I remember this show. It was terrible.Richard Dean Anderson, Drake Hogestyn, Peter Horton, they were all just cookie cutters of the same character with different hair color and a name. Nothing distinctive about any of them.When Hogestyn ventured to Days of Our Lives, his 'character' on this show was described as the most 'taciturn'.What is that? That's a characterization? Why not say, the moodiest? Or the quickest temper? It says nothing about a person.I remember one truly awful episode when one of the brothers (like it mattered) was dating a girl, going to marry her. Her name was Tally (think the worst comment imaginable and that is how I remembered her name).Hogestyn's brother said he knew this girl from her sordid past (his too apparently). And they broke up. That was the drama.Scenes from the next episode, now Hogestyn was the over-wrought brother as he had to face some dilemma, whereas this episode, he had been the all-knowing brother with the younger one's dilemma.Oh, it was terrible.I remember a program about TV shows on CBS and we see the producer of this, I guess, on the phone, CRYING, because his show, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, had been picked up by the network.I knew it was rubbish. I wondered how much he cried after it was cancelled so quickly? I had a schoolteacher like this show. She was endlessly slipping it into teaching lessons.Use the word 'excellent' in a sentence."Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is an excellent show." I know one classroom that made sure they never saw it.

I admit, I loved this show because I loved the original musical, but I was sad to see it go away to be kept in some dust-covered bin in a Hollywood storage vault! Regardless of all my friends teasing me because they thought it was a "corny show", I couldn't wait to see each episode! (I was raised by my grandparents so perhaps that's why I've always been drawn to the more reserved, wholesome, and yes, sometimes "corny" stuff.) I wish some studio exec would recognize that there are plenty of networks out there now (ie: Hallmark, ABC Family, Nic....) that have the perfect format for shows like this. If there had been more than just the "Big three" networks around when the show was produced, it would have had a better chance. But it's sad to think of it wasting away when it could be entertaining and influencing a new (and not-so-new) audience.

First of all, the title probably wasn't the best, but what would have been a better title? Maybe they should have cut the number of brothers and given it a different title. "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" and "The Magnificent Seven" are rather famous titles in the history of Western cinema, but younger people in 1982-1983 weren't familiar with them. The seven orphan brothers run a ranch in California. They are rather hard up for money. They had an old International pickup and a late-model Jeep. There was one episode where they broke into a bankrupt grain warehouse to get some feed they owned in there but weren't allowed to get. This was obviously based on the Wayne Cryts soybean incident in southeastern Missouri. In another episode there were cattle rustlers and they had to chase a potload of stolen cattle in the Jeep and shoot out a front tire. There was another episode with a blizzard.

Seven brides For Seven Brothers was a great family show. It starred many of today's favorite actors including: Richard Dean Anderson, Drake Hogstyn, Peter Horton, Terri Treas, Roger Wilson, and River Phoenix. It had wonderful music written by Jimmy Webb especially for the show. If it had been allowed to continue, I think that it would have done very well in the ratings. The story lines were about how a family of seven brothers (with the eldest brother's wife) tried to make a living on their ranch after being orphaned ten years earlier. it would have been interesting to find out more about the family's past, but the show was cancelled before we really got to know them better.