I never found this show funny. Not ever. I found it bland, stupid, moronic, and completely out of touch with reality on all levels. No, it was not brilliant theatre, but something lurking out on cloud nine with an idealized portrait of how a family should have been during the late 60s and early 70s.And yet, people ate it up. That annoyed me more than anything else in the world. During this shows inception there were great upheavals around the the globe, and this little slice of Americana was just self removed from the Cold War and all the events that conflict had ignited. Domestic issues were ignored. Okay, yes, I realize this was (is) the Brady Bunch, but that's pretty much my whole point regarding this vapid theatre that catered to the mothers and daughters of America.As I watched it, I watched out of frustration that there was nothing better on. It ate up time. It was better than watching Dinah Shore, Merv Griffin, one of the late running soaps, or that horror or horrors, PBS's Sesame Street. Hence, the Brady Bunch took up alleged quality time before the news and much richer shows (Star Trek as an example) could come on.The thing that got to me about this show was that I, as an extremely younger person than I am now, could see through the junk that this show was. And yet the people around me couldn't (mostly women). Just like a book I read commented, when teenagers of the time were experimenting with drugs and sex "The Brady Bunch" was giving an updated Beaver- Clever-like sheen juxtaposed to the counter culture that was in near full swing.I found it insulting. But the blithering idiots that sat next to me ate it up. "Oh, this is the one where Bobby... or Alice... or Marcia... or Greg... (enter mundane circumstance here)". And the laugh tracks added even more insult as rarely anything was genuinely funny in this show. Yet again no one I watched it with made the slightest disapproving comment. That verse some of today's uproarious comedies, shows that are genuinely funny, that touch on edgy subjects but are still quite clean or at least well comported. Shows that need no laugh track, by the way. That verse yesteryears' Brady Bunch which needed canned laughter to let the TV viewing audience know that someone (or a bunch of someones) was laughing at the corny comments.What's worse is that this show thrives today by those with wistful memories. Why. Just why would you even like this show? No wait, don't answer. I might get convinced.Seriously, there's better entertainment out there.Avoid this thing.

The idea that "The Brady Bunch" portrayed a "realistic" suburban family has its roots in TV fantasy-land, similar to the silliness of "Happy Days" and "Leave It to Beaver". Most of the situations in this show were ridiculous contrivances that had little basis in reality whatsoever. The seed of the show was conceived from a newspaper article stating that something like 40% of families had children from other marriages. I guess if you can take a statistic and make it into a TV show, you can do anything. You can also throw spaghetti against the wall and hope it sticks.The shortcoming of the entire show was that the writer-producers did not seem to base any of the episodes upon real-life incidences, which is where the real human drama resides, and where some of the funniest material comes from. I have always believed the best story material can't be made up; it comes from seeing real people doing ridiculous things you could never imagine. That's why shows like the Dick Van Dyke Show are so well-written and ultimately hilarious because it was based on the writers' experiences. Even the Partridge Family was based on a real-life singing family. Not the Brady Bunch whose scripts were strictly drummed out of thin air, which is always the least effective way to write if the intention is to be "realistic".The contrived situations seemed at odds with the issues with which young people were facing in the late 1960's and early 1970's. For a time resplendent with social issues and social change, the Brady Bunch relied on the banal. (In fact, the father of the show played by Robert Reed was an in-closet gay man. Wouldn't that have made the show interesting?) But no, the Brady's situations were mainly trivial. Playing ball in the house. Bobby is falsely accused of doll-napping. Cindy makes it a habit to tattle-tale. Rather silly stuff. They never dealt with death, prejudice, love, hate, race relations, or politics.I was slightly younger than the Brady Bunch kids (I grew up in the SF Bay Area suburbs in the 1970's and 1980's), and yet I never knew anyone who had the kinds of "situations" that the Brady's did. I'll confess that I did watch the show in reruns, but there were a lot of episodes that, even as a kid, I thought were rather stupid. One of the kids having an "identity crisis" was a recurring theme throughout the show. I never knew anyone, among my family or my friends, who engaged in this kind of behavior. In one episode, Peter Brady adopts the personality of Humphrey Bogart. In another Jan Brady wears a wig. In yet another, Bobby tries to make himself tall by hanging from a swing set. Or when Marcia becomes stuck on herself as a "star". Maybe one of the few episodes that had a spark of realism was when Jan was jealous over Marcia's success at school. Of course, Marcia wins every award you could imagine. And when Marcia enters an essay contest in which she describes her relationship with her father, of course she wins first prize. It would have been far more interesting and real if she hadn't won but still felt the same way about her father. The fact that she wins somehow loses any modicum of interest the episode might of had. But of course, this is American television, 1970's style. She HAS to win.Probably the stand-out of the show was Eve Aline Plumb as Jan. Despite a lot of the mediocre writing, Plumb brought a sensibility to her character that was lacking in a lot of the rest of the cast, including the parents, who were probably the least-interesting of the whole family. The parents, Mike and Carol seemed like know-it-all busy bodies who were near-perfect but lacked any real emotions, not to mention any shortcomings. I would have like to have seen a little more blood-feuding between them. That's what happens in real families. But again, not the Brady Bunch. Even the cook-housekeeper Alice was a bit more interesting than the parents.Overall, a mediocre show at best and a contrived somewhat intelligence-insulting program at worst. I think the Brady Bunch tells us more about perceived sensibilities and prescriptive norms of Americans in the 1970's than being a realistic portrayal of the 1970's, much the same as "Leave It to Beaver" in the late 1950's to early 1960's. And maybe that's the problem. The Brady Bunch never showed what it was really like but instead tried to show us what we were supposed to be like.

I think it's ironic as all get out that just when the anti-war movement was at its height and kids all over the nation were doing all kinds of experimentation with drugs that on television we managed to find solace in the gentle G-rated adventures of a blended family that was called The Brady Bunch.In true paternal style the man with the three boys named Brady wed the woman whose name I can't recall, but Florence Henderson and her girls became Bradys just like Robert Reed's boys. In fact it was hard to remember that they weren't biological Bradys.The anti-war movement, Civil Rights, gay rights (Stonewall happened the year of The Brady Bunch Debut) was something that was never mentioned on the show. Sports got into things occasionally, Joe Namath from football and Don Drysdale from baseball got some guest starring roles as themselves.The Bradys did dress in the latest fashion though. I do remember those bell bottoms that I wish I could get into now. Barry Williams as Greg Brady wore them with style. He was quite the teen heartthrob during the run of the show.The shows hearkened back to Leave It To Beaver with Robert Reed as the all knowing dad. You did get the feeling unlike Hugh Beaumont and Barbara Billingsley, Reed and Henderson did have a sex life. Some concession to the times.The shows were positively antiseptic. Barry Williams chasing after this that or the other girl, Cindy not being a tattle tale, Peter's voice changing, and the tag line that the show got known for, middle girl Jan's jealousy of older sister Marcia, with that cry of 'Marcia Marcia Marcia'.Later on it came out that all American dad Robert Reed was gay after of course he died of AIDS. In the community that was pretty well known, a friend of mine recalls meeting Reed at a gay bar in New York City during the Seventies. The cast and crew of The Brady Bunch knew it too, but as Barry Williams points out in his memoirs, they didn't care, he was accepted as an artist and a human being. That was a concession to Stonewall that we didn't know about until later.Blended families are still fodder for situation comedies like Step By Step and Life With Derek. Those have a bit more bite to them than the ever loving Bradys. Still those kids still looked real good and I did so like Barry Williams back in the day.

Who wouldn't have wanted to have lived in that Groovy, three story house (counting an attic that expanded to a full-size room) somehow tucked into a split-level exterior? Who wouldn't have wanted to have owned all those Groovy clothes that somehow always were up to date and never got handed down from one kid to the younger sibling?Who wouldn't have wanted to have had no problem that could not be resolved completely within a week AND that never seemed to be worse than something as trivial as whether a boy would like a girl who wears braces? Who wouldn't have wanted to have had all those Groovy celebrities just drop in anytime you became president of their local fan club or foolishly swore you could get them to perform for your school dance?Who wouldn't have wanted to have been part of a Mod, Groovy singing group made of your siblings while somehow having time for all the other extracurricular activities of your school? Who wouldn't have wanted to be a Brady? What a great, Groovy time this show was!