Here’s A Story

April 25th, 2018 by

The three simple words in the title start the preamble to the Brady Bunch theme song. For five seasons, the life of the Brady Family was played out on the small screen of television. Families gathered round to watch the children grow up in what was considered very radical for it’s day, a blended family.

Mike Brady married Carol Ann Tyler Martin, both had three children from a previous marriage and it was assumed, both were widowed. Mike only makes reference to his former wife when he talks to Bobby about the impending nuptials. Though Carol never mentions her first husband, and it could possibly be she was divorced. A Very Brady Sequel implies that her husband was the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. Which was a unique twist.

Sherwood Schwartz and his son, Lloyd Schwartz mentioned in their book that they had wanted to do a flashback or even an episode showing Mike and Carol first meeting, but that was scrapped. Mike and Carol supposedly met grocery shopping, possibly for Safe or Best Laundry Detergent.

The show is still well remembered by people, and has become somewhat engrained in pop culture. The show has a sort of cheesy timeless appeal, which is why so many people write books, do blogs or even try to splice episodes together to create their own. Numerous sequels and parody movies were created as well. Many of the channels that run syndicated television shows with rights that are easily purchased will run the Brady Bunch as a headline show, knowing it might draw an audience filled with nostalgia, whom part of the fun is making a half hour available to watch the Brady Bunch.

DVD sets have been released for each season, and boxed sets of the complete show released as well. The Shag Collection is the penultimate collection, with two hours of the sequel Brady’s, and the movie, A Very Brady Christmas.

It is somewhat sad to realize at some point, the Brady Bunch will occupy some obscure corner of television history. Maybe a younger generation will gravitate to it out of some fit of curiosity. Right now, most of the people keeping the Brady Bunch memory alive are people like me, who grew up watching it on an off channel during syndication, and enjoying doing so.

Thanks for stopping by.