# Was the Brady Bunch premise forgotten? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 14, 2006, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701 "2006-05-14T02:05:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/21 "2006-05-14T21:36:00Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > Manda JO writes: > > \> Speaking as someone with five siblings, I think they HAD to go with the premise > \> if they wanted to tell a story about a “typical” family: typical families don’t have > \> six kids, and when you have six biological children, there is a suspicion that > \> either you are dangerously religious or dangerously sexual or dangerously > \> incompetent. > > Speaking as somone with seven siblings, my family didn’t fit into any of those categories. My family doesn’t fit them either but when I tell people that my parents had ten kids, some of them start guessing that we’re Catholic. ---
**Author:** ![hawksgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ed655f/32.png) [@hawksgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawksgirl)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/22 "2006-05-14T21:41:09Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > Manda JO writes: > > \> Speaking as someone with five siblings, I think they HAD to go with the premise > \> if they wanted to tell a story about a “typical” family: typical families don’t have > \> six kids, and when you have six biological children, **there is a suspicion that** > \> either you are dangerously religious or dangerously sexual or dangerously > \> incompetent. > > Speaking as somone with seven siblings, my family didn’t fit into any of those categories. Bolding mine. She didn’t say that she did either. Its a “what other people think” kind of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/23 "2006-05-14T21:43:17Z")
I didn’t run into a lot of people who suspected that we were any of those things either. ---
**Author:** ![SkeptiJess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@SkeptiJess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkeptiJess)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/24 "2006-05-14T22:08:31Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > I didn’t run into a lot of people who suspected that we were any of those things either. Really? Where are you from? My husband is from Wisconsin and is the eldest of 7. In Wisconsin, nobody thinks twice about this – large families are the norm there, even now. At least in the small farming communities such as his hometown. But, outside of Wisconsin, people are usually surprised to hear about his large family and he is often asked if they were Catholic or Mormon. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/25 "2006-05-14T22:24:04Z")
I grew up on a farm in northwest Ohio. Even back in the 1950’s, it wasn’t common for families where I grew up to have eight kids. I don’t think any of my friend’s families had more than four kids. Despite that, nobody thought that we were especially religious or sexual or incompetent. Maybe a little weird, but maybe it was more like they thought that we just did things our own way. ---
**Author:** ![supervenusfreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@supervenusfreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/supervenusfreak)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/26 "2006-05-14T23:07:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I thought that her fist husband was lost at sea, and implied to be the Professor on Gilligan’s Island. That was actually an implication (and a tip of the hat to Schwartz) in one of the Brady Bunch movies. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_Rhosis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@Sir\_Rhosis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Rhosis)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/27 "2006-05-14T23:17:53Z")
I thought Carol’s ex-husband showed up in an episode–played by Denny Whatshisname–the big blond Tarzan/Wagon Train/Gorton’s Fisherman guy who surfed onto “Gilligan’s Island” once. Or was he just a jock ex-boyfriend of Carol’s? Sir Rhosis ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/28 "2006-05-14T23:18:33Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > I grew up on a farm in northwest Ohio. Even back in the 1950’s, it wasn’t common for families where I grew up to have eight kids. I don’t think any of my friend’s families had more than four kids. Despite that, nobody thought that we were especially religious or sexual or incompetent. Maybe a little weird, but maybe it was more like they thought that we just did things our own way. Well, we grew up all over the South in the eighties, by which time smaller families were more common–or large families were more suspect–and where “Catholic” had a certain stigma. Cetainly LOTS of people asked if we were Catholic (yes). My mother, who is an finance/database guru type person felt the need to minimize how many children she had in the workplace because people have preconcieved notions about someone who is the mother of six, and those notions don’t involve being competent with emerging technology or savy about manufacturing or just professional in general. I certainly have nothing against large families, I just think that sit-coms such as the Brady Bunch were almost fixated on being typical, generic, suburban WASP, and a typical, generic, suburban WASP family does not have six children. Catholics might, or country people, but not young WASPS. It is weird enough that there needs to be an explaination, and “Mike and Carol like to get it on and Mike has problems with pulling out” or “the pope told them too” were not explanations viewers would have been comfortable with. ---
**Author:** ![Missy2U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Missy2U](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Missy2U)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/29 "2006-05-15T17:14:48Z")
> [@Sir Rhosis](#): > > I thought Carol’s ex-husband showed up in an episode–played by Denny Whatshisname–the big blond Tarzan/Wagon Train/Gorton’s Fisherman guy who surfed onto “Gilligan’s Island” once. > > Or was he just a jock ex-boyfriend of Carol’s? > > Sir Rhosis Tank, I believe his name was. He was an ex boyfriend. ---
**Author:** ![Wee\_Bairn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90db22/32.png) [@Wee\_Bairn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wee_Bairn)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/30 "2006-05-15T20:51:18Z")
\ Carol’s married name is Martin, same as Oliver’s. This means Oliver is a relative of Carol’s husband. Are the Brady’s that damned nice that they would take in the nephew of Carol’s ex-husband?? ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/31 "2006-05-15T21:04:51Z")
> [@jmwatts](#): > > The premise of “The Brady Bunch” was that after their spouses died, Mike and Carol got together and formed one big family. We’re reminded of this by the theme song every episode. It seems to me however that this fact was de-emphasized more and more as the series progressed… Marsha never refers to Greg as his “step-brother”. The parents are “mom” and “dad” to all the kids. The whole premise of the show seemed to be a dirty little secret that was swept under the rug. This doesn’t seem to be a bad thing, I don’t think the show loses anything after they just become a “regular” family. Did Sherwood Schwartz just figure he needed a gimmick to get the series off the ground, and then it was no longer needed after the first few episodes? In my experience, being a ‘step’ becomes a lot less of an issue after the adjustment period. Of course, some blended families call each other step-this or that forever but not all. In some cases, they ‘forget’ that they aren’t a regular family, as you put it. For example, my dad (step father) has said he remembers changing my diapers. Considering that he didn’t even meet my mother till I was 4, this is very very untrue. but the point being, he doesn’t think about that I’m not ‘his’ child. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/32 "2006-05-15T22:29:41Z")
> [@Manda JO](#): > > I certainly have nothing against large families, I just think that sit-coms such as the Brady Bunch were almost fixated on being typical, generic, suburban WASP, and a typical, generic, suburban WASP family does not have six children. _Brady_ is an [Irish surname](http://scripts.ireland.com/ancestor/surname/index.cfm?Surname=brady&fuseaction=Go.), from the Irish _Mac Brádaigh_. There were 2,643 Brady households in Ireland in the period 1848-1864. There were about 11,700 persons with the surname Brady in Ireland in 1890. (And Florence Henderson is Catholic.) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/33 "2006-05-15T22:52:02Z")
> [@Antinor01](#): > > For example, my dad (step father) has said he remembers changing my diapers. Considering that he didn’t even meet my mother till I was 4, this is very very untrue. Or at least embarrassing. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/34 "2006-05-15T23:51:29Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Or at least embarrassing. 😃 I thought about that AFTER posting. hehe. But just for the record, it’s totally and completely untrue. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/35 "2006-05-16T00:22:01Z")
> [@Antinor01](#): > > I thought about that AFTER posting. hehe. But just for the record, it’s totally and completely untrue. 🙂 Or you’re repressing the memories of childhood incontinence. ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/36 "2006-05-16T02:53:26Z")
> [@Antinor01](#): > > For example, my dad (step father) has said he remembers changing my diapers. Considering that he didn’t even meet my mother till I was 4, this is very very untrue. but the point being, he doesn’t think about that I’m not ‘his’ child. Yeah, that’s the way it was with my family. My older brothers are technically half brothers, but they were raised by my dad so I never really thought about it. Even though my parents divorced in 1986, my brothers (and my sister and I) stayed with my dad - even though he technically isn’t related to them anymore. They both still call him every Sunday, call him Dad, and refer to their children as his grandchildren. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/37 "2006-05-16T18:16:03Z")
> [@Wee Bairn](#): > > \ > > Carol’s married name is Martin, same as Oliver’s. This means Oliver is a relative > of Carol’s husband. Are the Brady’s that damned nice that they would take in the > nephew of Carol’s ex-husband?? Two points: A. Even if Oliver is her ex-husband’s nephew, that doesn’t discount the fact that his mother could have been a relative of Carol’s–her sister, niece, female cousin, etc. B. Martin is an extremely common name. Oliver could be the son of a relative of Carol’s who married into a different Martin family. ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/38 "2006-05-16T20:31:52Z")
Back to the OP, there was a late series ep in which Ken Barry appeared. His character and his spouse were adopting a kid and ended up also adopting the kids two best friends, one of whom was Japanese and one of whom was black. At one point in the ep Barry referred to the fact that when Mike and Carol married, Mike adopted Carol’s girls and Carol adopted Mike’s boys, so the premise wasn’t totally ignored. Besides, it was stated every week in the theme song. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/39 "2006-05-16T21:05:18Z")
> [@photopat](#): > > Back to the OP, there was a late series ep in which Ken B[e]rry appeared. His character and his spouse were adopting a kid and ended up also adopting the kid’s two best friends, one of whom was Japanese and one of whom was black. That episode was intended as a pilot for a new series called [_Kelly’s Kids_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0531104/), but the proposed show was never picked up by a network. Matt, the boy whom the Kellys originally set out to adopt, was played by Todd Lookinland, brother of Mike “Bobby Brady” Lookinland. ---
**Author:** ![photopat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e95f7d/32.png) [@photopat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/photopat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701/40 "2006-05-16T23:48:47Z")
> [@Sternvogel](#): > > That episode was intended as a pilot for a new series called [_Kelly’s Kids_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0531104/), but the proposed show was never picked up by a network. Matt, the boy whom the Kellys originally set out to adopt, was played by Todd Lookinland, brother of Mike “Bobby Brady” Lookinland. I knew even then that it was a pilot within a series. Those always had an odd feel to them since the primary characters of the series were put in the background for the episode. There was one, for example, during “The Six Million Dollar Man” about an agent with a computer chip implanted in his brain that allowed him to download info in order to fulfill his undercover missions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-brady-bunch-premise-forgotten/356701.md?page=3)