'The Brady Bunch' Book: Take a New Look at TV's Favorite Family

There are many entertainment brands out there in danger of overexposure, but The Brady Bunch obviously isn’t one of them. Even after starring in their original Classic TV series 50 years ago, a Saturday morning cartoon version of themselves, their own variety show and even the recent reality series A Very Brady Renovation, there is still more to know about this bunch — as revealed by author Kimberly Potts in her new book, The Way We All Became the Brady Bunch.

Kim, who serves as co-host of the podcast Pop Literacy, admits she did have to carefully consider the idea of giving the world what would be yet another book on the subject, especially since she feels that Barry Williams’ autobiography Growing Up Brady stands a true biography of the show itself.

brady-bunch-book-cover — Grand Central Publishing

“For me,” she says, “the statistic that made me most interested in doing a book on The Brady Bunch was that the show had never finished a season higher than 31 in the ratings, and the reason that was such a surprise is just how enduring it is and how influential it continues to be in pop culture. I would say half the book is the history of the show, but just as important is that it’s a history of of how influential it has been on all these other shows, and not just the spinoffs of the show itself, but other pop culture properties that have been impacted by it. Just how many times that opening credit sequence has been paid homage to. So that was really why I thought there needed to be a book that paid tribute to its place in TV history, which it’s earned.”

Kimberly points out that writer/producer Vince Gilligan did an X-Files episode with a Brady Bunch theme, there have been no fewer than five XXX-rated Brady movies, TV sitcoms have done Brady-inspired episodes and, of course, there are all of those spin-offs from the classic series featuring the original cast. The real question is why the show connects the way that it does, because, if one was to be honest, many of those episodes are …. dopey, at best.

brady-bunch-susan-olsen-christopher-knight-maureen-mccormick — Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

“In terms of the episodes themselves,” Kim suggests, “I think, beyond any silliness, it’s the simplicity. People remember them fondly. I know when I was in college, and the episodes were airing, I believe on TBS, we would turn it on and kind of play a game to see who could most quickly remember which episode or what the plotline was. It’s just something that people bond over as comfort food TV. They were simple plotlines where there were two parents and a bonus mom in the form of Alice, who were waiting there for them every single day when they got home from school and whatever their little problem was in the scheme of things, it was the most important thing that was gong on in that household.”

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Brady Identification

“And who didn’t want a childhood like that?” Kim continues with a laugh. “If you had that kind of childhood, you identified with it. If you didn’t, you wished for it. Either way, it’s still very comforting. I really do feel that the simplicity series creator Sherwood Schwartz clung to, and his insistence on a lighter approach, was the right way to go when everyone around him was telling him that it should be a little more serious, a little more realistic. In the end it kind of bore out that he was onto something, which is why all these years later we still can look to it and still get joy out of it.”

The Bradys Differed From Other Kid Stars

Having done thorough research and conducted interviews with cast members, one does tend to wonder what sort of revelations Kim may have come out with at the end of the writing process. “When we think of former child stars,” she suggests, “we think of the ‘80s and the Diff’rent Strokes kids and a lot of things that have come out of that. Obviously there’s Ron Howard who everybody points to when they say, ‘Well, not every child star has things turn out badly for them,’ but he’s the only one that anybody can ever name. For the most part, the Brady kids — and it seems funny to call them that now — turned out pretty well too. I think that a big reason for that is that they did have each other on the set. And that there were other people looking out for them.”

‘Let Them Be Kids’

Elaborates Kim, “The set teacher was a protector of them and did a lot to make sure that they got play time and that the union rules were followed in terms of how often they could work and how many hours they could work. Schwartz, as producer, was the one to take care of them and when Paramount executives didn’t want them running around the lot, he kind of fought back and said, ‘No, they’re kids. They should be able to explore and do things. Obviously we don’t want them to be in danger, but let them be kids.’ Also, they all have had such varying thoughts and feelings about the show and its place in their lives — and their characters — across 50 years. All of them have had points where they’ve been bitter about it, where they thought it was going to lead to a lot more work and it didn’t.”

Career Disappointments

“Susan Olsen told me about how they would, a few years after the show, be called in for auditions and think, ‘Wow, this is cool; I’m going to get this good role and it’s going to allow me to break out of being Cindy.’ But then she would get there and find that these executives just wanted to be able to tell their friends that they met Cindy Brady, and had no interest whatsoever in casting her. But after that, with the reunions in the 1980s and 1990s and all the way to today, you can see where they’re being interviewed, even during the renovation series, they’re kind of surprised by just how many people seem to not just be interested in the show, but really loved the show. They’re getting to see, again, that the show does have a place in pop culture and TV history, which I don’t think is always the feeling they’ve gotten from fans. This show has been such a big part of their lives and it’s fascinating to consider how they’ve felt differently about it at different stages of their lives. And for very good reasons. But they’ve weathered the storms of trying to work in Hollywood with various levels of success along the way.”

A Very Brady Future

With A Very Brady Renovation behind them and A Very Brady Renovation: Holiday Edition coming December 16, the question is what lies ahead for the kids who would be Brady. As Susan Olsen told Closer, any future reunion won’t be in the form of their characters. “Once we were allowed to be ourselves [on the renovation show], there’s no going back. Every time we go back to play those characters, it stinks!” That hurts, Susan.

One idea Kim has is a reality show in which the actors live together for a finite amount of time in the reconstructed Brady house as featured in HGTV’s show. “Think about it,” she laughs, “Chris Knight did The Surreal Life, Maureen McCormick did Celebrity Fit Club, where I think contestants also lived together while they were filming those shows. Getting them to do that for a week or two would be very interesting. It would also be interesting to see their relationship with each other and their personalities really come out if they did live together, especially in that house, which is automatically going to bring back a lot of memories of their relationship throughout the years.”

Imagine the Diary Room!

A reality show as described above could actually be a lot of fun, especially when the actors are losing it and go into the diary room to start complaining about each other. “They certainly have had their sibling-like squabbles over the years,” enthuses Kim, obviously getting into the idea, “and some of them have been public. See, that’s what I’m saying: If you live together, even for a week or two, it would be very interesting. Think about it: When people go on vacation and you’re in one place together with a long history … it would be like a group of real siblings living together in their childhood home for a week. Things would happen. Real feelings would come out, past arguments would be revisited. As a Brady fan, who doesn’t want to see that?” Hey, HGTV, are you listening?

A Very Brady Legacy

Looking back at 50 years of The Brady Bunch, and having done all of the research Kim did for her book, how exactly does Kim view the legacy of the bunch named Brady? “What sums it up for me,” she reflects, “is the fact that the title, The Brady Bunch, is a phrase that’s synonymous to describe happy families, large families, blended families. That really says it all. To me, that is what people think of. And not just in terms of other TV shows or movies or pop culture — it’s applied in real life. People say things like, ‘They’re not exactly The Brady Bunch,’ or ‘This is our version of The Brady Bunch.’

“Again, it was a simple concept about family, about these kids who fought and did all the same things that other kids did. But at the end of the day they had this safe environment where they could go to and parents who loved them and created this safe haven for them. Who cared about their problems and helped to solve them, and who cared about what kind of people they were being in the world and what kind of people they would turn out to be. It really is kind of the ultimate family sitcom. I’m not saying the most realistic or the best, but we remember them fondly and they make us feel good when we watch it,” Kim concludes. “That’s it’s legacy. That’s its place in pop culture history.”

The Way We All Became The Brady Bunch is available now through Amazon and wherever books are sold.