe for appropriation by right-wing "family values" religious groups. Indeed, it became a benchmark series for the Family Channel, the media outlet for Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, which held exclusive syndication rights for the series in the early 1990s. In the intervening years, conservative politicians have often cited The Waltons as the archetypal family embodying whole­ some American "family values." In the American collective imagination, then, Hamner's family  has become more than just a television series; it is a signifier that elicits the mythos of an era of prewar inno­cence and of a particular structure of intergenerational family and community relationships.