I'm working on a paper for a class, and I was wondering...
Why do you watch the Brady Bunch?
-and-
Did you watch the show during its original run, or in syndication?
Thanks!

I watched it in both, but I remember it a lot more now. I was just a kid when it originally aired.

I like it because Alice is amusing, Robert Reed is a very good actor, and the first couple minutes before the commercial captures your attention and makes you want to watch the show to see what happens.

I watched it when it originally aired, but didn't became a fan until I started watching it with my kids on TVLand. My husband is the one who started us watching the show. I like it because I don't have to worry about my kids seeing anything I wouldn't want them to see and because it deals with common problems kids enounter and their reactions to them.

I watch the show because it is an entertaining timeless classic. Try to find something made today that will fit that category thirty years from now!

I only remember watching it in syndication (the last episode, "The Hair Brained Scheme", originally aired a few days before my second birthday), but I've heard my parents say I loved it when I was a baby. I can remember Dayton's Fox affiliate, WRGT 45, aired it in the early-mid 1990s while I was in college, and I started to rediscover it. However, my interest did not skyrocket until Nick at Nite picked it up and started airing it June 1, 1998. :D

i think i watched it a few times when it aired on abc but i was really little i started watching it alot around 1976 and i still love it i watch it for different reasons now then i did when i was a kid when i was a kid myself i watched because of the kids .but now that im past 30 i watch it not only because i grew up with it . but like alot of adults who watch it now it has corny campy overtones that most kids dont notice but adults do i think thats one of the reasons its still going strong after 35 years it isnt often that kids and ther parents like the same show esp. nowdays

I was 10 when the show debuted, and I did not start watching it until probably about the 3rd or 4th season of the show...

I enjoyed the show once I started watching it, I liked all of the kids, and of course had a crush on Marcia.

I also remember that when the show started it's fifth and final season, I thought that maybe they got a new girl to replace Eve Plumb, since she looked so different in the opening credits. Me and my friends couldn't believe what a knock-out Eve Plumb had become. That was the talk of the neighborhood that weekend (I grew up in Pleasantville j/k)

The strangest thing, for me, was watching the early episodes when the show was first syndicated. I'd never seen the kids at that age (since I didn't watch the show during its first couple of seasons), so they looked really, really young! That was actually quite a shock. I remember calling my sister (who's a year older than I) and saying something like, "Oh my God, are these the same kids?".

I still like watching the BB today, there are only a few (to me) unwatchable episodes.

I think one of the reasons for the show's continued popularity is the fact that, with so many kids in that family, most kids can relate to at least one of them...Most of us have faced some dilemna in real life that was similar to something that happened to a Brady (although I never ran around a corner in a school hallway, only to run into (literally) my identical twin, who just moved into town a couple of days earlier, and knock him on his a**).

Today's kids have to deal with drugs, while Greg had to deal with the peer pressure to smoke, which in those days was about the worst thing a kid could do...

But the Brady bunch was mostly about growing up, working through problems at school and at home, and dating (and meeting celebrities such as Davy Jones, Joe Namath and Mrs. Howell). Because most kids can relate to at least some of these situations, the show can be relevant even today.

IMO, the Brady Bunch has stood the test of time much better than, for example, All in the Family, becaue so much of what made AITF so funny at that time was the political climate, which kids today know very little about. As a result, it doesn't play as well today as it did back then. While I'm not sure I'd say that the Brady Bunch is "timeless", it is in a sense, because there's little reference to when the show takes place (other than the clothes they wear). They never mention who the President is at the time, only a few mentions of sports figures and a couple of celebrities like D Jones and D Arnaz Jr.

Originally posted by Tweety
That was the talk of the neighborhood that weekend (I grew up in Pleasantville j/k)

Tweety, what is Pleasantville? I sense that by your "j/k" that it was the fictional Los Angeles-area neighborhood in which the Brady family lived.

Originally posted by James
Tweety, what is Pleasantville? I sense that by your "j/k" that it was the fictional Los Angeles-area neighborhood in which the Brady family lived.


Naw, I was just kidding around with that comment. The town I grew up in was similar to Pleasantville (from the movie of that title) because nothing much exciting ever really happened there, it was just an ordinary town with a lot of ordinary days...

My (so-called) "joke" was really the fact that the most exciting thing to happen in my town the weekend Season five of the Brady Bunch premiered was seeing the "new" Jan in the opening credits. And (true story) it was a big topic of conversation between my friends and I in the days that followed...we all fell in love with Jan that weekend, as we realized that she'd passed Marcia in the looks department (left her in the dust, some of us thought, although that's a bit harsh of a statement).