Civil liberties

Weird Brady Moment

I flipped past TV Land and caught a few minutes of a first-season episode of The Brady Bunch -- the one with the kids fighting about the club house and sharing, etc. Carol asks Mike how he'd feel if the boys wanted to play with the girls' doll house. And Mike replied something like, "If the boys wanted to play with the doll house, I'd take them to a psychiatrist." Big laugh track guffaws. Get it? Playing with a doll house is the gay -- and therefore crazy.

Two things. First, Robert Reed was gay (closeted) and it probably pained him on some level to read such a line -- on top of the fact that he was a little embarrassed to have to take the role in the first place. But more importantly, it's such a weird snapshot of the times. Homosexuality as a mental disorder, and the resulting comedy derived from making it seem like a batshit crazy psychosis.