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The Brady Bunch
1969 · TV series · 25 min episodes · 5 seasons
Created by Sherwood Schwartz
When widower Mike Brady marries a lovely lady widow Carol Ann, their two families become one. These are the misadventures of this new couple, their six children, a dog named Tiger, and quirky housekeeper Alice.
3 negative5 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
The Brady Bunch, Season 1 Episode 9: "Sorry, Right Number"
Airdate: November 21, 1969
A huge phone bill prompts Mike to have a pay telephone installed to teach the kids a lesson in financial responsibility. His plan nearly backfires when he is forced to use the payphone to close a deal. Thankfully, his client has three teenagers of his own and understands Mike's situation and even installs a pay phone in his own home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Brady_Bunch_episodes#Season_1_(1969%E2%80%9370)
Perspective is strange. I suspect we're not far from a time when a show such as the Brady Bunch will be as bizarre to the modern mind as the most severe Twilight Zone episode was in its time.
While it makes some good points, I think a lot of it depends on what content you are consuming.
I feel like there used to be a lot of family oriented shows in the past. There may have been some innuendo for the adults, but nothing really sexual, no vulgar language, etc. It seems incredibly rare to find a show like that today. Think Brady Bunch vs Modern Family.
There are plenty of shows available today that are highly sexual, but most of them have moved out of the mainstream because you can cater to the niche more than if it were for a general audience. Sex Life, Spartacus, etc has lots of sexual content. I'm not sure if Game of Thrones fits with the author's take or mine, but there are likely examples of each depending on the scene. We don't really need this content in blockbuster movies when we can get even more graphic content through these shows.
There's only so many times you can rewatch The Office and Friends. It can't be a major ongoing revenue source.
> brainwash
This has been going on forever. Check out "The Brady Bunch". Every episode revolves around a heavy-handed moral lesson. Go back even further and you've got the Hayes Code. Hollywood has always seen itself as morally superior to the rest of us, and hence entitled to preach to us.
Though with all the scandals emanating from Hollywood, one wonders how they hold on to that moral superiority.
Think someone like Alice the live-in-maid from The Brady Bunch. Yes, she was part of child rearing, but Mike and Carol were there too. Granted, it's a saccharine sitcom of total unbelievableness from the 60's.
Wasn't Hanna-Barbera the guys who made the Brady Bunch Kids and other sit-com spin-offs? =[
As a kid I never noticed how commercial it all really was.
After reading some of the history you can see they've all been doing the exact same tried and true things since forever.
Merchandising, spin-offs, episodes written around new album releases, copy-cats of successful shows (e.g. Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie), etc.
So you end up with minimal janky animation, Disney child actors, and 1/2 hour toy commercials.
As a Gen Xer growing up in the 80s, I remember drowning in Baby Boomer nostalgia for the 60s counterculture, classic rock, cutesy retro advertising, old TV shows on Nick at Nite, Frank Capra movies, and so on. The culture was immersed in it.
Then, starting in the 90s, our generation started to do the same thing, looking back nostalgically at childhood favorites like the Muppet Show, Gilligan's Island, and the Brady Bunch.
So I would say that this sort of nostalgia has a staple of modern life for at least several generations.
And I would give credit to Disney and Viacom/Nickelodeon for trying to create entertaining sitcoms for kids. It can't be Spongebob and Phineas and Ferb 24 hours a day (although it sure seems like it).
You may think it's crap, but go back and watch the sitcoms you watched as a kid (Brady Bunch for me). It's even worse than you remember.