Bunches and Bunches of the Bradys : Television’s Underrated ‘70s Family Sitcom Still Thrives, Now Making Its Way to the Big Screen

On March 8, 1974, a sitcom that had rated no higher than 20th place during its five-year run aired its final episode.

Few Americans over age 16 noticed or cared: After all, this was a program the critics savaged and was largely ignored by the mainstream press. Newspaper TV columns carried neither eulogies nor appeals to save it from cancellation. There was no tear-stained final episode.

And why would there be? That show, “The Brady Bunch”--about a widow with three girls who marries a widower with three boys--would presumably be consigned to reruns or, more likely, to TV heaven.

Life would go on. Viewers would turn to ABC Friday nights at 8 and watch instead an Alaska adventure series called “Kodiak.” The teen magazines that had regularly chronicled the lives of the Brady kids would find other young stars to rave about. The show’s audience would grow up.

If anyone had the vision to predict the show’s fate in the next 20 years, come forth now and give us a hint on the price of IBM.

For rather than disappearing, “The Brady Bunch” became a touchstone for a generation, a show that has elbowed its way into the pantheon of cult TV shows along with “Star Trek,” “The Honeymooners” and “The Twilight Zone.”

The original program spawned a 1973 Saturday morning cartoon show, a 1977-78 variety hour, a 1981 spinoff (“The Brady Brides,” which itself was spun off from the TV movie “The Brady Girls Get Married”), a 1988 TV movie (“A Very Brady Christmas”) and a 1990 drama series. And in 1991 and 1992, a stage production, “The Real Live Brady Bunch,” re-created word-for-word episodes, packing houses in L.A., Chicago and New York.

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Now, the big screen beckons. The nominal plot for “The Brady Bunch Movie” may be the notion that the Bradys are still stuck in the ‘70s although it’s 1995--but the movie that opens Friday is essentially an 85-minute in-joke whose subplots are cobbled together from episodes of the show.

TV actors Shelley Long (“Cheers”) and Gary Cole (“Midnight Caller”) segue effortlessly into the clothes, hairstyles and personalities of parents Carol and Mike Brady. The actors who play six kids and Alice the maid also bear uncanny resemblances to the originals. Brady aficionados will snicker knowingly throughout the film.

Clueless folks over 40, however, may be wondering how this happened. Why “The Brady Bunch” and not “Nanny and the Professor” or “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”?

“Brady Bunch” creator Sherwood Schwartz, a former Bob Hope gag writer who also created “Gilligan’s Island,” has said his show’s appeal is due to “the stories . . . human, family stories. I don’t care what the generation is, it’s the same: the problems of communicating, of honesty, of being the middle child, of little things like wearing braces.”

That is true, but one could say the same thing for “The Brady Bunch’s” 1950s ancestors, “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It to Beaver,” or its modern descendants, “The Cosby Show” or even “Roseanne.”

There has to be more here, of course. Here are four more reasons for the show’s enduring appeal:

1. GOOD TIMING

The darn show has never left the air. Each of the 117 episodes has been shown over and over daily for two decades. The explosion of cable outlets created a hunger for programming and the show’s wholesomeness made it perfect fare for after-school airings. Moreover, “The Brady Bunch” was in color, which was more desirable than the black-and-white sitcoms of the ‘50s. The constant reruns increased the show’s fan base exponentially: They were watched not only by the show’s original viewers, but by their younger siblings and by the children of the original viewers.

But what made this mass of viewers different from those generations that watched, say, “I Love Lucy,” was that many of these kids were the products of broken homes. Divorces skyrocketed in the 1970s and ‘80s. Yet every afternoon, kids could watch this program in which a blended family had worked things out, in which (a non-working) mom and a maid would be there with milk and cookies and all sibling squabbles would be arbitrated by Dad. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect fantasy world.

Moreover, “The Brady Bunch’s” concept was ingenious: having three boys and three girls of varying ages provided a kind of instant appeal to members of both sexes of those same ages (ranging from about 7 to 12 when the show premiered), who could identify with any of the Brady kids.

2. THE LURE OF NOSTALGIA

With their over-romanticizing of the ‘50s and ‘60s, baby boomers sometimes make it seem as if their Wonder Years were the only ones that mattered.

As the post-Boomers entered their 20s and 30s, they, too, began to mythologize their own past--a key part of which was spent watching “The Brady Bunch.” And after dealing with the secondhand nostalgia handed down by the Boomers (classic rock, early-’60s sitcoms), “The Brady Bunch” was something they could call their own, a kind of video fraternal handshake.

3. THE KITSCH VALUE

The 1970s were, as everyone agrees, one of the most taste-free decades in world history. And in every episode of “The Brady Bunch,” the most garish excesses of that decade are in your face: from the Bradys’ avocado and tangerine-colored kitchen to their groovy hairstyles to the crocheted vests, Huckapoo shirts and plaid bell-bottoms. It’s humorous and embarrassing to realize that many of us wore the same outlandish outfits and even more amusing to those who were too young to be there the first time around.

From an adult perspective, some of the show’s more goofy contrivances stand out in even bolder re- lief. Just how did nine people share one bathroom (one, incidentally, where we never saw or heard a toilet)? What about that sexual subtext between Greg and Marcia? And how did they live that lifestyle on one income?

4. NOTHING LIKE REAL LIFE

“The Brady Bunch’s” original run nearly paralleled the same years as the Nixon Administration--a time of great social ferment and generational upheaval that TV programming had just begun to reflect. But except for a few episodes (the tame subject of ecology or a gentle poke at women’s liberation), the Bradys reveled in their irrelevance. While Archie Bunker might be railing against Sen. Sam “Irving” or praising President Richard “E.” Nixon, the Bradys--undoubtedly card-carrying members of the Silent Majority--were more concerned about what to do with 94 books of trading stamps.

The Brady ethos was summed up in one of the series’ early episodes when Mike observed, “We have a wonderful bunch of kids. I mean really marvelous. They don’t play hooky. They don’t lie. They’re not fresh. But boy . . . they just won’t stay off that phone.” In that episode, Mike installs a pay phone to teach them the value of money.

It’s easy to laugh at “The Brady Bunch.” But look past the shag haircuts and dopey expressions and you hit upon a more deeply felt emotion: a yearning for the kind of idealized family life the Bradys had. Most of us didn’t have a live-in housekeeper or sympathetic parents or great relationships with our siblings. As many of the original Brady watchers become parents themselves, struggling to maintain a Brady-like lifestyle with fewer kids and smaller incomes, the yearning becomes even stronger.

Sure, the show was anachronistic then (and has grown even more so as life has become nastier and more complicated since 1974), but it had a genuine core. It was never cynical or calculated and never took itself too seriously.

Still, they really acted like a bunch of white-bread dorks, didn’t they?

“Nick at Nite’s Buncha Brady” week, featuring five nights of Brady-related programming, runs at 8 tonight through Thursday on cable’s Nickelodeon.

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So You’re a Brady Fan? Try Answering This Quiz

Think you’re a Brady aficionado? Test your knowledge.

1. How did Marcia’s nose get broken, jeopardizing her big date with football hero Doug Simpson?

A. Bobby threw a baseball at her; B. Peter threw a football at her; C. Greg threw a basketball at her; D. Alice threw a brownie at her.

2. What was Alice’s last name?

A. Kramden; B. Toklas; C. Nelson; D. Brady.

3.What was the name of the Bradys’ dog?

A. Tiger; B. Lassie; C. Fala; D. Spot.

4. What street, named for a U.S. President, did the Bradys live on?

A. Eisenhower Avenue; B. Roosevelt Road; C. Lincoln Court; D. Clinton Way.

5. Jan or Marcia?

A. Couldn’t tap-dance; B. Played Juliet; C. Wore glasses; D. Wore a wig; E. Was a cheerleader.

6. What did the girls buy with the 94 books of trading stamps? A. Sewing machine; B. Color TV; C. Barbie doll; D. Mystery Date game.

7. How did the lovely lady meet the fellow (and they knew it would be much more than a hunch)?

A. At a Parents Without Partners dance; B. Personal ad; C. They were set up by Sam the Butcher; D. It was never explained.

8. What real-life athlete never appeared on “The Brady Bunch”?

A. Don Drysdale; B. Joe Namath; C. O.J. Simpson; D. Deacon Jones.

9. What job did Greg not have?

A. Office boy for Mike; B. Delivery boy for Sam; C. Local chairman of Youth for Nixon; D. Class photographer.

10. When Peter imitated Humphrey Bogart, he kept saying: “Pork Chops and . . . ?”

A. Applesauce; B. Wonder Bread; C. Rice; D. Mashed Potatoes.

Answers: 1-B; 2-C; 3-A; 4-D; 5-A) Jan B) Marcia C) Jan D) Jan E) Marcia; 6-B; 7-D; 8-C; 9-C; 10-A.