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Today, I want to know your pick for the worst TV child actor of all-time.

Pop Culture Theme Time (https://popculturereferences.com/category/pop-culture-theme-time/) is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.

Look, I know it’s tough, as these kids are, you know, kids, but darnit, some of these kids are just terrible, so let’s get it all out, tell us who you think is the worst child actor that you’ve seen who is/was a main cast member on a TV series.

I really wanted to pick Jerry Supiran on Small Wonder, but I just can’t, I have to go with the terrible twins, Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush, who played the youngest daughter, Carrie, on Little House of the Prairie.

They were both so bad that the character, ostensibly a main cast member, was essentially removed from the series as an active cast member for the rest of her run. Normally, as child actors age, they get MORE to do, but Carrie got LESS to do as she aged. They could barely deliver lines, let alone do actual acting. Carrie had a single spotlight episode in the series, a terrible Season 5 episode where she imagines a twin to keep her company (this allowed the sisters to act with each other). So bad.

Do man children count? So, Landon then.

Yes they were cute twins and could see how they got the part. The long days could be split up between both of them. But as kids, they could not deliver their lines convincingly. In Alison's book she mentions their mother was kind of strange.
I just watched Quarantine where the Fever has spread and Laura thinks she got it but its really poison ivy from picking berries. Carrie could not even munch berries convincingly. She had fake red paint around her lips and even though she had no words she could not even munch berries on camera.
Even when she fell down the mine shaft, she was unconvincing being rescued in the end.
However her spontaneous and unplanned fall from running down the hill in the intro works so well. It was real and you can see it.

Carrie was good for cute, humorous one liners in the early seasons. "And I can milk the cow!" "Please stay, Mr. Edwards!" "I want a dress for my dolly!" But I never understood why Landon didn't find a more capable child actress to play an older Carrie in Season 4 and beyond. That way, Carrie could have been given a voice in the show--maybe an episode where Laura gets into trouble and Carrie is the unlikely hero, or Laura has to help Carrie with her studies or show her how to stand up to a bully in the playground, maybe even give Carrie an artistic obsession like drawing, painting or gardening. You could keep Albert and still juggle Laura and Carrie. Have Laura and Carrie sleep together upstairs and have sister/sister conversations after Mary leaves and have Albert sleep downstairs.

By the time James and Cassandra showed up, Landon destroyed any chance of making Carrie a memorable character when there was plenty of time beforehand to do it. IMHO, he shot the show in the foot by placing Carrie and Grace forever in the background.

Real Carrie deserves better than the posthumous character assassination by Landon and Americans now thinking the real person wet herself all the time and never learned to talk properly.