Would The Partridge Family have lasted longer if Ricky never existed?

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Originally Posted by GentlemanJim

I believe that the main thing that killed the show was the groups declining popularity.
It's biggest fans were growing older, and their tastes in music were evolving. And I say this from experience.

There just came a day for me where a band lead by their mother just didn't seem as hip as Alice Cooper. Then.......Deep Purple. And after a friend brought over a Black Sabbath album one day,..I no longer wanted anything to do with kiddie-pop.

Oh, I'm sure that there were die hard fans who played their records until the grooves wore out.....even today I can listen to bands like Ohio Express, in small doses, and find enjoyment in it.
But back in the day there was a strong incentive to try to find the cutting edge, and ride it.

And I just recall that (from my perspective) the Partridge family took on a "too tame" aura right about the same time I felt that I needed to grow up.

I also wonder if The Partridge Family and by extension, The Brady Bunch, were simply victims of a changing TV landscape. It seemed like the big sitcoms on American TV come 1973-74 were the stuff that Norman Lear and MTM were putting out. They weren't exactly "wholesome" family sitcoms as far as I could tell.

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Originally Posted by Cocoa8

I just saw the episode where Ricky was introduced. I thought it was cute. His mom was a hot mess! I thought Ricky was cute, did he only make cameos or was he a regular during season 4? Maybe if they had only let him act versus the annoying singing, maybe there would have been better reception. That was a little disturbing when he told Keith his older sister had a great body. Come on! The kid was only 5 or 6 the most. Did his mom or sis appear any more times on the show.?

In Season 4, it seemed like the producers were dead set on introducing new young characters to interact with the Partridge family and have them be recurring characters. It wasn't just Ricky but older kids like identical twins David and Andy Williams (Andy Williams’ nephews) and Reuben Kincaid’s nephew, Alan.

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I think a main issue with Ricky that probably hasn't been addressed yet is that they didn't really know where to go with his character since the main conflict involving his mom and the Partridges was resolved by the end of Ricky's first episode. So of course, we never see Ricky's mom or his sister again for the rest of the season. Ricky's mom could've been something of a recurring antagonist to Shirley had they played their cards differently.

Instead, Ricky's mere presence just screws up the show's dynamic. I mean, the show already had a couple of cute little kids in the form of Chris and Tracy, but the writers/producers never seemed to want to develop them. So at the end of the day, they always seemed like window dressing even before Ricky's arrival.

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Originally Posted by MIKEPR

While the scheduling info is correct David also announced before the 4th season that he was going to quit.

He mentions it in The 1998 VH-1 Behind The Music episode and TPF episode from the following year says the same.


Plus I can't see why anyone would have stopped watching because of Ricky.

I was just watching the final episode, "· ...---... (S.O.S.)" the other day, and there seemed to be little inclination that this was going to be absolutely, the final episode in terms of providing a real sense of closure. It just comes across as like any other episode.

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Originally Posted by um

The "2200 A.D." show was meant for Saturday morning kid's viewing and was not actually a "replacement" for the original Partridge Family TV show.
It did seem odd though that since a lot of teens were into the original Partridge Family, a Saturday-morning spinoff was ever made.

The cartoon show was more for kindergartners or maybe kids up to age 8. The teen fans of the original Partridge Family would know that the cartoon was based on the TV show and some might have watched the cartoon just because it was all they had of their favorite show. And of course by the time a lot of teens reached their mid to late teens they completely out-grew The Partridge Family music and the main heartthrob but, much younger kids who watch Saturday morning cartoons might not exactly have gotten the concept and might not have known the original "Partridge Family" before the cartoon.

It seems that a lot of the comments on this thread are from people who were not around when the original series first aired. There is a lot of misunderstanding of what happened with the course of the show in the 4 seasons that it lasted.
The fact is that the ratings were dwindling a good amount of time before it went off the air, even by early the third season. The people in charge of the show and TV time slots felt it was time to make a maneuver that would eventually take the show off the air completely. The addition of Ricky has
had speculations. Some say it was to attract viewers to a much younger audience than the teen audience that the show originally attracted sine that audience was growing a few years older and were no longer into the soft pop and the bubble gum image of the characters.
The show was definitely headed for the chopping block significantly before the addition of Ricky. The Partridge Family just Jumped The Shark. (Don't forget that the the very term was coined because someone noticed that the TV show "Happy Days" came to a point where the episodes were dull and stupid and lacked creativity or wit, and decided to use the term because of one particularly boring episode in which "Fonzie" supposedly jumps over a toy shark, which is an episode I never saw but looking at re-run snippets on YouTube it seems he never jumped over any shark and "Fonzie" was always a dislikable character who I think should have been shown being eaten by a shark . That would have gotten better ratings. I never could understand how "Fonzie" became so popular.

But also as far as the cancellation of The Partridge Family, as a lot of us know the Brady Bunch very much had the same fate coming to them and they too Jumped The Shark essentially at the same time. And they added "Cousin Oliver" in the same spirit.

I think I mentioned this in this or other posts. The Partridge Family, I would say, started out as a good concept because it was within the mood of the times, the early 1970's. The music even though it was easy-listening rather than Punk rock had its place.
However it should have lasted no more than two seasons. When it comes to TV shows, there are only re-hashes of plots and episodes and eventually trying to find new situations for main characters gets to where it cannot be done, and shows that lasted much longer such as All In The Family and MASH just stayed on the air too long even though they are now considered classic sitcoms.

The fundamental problem with a show like The Partridge Family is that there were few actually developed or defined characters with distinct personalities. You can tell that most of the creative effort went into the songs over character driven plot points. So the plots themselves on The Partridge Family often wound up becoming pretty inert.

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Originally Posted by sixfingers

No, it wouldn't have lasted longer just as Brady Bunch wouldn't have lasted longer without Cousin Oliver.

Even without Cousin Oliver, The Brady Bunch already had over 100 episodes (which was the minimum threshold for syndication) by the time that it ended. Plus, the show was never really that big of a ratings. It had steady ratings but it never cracked the top 30 in the Nielsens. And keep in mind that there were only three American TV networks that were around at the time. You also had a very problematic star in Robert Reed, who among other things, flat out refused to appear in what would be the series finale.