Fear & Loathing Becomes Da-da: The Brady Bunch

 
Now that it's officially summer, it's SO time for fetish rehashing. Don't worry, you all love fetish rehashing.

Speaking of entirely tenable segues, The Brady Bunch invokes both fetish and solace AND dread -- no, really -- in a combination Nietzschean/Xmas dervishnessity (what?) and Julie Andrewsian Halloween horreur sympathique that can only be removed with eloquence wax. Bad writing aside, The Brady Bunch conjures SOLACE in Da-da, as it reminds him of his insane, singular childhood, which revolved around his sibling, TELEVISION, and dreadwise as The Brady Bunch reminds Da-da of his insane, singular childhood -- and the horror he could've experienced if he'd not had the good sense to stop having psychotic children. Does that read right?

Yes, Da-da starts to sweat when he thinks about living in the same house with six kids, with each sex sharing a group room -- and those rooms abutt one another -- not to mention the fact that both factions share a common bathroom. Six kids + one bathroom = more dead spouses, provided one of the spouses doesn't go Freddy.

Then there's the unspoken question about what exactly happened to Greg and Carol Brady's previous spouses. It's never mentioned. They're both mysteriously labeled as, "widowers," both of them looking innocent with blue suitcases around them, but the details are always glossed over, and what's really in the suitcases? Are all these smiling, happy-faced white people closet axe murderers? Or schizoid poisoners? Recalcitrant, ham-handed pastry chefs? Unrepentant ROTARIANS?? Come on, anyone with three boys is a suspect for going off the deep end, three girls not so much: with three girls you pretty much just wake up with your toenails painted and your hair braided. Team up three boys and you've got Lord of the Flies.

And what, pray tell, happened to Fluffy, the girls' cat which they could not live without in the first episode? Was it, like the two dead spouses, stuffed and mounted in the Brady's secret family crypt, rumored to exist deep below the Brady manse? Or fed to Tiger, the dog? And did this unspoken tie-in between the dead cat and rotting spouses in the blue suitcases have anything to do with Florence Henderson hawking Wesson oil?? Disgusting.

So many unanswered questions. So little interest. Suffice to say that Da-da has an eidetic memory and has every inane theme song, smell and image from the '70s memorized, which might give you, gentle reader, some deep-pile shag understanding of The Gothic Horror that is Da-da.

An estranged and bitter Fluffy still stalks some of the Brady Bunch cast.