The Bradys

Bless their hearts, they tried. They tried to put a situation comedy family, who is at the cornerstone of American pop culture, in a family drama. But it simply didn't work. It's just like trying to make a Cadillac out of a Volkswagen ... it ain't gonna happen! Assigning major problems to each of the family (e.g., Marcia's alcoholism, Bobby getting paralyzed), along with using a laugh track just didn't work. In hindsight, if the producers had gotten a decent writing staff and flexible directors, "The Bradys" might have worked. Unfortunately, it simply destroyed the Brady franchise. Fortunately, we still have the reruns of the original 1969-1974 ABC series, which will be around for a long time. So will, unfortunately, this show, which is bound to turn up in reruns at some point.

Being a fan of "The Brady Bunch", I was interested when I first heard that CBS was going to release this show as a Spring replacement.

Since I couldn't watch the episodes at the time it aired due to other commitments, I set the VCR for the first episode. When I watched it, I didn't like what I saw. It looked horrible. I thought that maybe it was a fluke, so I taped another episode and it was more of the same.

What bothered me the most is it seemed like the Brady Family was going out of their way to say, "we are no longer that goody-goody little family you used to know and remember, way back when".

Also, it seemed like every week, a new crisis struck the Brady family; From Marcia becomes an alcoholic, or Bobby becoming a paraplegic in a racing accident. You had to ask yourself what tragedy could happen next; Peter gets shot in a bank holdup? Or maybe Cindy ends up missing.

With every week being what seems like "The Brady crisis of the week", it makes the show unbelievable and you end up thinking; No family could have as many problems as they do.

Just watching it makes it painful to watch; Not painful in the sense that you're feeling the Brady's tragedy, but getting that "I can't take anymore of this crap" feeling.

Only 4 episodes were aired and Maureen McCormick had the good sense to stay away from this "turkey". In a way, I felt it was 4 episodes too many.

When The Bradys aired in 1990 a lot of people called the short lived series Brady Something a Thirty Something parody which was a drama on ABC at the time. It was an attempt for The Brady Bunch to be taken seriously but failed. The first episode which was a two hour pilot made Bobby Brady a paraplegic and Marcia an alcoholic in another episode. CBS aired The Bradys on Fridays with the hope that Dallas would help draw viewers which didn't cause ABC had the successful TGIF shows at the time and Dallas was waning in popularity.

This show probably ended the notion of people trying to milk the Brady franchise for all its worth. The idea of trying to turn one of the corniest, but memorable, sitcoms in television history into an hour long drama is probably one of the worst ideas in the history of television. To me, the idea of the Brady's finally having real life problems is so absurd after the surrealism of the original series. Just thank God they didn't bring back cousin Oliver.

That one word describes this series. The pilot episode involving Bobby being paralyzed and Jan and Phillip's marital problems (among other side archs) was actually well written. The rest of it went down from there. The family has to move because their house at 4226 Clinton Way is in the path of a freeway development. ok, fair enough so far. They are unsucessfull at getting that changed; uh huh. Next, so they decide to move the house; literally cut it into pieces and move it, so that the producers can stop using the fooage of the actual house filmed back in the 60's (the real house, while still there, looks nothing like it did and is now protected by a big wall), but not design new sets. This is where it started to be a stretch. Mike is mad that their councilman wouldn't support them in their opposition so he decides to run against him, and (surprise! surprise!) he won. This is where they lost me. The rest of the series went downhill from there, culmunating with Marcia's alchoholism. Don't get me wrong, I think that Marcia becoming an alchoholic was a good idea (it was built on from the way things were when the series started -- can we say good plot development?) but the writing could have been better, and then she admits her problem (after hitting bottom) gets and into treatment (becoming an advocate for people with her problem to seek help); all in one episode. Then in the next episode it was completely forgotten. Oh, please! The next, and final (thankfully)m episode dealt with the girls putting together a catering business (The Party Girls). Oh, and least I forget, throughout the show Cindy is dating her widowed (or was it divorced, I forget) boss at the radio station where she works as a D.J. Ack Ack Ack. Go away!