The “Brady Bunch” is getting some modern touches for a 21st century relaunch: Mike and Carol were previously married, and their respective ex-spouses are still in their lives. Plus, they have a kid together. No word regarding Alice or Sam the Butcher’s revised characters (the best butcher shop I know in Los Angeles, Lindy and Grundy, is run by a lovely couple, Amelia and Erika, so butcher shops still exist, and Alice might end up being an older tattooed hipster nanny/manny which could be interesting). Vince Vaughn is producing, and the project is at CBS
Growing up in SoCal, where almost everyone I knew was a kid with divorced parents like me, both The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family seemed to be about divorce, and a way of helping kids cope with being in a blended family (as we call them now), or having a single parent. I always wanted an episode of The Partridge Family where the kids’ dad reappears and wants to take Danny with him…
Deadline Hollywood, which broke the story, points out that in 1969, the show’s creator Sherwood Schwartz (the man behind My Favorite Martian and Gilligan’s Island), a true television genius who addresses vital societal issues in his sitcoms:
wanted Carol to be a divorcée but the network refused, so the end of her first marriage was never addressed.
According to Primetime Propaganda, a new book by conservative author Ben Shapiro, there is a huge underground river of liberal propaganda that subtly (and not so subtly) flows into American television. Conservatives lost the TV war, he weeps, rending his cable guide.
Well, sure, All in the Family, Maude and Saturday Night Live certainly presented alternatives to conservative values. But Happy Days?
Happy Days seemed so wholesome, so All-American, set in the idealized and idyllic 1950s, post-Korean War, pre-Viet Nam era when father knew best (which was to leaving it to Beaver).
Happy Days was a pilot for the 1972 television season, but it got shelved. It was then resurrected as an episode of Love American Style. After Ron Howard shot to success in American Graffiti, the nostalgia-laden series was a no-brainer. The 50s were back! Happy Days debuted in the fall of 1974, the Fall of Saigon was six months later. In an interview with staff writer Ben Shapiro gleaned this nugget:
The draft and the specter of military service do appear in Happy Days, but not until late into the series run. In season 10, Fonzie must report for Army Reserve duty. Earlier, in 1981′s season 7 (to accommodate Ron Howard’s directorial career), his character Richie Cunningham and buddy Ralph were written out. The red-haired duo are apparently drafted and sent to “Fort Silverman” where Richie is assigned to scrub latrines (he’d applied to write for the camp newspaper). Later, Richie is sent to Greenland for his tour of duty, where he marries his girlfriend over the phone, impregnating her when she flew to Greenland to visit him. Richie returns in the last season with mustache and attitude, not because he saw any action, but because he is unhappy that he may be trapped in his hometown – he does seem a little edgy, as the clip above shows.
Shapiro also deconstructs Three’s Company, Friends, MacGyver (which was anti-gun, according to Shapiro) and of course Sesame Street. Today in Big Hollywood he writes:
Sesame Street’s liberalism is soft and overarching, not intrusive and annoying. The Sesame Street website lectures Americans about their deep, dark cultural biases ordering parents to examine “your own cultural assumptions and biases” as a “good place to begin your anti-bias work.” The website also tells parents to “try to use gender-neutral language … [use] words such as firefighter, flight attendant, garbage collector, and humankind to replace the use of ‘man’ as a generic noun or ending.” The goal, of course, is to parrot the feminist line about language’s inherent sexism. The website also encourages parents to find toys and books with characters “that break stereotypes about men and women, for example, dolls for boys and building toys and puzzles for girls.” Larry Summers has amply debunked such nonsense – it’s leftist utopian thinking at its finest, fostered with your tax dollars.
Wow, you know Gilligan’s Island is actually a parable for all the continents on Earth getting along, per creator Sherwood Schwartz. Just saying…
