The Brady Bunch

[sandy_richards]

Kate, was the Brady Bunch true-life? No. And that was probably part of its popularity. The Brady Bunch first aired in the fall of 1969 - the Vietnam War and the protest of the war was raging. Within months, the Ohio National Guard would gun down student protesters at Kent State. JFK had been assassinated, and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been murdered. Within a couple of years, the country would be watching Watergate hearings on TV and, finally, a President would be impeached and board a plane out of D.C., in disgrace. Then, as now, true life was sometimes over-rated.

Personally, I love watching Brady Bunch reruns because when that show first aired, my own life had been untouched by trauma. It takes me back to a happy time, when I was blissfully unaware that life was filled with far more tragic issues than whether the "big man on campus" would ask you out, and when it actually seemed possible to have Davy Jones sing at your school dance. Well, OK, that never seemed possible, but it was a fun fantasy.

Is the Brady Bunch quality TV? Nope. Is it good TV? I think so.

And just about everyone on that show could have used a good spanking at one time or another. When Mike Brady started his endless moral sermons, someone really should have spanked him. F/M really isn't my thing, but I might have enjoyed it if Carol, or better yet, Alice, spanked Mike.