The Bradys is an American comedy-drama television series that aired on CBS from February 9 to March 9, 1990. The series is a sequel and continuation of the original 1969-1974 sitcomThe Brady Bunch, focusing on its main characters as adults, and was the second such continuation after the short-lived 1981 sitcom The Brady Brides. Airing on Friday nights, The Bradys failed in the ratings against the popular TGIF lineup on ABC and was canceled after one month, with the last of six produced episodes airing on March 9, 1990. In its short run, the show went through three different theme songs based on that of The Brady Bunch, the last featuring revised lyrics sung by Florence Henderson.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas as Kevin Brady, Greg's and Nora's son
Michael Melby as Mickey Logan, Marcia's and Wally's son
Jaclyn Bernstein as Jessica Logan, Marcia's and Wally's daughter
Valerie Ick as Patty Covington, Jan's and Philip's adopted daughter from Korea
Influence and casting
In 1988, CBS commissioned a Brady Bunch reunion telefilm for its Christmas season programming. A Very Brady Christmas premiered on December 18, 1988 and drew a 25.1 rating and 39 share, very high ratings for a television film at the time. The success of the film convinced series creator Sherwood Schwartz that a new Brady family TV series could be a hit, and work began on the show in December 1989. CBS re-aired A Very Brady Christmas on December 22, 1989, using it as a promotional tool for the upcoming new show. Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, Ann B. Davis, Barry Williams, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Mike Lookinland and Susan Olsen all returned in their original Brady Bunch roles, and Jerry Houser and Ron Kuhlman reprised their roles from The Brady Brides. Leah Ayres played Marcia because Maureen McCormick declined the role.
Style
The Bradys involved more dramatic storytelling than that which viewers had seen in the previous Brady series. Unlike the original 30-minute sitcom, The Bradys was an hour long and featured far more serious plot lines. Among them:
Family patriarch Mike begins a political career.
Bobby's budding auto-racing career ends abruptly in the first episode after an accident leaves him a paraplegic. As he recovers, he marries his college girlfriend.
Peter breaks up with his fiancée, to whom he became engaged in A Very Brady Christmas, and begins dating the abusive daughter of Mike's political rival.
Jan and Philip, unable to conceive children of their own, adopt a Korean girl named Patty.
Stay-at-home mother Marcia battles alcoholism while Wally loses yet another in a series of jobs, the latest being as Mike's campaign manager. Wally and Marcia, who have been forced to move in with Mike and Carol along with their two children, open a catering business to support their family.
Radio host Cindy begins a romance with her boss, a widower more than ten years her senior who has two children.
Despite the more dramatic tone, the show did include a laugh track.
Cancellation
The show was put on hiatus with plans to continue sometime later in the year, but production never resumed and The Bradys was quietly canceled after six episodes had aired. Following the premiere, which had semi-decent ratings, the show was among CBS' lowest-watched each week until its cancellation, only once outperforming another show, an episode of Tour of Duty. At the time, it was thought that the audience was simply unwilling to accept the sitcom characters in a more dramatic setting. The situation was further complicated by the show's time slot. When The Bradys launched, CBS placed it in the 8:00 p.m. slot on Friday nights, making it the third show of the season to lead off the network's Friday lineup; the other two, Snoops and Max Monroe: Loose Cannon, both flopped. The network placed the show against the comedy hits Full House and Family Matters, which comprised the first half of ABC's Friday night TGIF lineup. In Barry Williams' autobiography Growing Up Brady: I Was A Teenage Greg, he stated that when the initial two-hour episode aired, ratings were poor for the first hour, but when the second hour aired, the show won its time slot and the producers believed a change could be beneficial. The second hour, however, was the 9:00 p.m. hour that long been home to CBS' Friday stalwart, Dallas. Although Dallas had been slipping in the ratings for several years, CBS was unwilling to move the program to accommodate The Bradys, as doing so would have resulted in the displacement of both Dallas and the show that followed, the equally ratings-challenged Falcon Crest. Although CBS would eventually move both shows before the season ended, it did so after The Bradys was canceled. This would prove to be Robert Reed's final role of any significance. He fell ill in 1991, suffering from a combination of colon and bladder cancer that was exacerbated by his development of HIV, and died in May 1992.
Episodes
Notes
"Start Your Engines" and "Here We Grow Again" were later repackaged as a two-hour movie titled The Brady 500.
"A Moving Experience" and "Hat in the Ring" were later repackaged as a two-hour movie titled The Bradys on the Move.
"Bottom's Up" and "The Party Girls" were later repackaged as a two-hour movie titled Big Kids, Big Problems.
