The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island

Two of my favorite shows growing up were The Brady Bunch  and Gilligan's Island. Both shows aired in the afternoon when I got home from school. They were shows that required absolutely no brain power whatsoever, and were good shows to transition from school to home to evening activities and homework.

The Brady Bunch involved two adults who each had three children. The father, Mike Brady (Robert Reed), was a widowed architect with sons, Greg (Barry Williams), Peter (Christopher Knight), and Bobby (Mike Lookinland). The mother, Carol Ann Martin (Florence Henderson), had three daughters: Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb), and Cindy (Susan Olsen).

The blended family, Mike's live-in housekeeper Alice Nelson (Ann B. Davis), and the boys' dog Tiger all end up living in a large, suburban, two-story house that was designed by Mike.

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What I liked about The Brady Bunch was that the girls were around the same age that I was when the show aired. My sister and I would pick who we "would be" for that show. We liked being Jan and Cindy. For some reason, we rarely picked Marcia. I think she was too old for us and had different issues. Jan had the long hair (which we both wanted) and Cindy had the cute curls (which we also wanted).

The other show that I liked was Gilligan's Island. It was created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz who also later created The Brady Bunch. Gilligan's Island was a comedy that featured Bob Denver; Alan Hale, Jr.; Jim Backus; Natalie Schafer; Tina Louise; Russell Johnson; and Dawn Wells. It was originally filmed from 1964 to 1967. So, by the time I was watching it, it was in syndication.

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Basically, seven people went on a boat, there was a storm, and they became shipwrecked on an island. The castaways attempted to survive on the island on which they had been shipwrecked. Most episodes revolved around the how different the castaways were from one another, their conflicts, and their failed attempts to return home.

I remember watching the shows repeatedly throughout my childhood. My dad would come home from work and say as he headed down the stairs to his home office, "You've already watched that show."

And we would always answer, "Oh...but we don't remember all of it." In all honesty, I think we probably could have recited the lines word-for-word from some of those episodes.

Regardless of how many times we watched The Brady Bunch or Gilligan's Island, we would laugh and enjoy those shows...like we were seeing them for the first time each time we watched them.