I think it's a good thing that Robert Reed labored so long and hard to keep realism in the show. You can see his influence in several scripts and story lines especially after the first season when the kids got older and the situations had somewhat of a more realistic less comody oriented focuss. Tam Spiva was a script editor on the show and a close friend of Reeds and worked with him on some scripts. If you see her name as script editor, you know it's a great episode. In fact she worked on 2 of my favorite episodes. "Bobby's Hero" and "Her Sister's Shadow" Credit should be given to Robert for suggesting bringing her in as a script editor. I think she also was script editor for "The Dropout" which is also very well done.

I agree with you, I definitely see some influence by Robert Reed on some of the scripts. Tam Spiva is a man though, he was interviewed on the A&E Biography special on Robert Reed...

I think it was a good thing that Robert Reed tried to maintain a higher quality in the scripts and keep Sherwood Schwartz from allowing the show to sink to the Gilligan's Island level. If not for Reed we may have had a lot more "Skip Farnum" type episodes and less of the memorable ones that make the series so endlessly watchable.

BTW I thought Tam Spiva was a woman too!

So True Jack1000! Without his influ., some of the shows would be so fricken corny!