I love television: "Bobby's Hero"

The stock Brady Bunch episode is a dependably pleasant way to spend 30 minutes. This is saying something. Being able to count on a pleasant 30 minutes is valuable, and The Brady Bunch consistently delivers. And in the competent, proven hands of a pro writer like the late Michael Morris, born “Misha Stutchkoff” in Russia, The Brady Bunch can shine. Take Morris’s episode “Bobby’s Hero,” for example.

The youngest of the three Brady boys has identified Jesse James as his hero. The rest of the episode is occupied with his parents' wrestling with how to break him of his idol. It’s not an uncommon storyline for the time, but it’s perhaps even more topical today with so much media able to create so many heroes so quickly and on such flimsy foundations.

Carol and Mike's first tactic is to allow the popular media to redirect Bobby’s interests. They allow him to stay up late to watch a Jesse James biopic on TV. Carol and Mike are familiar with the movie.

Mike: “Honey, Jesse James must've killed 45 people in that picture.”

Carol: “That was before the credits.”

Carol and Mike stay up with Bobby to watch the movie, but the plan backfires because the killings have been edited out for the TV showing of the movie.

Carol and Mike’s next tactic is to retreat—to let Bobby “grow out of it.” This, too, fails. Bobby's behavior seems to grow more and more shaped by the Jessie James myths of which he was fond.

Finally, Carol and Mike decide to appeal to Bobby directly with facts. Mike checks out biographies of Jesse James from the public library (the Bradys are huge library fans; Mike returns about a dozen books when he goes to the library to check out the James bios) and even goes so far to invite one of the authors to the Brady home. The author tells Bobby of James’s murdering his dad, and, finally, Bobby is broken of the spell.

There’s a secondary storyline of Mike preparing, losing and finding a speech for a conference of architects. By weighting the stories as he does, Morris and The Brady Bunch show us again that parenting is the bigger job for Mike than is excelling as an architect. By the same token, the episode also accurately portrays all of life happening at once for Mike. It’s not as though he gets to forget his professional concerns just because a parenting pecadillio (or vice versa) has cropped up. These are not especially complex themes; nor are they exactly rare in the realm of sitcoms. But they're perfectly valid themes, consistently and competently told throughout the run of The Brady Bunch.

One more thing ...

There's a pretty interesting dinner-table conversation about midway through the episode. The whole family is talking about their different heroes, in hopes of pulling Bobby away from Jesse James. Cindy mentions once having written a composition about Joan of Arc. Bobby says something along the lines of, “That's OK for you; you've got a lot better chance of becoming a woman than I have.” And everybody laughs. Peter mentions his fondness for George Washington. Bobby: “Fat chance I've got of being father of my country.” And everybody laughs a little harder. Greg says there are plenty of worthy heroes alive and available today, suggesting Wilt Chamberlain. His dad confirms this choice. Bobby: “Yeah, some chance I have of being 7-feet-2.” Everybody laughs the hardest yet, and there's a scene change.

In the original episode, however, Bobby extends the line: “Yeah, some chance I have of being 7-feet-2 ... and black!” In at least some syndicated airings of the show, Morris’s intended punchline has been edited out.

But this is selling Morris’s writing short. Throughout the episode, Carol and Mike are intentional to not polarize the conversation. They need to be careful to keep Bobby in the fold and not squander their opportunity to influence. Carol and Mike also didn’t outright reject the notion that Bobby couldn't possibly emulate Joan of Arc, but chuckling along with the whole family indicates where they stand. I think Morris was doing the same thing with the parents' and family's reaction to Bobby's white/black silliness.