Watched: 11/10/2023
Format: Amazon
Viewing: Unknown
Director: Betty Thomas
November of 2023 is about 28 years from when The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) was released. Which is funny, because the TV show, The Brady Bunch, which this movie spoofs, ran from September 1969 to March 1974, meaning the movie - which was sending up the show was only separated from the final air date by 21 years. That's some math, but we're~7 years further out now from this movie than we were from the show when the movie arrived.
While the US is too large and has too many people to have a monoculture, due to the nature of broadcast TV, and then early cable, in the 20th Century there was a shared experience for the youth of the United States in the form of mass entertainment. With a minimum of programming aimed at youth, for millions of us, the politely banal episodic adventures of The Brady Bunch, playing in mid-afternoon reruns, were a common touchpoint. As were a handful of other shows, to be sure.*
Musical tastes of the time could vary - you might like country or R&B or rock or metal - but you only had so many channels to pick from. I cannot imagine today's kids have a concept of wanting to unwind after latch-keying oneself into your empty house after a long day at school and watching some TV, and, really, there's maybe two options across your 4 to 30-odd channels (if your folks sprung for cable).
So it was that, thanks to the power of cheap syndication, for about 20 years, The Brady Bunch aired daily, sometimes multiple episodes, as the six kids, two parents and their maid acted like weird, alternate-reality stepford wives and children, making mountains out of mole hills and speaking in an almost otherwordly way that became a common cultural currency for kids to discuss, make fun of, etc.... The tendency of TV execs to want to sanitize the world was so harsh and weird, it was like bleach had killed anything resembling actual life.
