I missed seeing the whole "Frontier House" series the first time around, but the local PBS station is currently rerunning it. The last two episodes air this coming Thursday.

I agree with you, Kevin, that one of the points of the program – the contrast between modern-day conveniences and frontier-life rigors – would not have been made if the producers had chosen Americans with a less "average" lifestyle. I think that one of the things they're trying to say here is that the majority of people of the 1880's who ventured west to stake their land claims didn't really know what they were getting themselves into, either.

Case in point: During the "Frontier House" families' wagon trip, the narrator mentions that in the nineteenth century, the trail west was littered with furniture and other things that had simply been dumped out of wagons, as pioneers came to terms with the life they were leaving and discarded the non-essentials that were literally and figuratively holding them back.