Aaron’s Way (1988)

Debuting March 9, 1988.  NBC, 8/7pm Central

Aaron’s Way was a family drama airing in the Wednesday night lead-in timeslot, with NBC shifting Highway to Heaven an hour later. Merlin Olson starred as Aaron Miller, the patriarch of an Amish family that moves from rural Pennsylvania to California where they try to navigate modern society while preserving their values. This was the third family drama that ex-LA Rams defensive tackle Merlin Olsen was featured in, with the two previous shows being Little House on the Prairie and Father Murphy.

In the two-hour pilot movie, Aaron travels to the California wine country by plane for the funeral of his son Noah, who had left the Amish life behind. Noah had died in a surfing accident, leaving behind a pregnant girlfriend, the independent Susannah (Kathleen York). Noah had previously helped Susannah modernize her vineyard with computer-controlled irrigation and now was left to run it alone. When Noah’s long-haired friend Blue comes to visit Aaron’s family, arriving on his ‘chopped hog’, this draws unwanted attention from the community elders. Facing likely shunning, Aaron and wife Sarah (Belinda Montgomery) take their family – the teenage Roseanne (Samantha Mathis) and younger kids Martha (Erin Chase) and Frank (Scott Curtis) – to Susannah’s vineyard to assist her with the coming harvest, which she initially is quite resistant to as they show up unannounced. There is also tension with Susannah’s cynical, divorced mother Connie (Jessica Walter) and an attraction between Susannah’s brother Mickey (Christopher Gartin) and Roseanne. The whole family pitches in and brings in the harvest, and the story ends with the birth of Susannah’s baby. Along the way, the Millers experience things like sneakers, Mr. Rogers, ATVs, frisbees, and tacos for the first time (which they adapt to with surprising speed…read on).

The following episode, “New Growth” saw Aaron enroll the children in a private school, only to discover it doesn’t welcome children of all colors, Martha and Frank adopt a stray dog, while Susannah contemplates giving the baby up for adoption. Future episodes dealt with the kids attending public school, Aaron getting a driver license and seeking employment in the modern world, and difficulties with Connie’s ex-husband. I’d write more about the dozen episodes that followed the pilot movie, but apart from “New Growth”, I haven’t seen the show since it first aired, and I’ve never found other episodes online.

Aaron’s Way was created by Rena Down, a writer on Dallas and Falcon Crest, and produced by William Blinn of Fame and Our House. Blinn’s success as a TV writer came with 1971’s Brian’s Song, followed by The Rookies and adapting Alex Haley’s Roots for television. The pan flute-heavy series theme music was composed by Mark Snow, who later gave us the haunting series theme for The X-Files. The show was evidently created to accompany Highway to Heaven on Wednesdays, starring Olson’s former co-stars Michael Landon and Victor French.

Olson had been raised in a strict Mormon family, and championed the series in the press, where it didn’t get a great reception. From a Canadian Press article: “There is very little television that we can sit down and watch together as families, and this is the kind of show that really asks people to question what is happening in this world and asks people to look at values. I think it’s the kind of show that can do something positive, instead of instilling an urge to violence in our kids and in our adults as well.” Producer Blinn added, “We’re not doing Mork and Mindy here. We are doing the reality of these people in this situation, and it allows us to examine the modern world in a different way.” Jessica Walter had previously been on a lot of television, but Aaron’s Way was only her fourth series as a regular, and she was the last actor cast for the show.

Tim Rose at the great Friday @ 8/7 Central blog compared the show to Apple’s Way, an earlier series that dealt with similar themes of culture conflict. In Apple’s Way, a father of six moves his brood from Los Angeles to the small town in Iowa he grew up in, where they live in a converted old grist mill. The mill set had been constructed on the Columbia/Warner Ranch backlot, later torn down and replaced with The Waltons house. Apple’s Way was essentially Aaron’s Way in reverse, as the similarly titled shows explored the tensions between different lifestyles and values, as the families encounter individuals with contrasting beliefs and behaviors.

Rose also brings up one issue with the show, being the backlash from those familiar with the Amish, and even former Amish themselves that watched it. Pennsylvania scholar John Hostetler called it “for the birds”, and Amish expert Donald Kraybill despised what he interpreted as “condescension” from the show. Hostetler refused to be a consultant for the series after viewing the two-hour pilot. “I did send them three pages of what I thought was wrong with it, but they didn’t respond.” Overall, he found it to be a “gross misunderstanding of the Amish.” Kraybill added, “The whole tone of the thing makes the Amish look like idiots. They make them look like they lived in a cave or the jungle or something…” Articles also criticized as unrealistic how rapidly the Millers adapted to the modern world. Neither Rena Down nor William Blinn are around anymore to ask about the show.

Aaron’s Way had respectable ratings on early Wednesdays for being on against hit ABC sitcoms Growing Pains/Head of the Class, and for a time was considered an ‘on the bubble’ show. Sadly, NBC chose not to renew it for fall, with network executive Brandon Tartikoff citing the difficulty of finding advertisers to sponsor it. Star Erin Chase reflected on the series cancellation in an LA Times article that July. “It’s such a good show, you know…when I found out it was canceled, I cried for three hours and missed my guitar lessons.” Unsolved Mysteries took its place that fall.

Aaron’s Way was rerun in Australia in 1989-1990 but never aired again in the U.S. that I am aware of. Although what seem to be two different home recordings of the two-hour pilot movie and first episode “New Ground” have found their way to the Internet Archive, and bootleg DVDs of the show can be found on those websites, remaining series episodes cannot be found online via your normal YouTube or Dailymotion searches. A screening of the pilot movie reveals the use of Billy Idol’s To Be a Lover, but I’m not sure if the rest of the series had any problematic music uses. At any rate, at this point it is highly doubtful Aaron’s Way will see the light of day via a legitimate release. Perhaps it’s time to bite the bullet and order one of those DVDs.