The Brady Bunch

This is a sitcom from the 1970's that is based on an unlikely premise but nevertheless makes good family viewing...fun, heartwarming, and entertaining escapist drivel. The story revolves around a blended family originating when the widowed California architect, Mike Brady, marries a lovely lady, Carol, who is herself a single mom raising three daughters. Mike's three boys, Greg, Peter, & Bobby, originally range in age from 7 to 13. Carol's girls, Marcia, Jan, & Cindy, vary from age 6 to 12. By the series' end all the kids are basically teenagers. Meanwhile, the six offspring in this new combined family together experience assorted growing up trials, sibling rivalry, school issues, dating woes, and family vacations. Also included in the Brady family is their comical live-in housekeeper named Alice.

Of course it isn't exactly a likely scenario, the blending of so many children (including teenagers) more probably fraught with major serious challenges. Here the family is both relatively affluent and very functional, with any difficulties quite trivial and always amusingly solved within the half hour. Not only do these six kids have a stay at home mom but also the benefit of the affable & amusing Alice to help sort things out for them. Furthermore, the former spouses prove to be no problem. The boys experience no prolonged grief for their birth mother, Mike's first wife. It isn't clear whether Carol is divorced but in any case, her first husband seems conveniently out of the picture. The kids immediately assume all appropriate parental and fraternal bonds with their step people.

However, the show's essential positive values more than compensate for all these inadequacies, with sitcoms generally not intended to be unduly realistic anyway. True, the Bradys live a prosperous California lifestyle in a Los Angeles suburb, the parents are invariably patient and caring, and the kids sometimes even get to choose their own punishments. Nevertheless, these Brady kids are respectful of their parents, who are assumed to know more than their children (not the reverse). They are disciplined when they go astray, taught concepts of right and wrong, and generally expected to live up to them. All in sharp contrast to prevailing modern TV standards.

I haven't really watched the show in re runs though would still tune in now and then, if given the opportunity. Therefore it's been awhile, so I don't recall many specific episodes. The Bradys are definitely an idealized average American middle class family. However, it's a carefree, innocent, and light hearted program, improbable but with good values.

The Brady Bunch came out the right decade. The Brady Bunch would have been unaccepted 10 years earlier at the end of the Eisenhower era cause it was about a blended family. It would be laughed and dismissed as anachronistic 10 years later. The reason The Brady Bunch came out was because it was The Vietnam War and it was escape TV from the realities of the time period. As the seasons gone by it was being overshadowed by the Norman Lear shows.

My first exposure to The Brady Bunch was at age 7, when I started watching the daily reruns. I don't know why I began to watch it, but what I can tell you is that it was (and still is) an entertaining situation comedy. It's no secret that critics were tough on the show. Sure it's corny, but it's fun to watch, and it has many great moments.

One of the favorite episodes is "Bobby's Hero," in which Bobby idolizes the notorious outlaw Jesse James. It has an interesting theme: you should always be careful who you pick for a hero.

Another favorite of mine is "Fright Night." That's the one where the kids' attempt to scare Alice backfires. In the dark, she smashes Carol's sculpture of Mike, thinking it was an intruder. Carol's important message in this episode: "If you carry a joke too far, someone might get hurt."

I have always associated myself with Peter Brady, because, like him, I'm a middle boy. To me, I'm very much the Peter Brady of my family.

I always wanted to be a Brady. I could see myself flying down

that staircase in the morning to be handed my school lunch in a

brown paper bag by Florence Henderson. I thought the house

could manage 7 kids as easily as 6. That was my dream and my

aspiration. The thing was, I identified very strongly with

that show. I knew it was lame brained, even when I was the

same age as the youngest of the Brady kids. I also knew that

its heart was in the right place and it represented to me,

everything that I did not have. Of course, I was living in the

REAL world, and that is not always easy to take. Nearly 30

years later, I have fond feelings towards this series and

occasionally can be seen watching the inevitable reruns. Many

people feel the same as I do, I'm sure, so they must have done

something right.

I am proud to be a Brady Bunch Junkie. I can quote practically every episode verbadum. I can identify each episode within the first 5 seconds (which I love to do to impress my friends). I bet I know each episode better than the cast does! When I was growing up, my sisters and I would try to cover each others mouths so that we could sing the opening song solo and a cappella. I,too, am a "middle child". The middle of three girls. I would have given anything to have three brothers to offset the middle child syndrome. Even if it meant not having a toilet (which was never shown). Jan was someone I could relate to and I thought my sisters could relate to me better through her. Whenever she was a focal point in an episode, I'd be all "see what I mean" and "that's how I feel" about being in the middle. To this day I still refer to myself as the "Jan" in my family. And if I meet a guy who happens to be a middle brother, I say " oh, you're like Peter". If he doesn't get it, than he's out. Anyway, regardless if I'm the middle or not, I always wanted to be a Brady. Where else could you find a family that let you decide your own punishments, live by exact words, help you contact Davy Jones, give up their den so that you could have your own "funky" room, let you have a slumber party (after you were in trouble with the school principal) put on a play of Snow White and the Seven Drawfs in your backyard, believe you when you say the cigarettes they found in your jacket were not yours AND had a live in maid! The only thing they asked of you was "don't play ball in the house". And, morals of the story were taught in Latin so you didn't understand them anyway (coviat emptor); "let the buyer beware." However, Mike & Carol did try to realte with their kids by using such phrases as "right on", "groovy", "far out" and my personal favorite "wrapping". Hopefully Carol realizes by now that it is not against the law. Overall, they were a well-rounded and well-balanced family who believed in each other and stuck by one another. As corny as the show was, for those thirty minutes, I secretly wished that I was a Brady.