Blast from the Past: Special RIP Sherwood Schwartz Edition

Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of two of the most insipid sitcom guilty pleasures, The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island died this week. Schwartz not only created these two (in)famous shows, he raised a generation of early cable TV children to consume repeated viewings of the same show over and over. And he squeezed every drop he could out of those shows, turning them into franchises. Below are clips from the various and sundry spin offs, sequels and remakes.
Let's start with the openings from the original shows, starting with Gilligan's Island's two famous intros.


And then two of the Brady Bunch themes.


But Sherwood wasn't done, no, no! There were the animated shows! How about Gilligan's Planet and The Brady Kids?


Read more after the break. . .



There was at least one more Gilligan cartoon, but the next big installments in the franchise were the reunion movies, which culminated in The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island. Yes, really. Which makes the Brady follow-up, The Brady Girls Get Married/The Brady Brides look positively top notch.


But I got a little ahead of myself there. I forgot about The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, a horrific mash-up of sitcom and Donnie & Marie-type variety show. It absolutely takes the cake for Gilligan/Brady dreck. That was in the late 70s, and it took them all the way until the 90s to come out with A Very Brady Christmas which lead to just The Bradys.


The Bradys was dismal, though the Christmas movie that it was birthed from would see its title appropriated when the fantastic spoofs, The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel came out.



After that burst of brilliance, it was downhill from there. There was a "Real" Gilligan's Island reality show competition, and a dreadful TV movie that tried to follow A Very Brady Sequel by putting the Bradys in the White House. But even with a higher ratio of misses to hits, and even with Sherwood Schwartz dead, they're probably going to keep going.