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We bet Sherwood Schwartz can convince you that Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch are the same show
"Once you put a family together, you can’t get away."
Sherwood Schwartz was one of the 1960s' brightest TV writers. He created two of the decade's most enduring TV shows: Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch. One is about a group of castaways from all walks of life who must learn to navigate the strange circumstance of being stuck on the same desert island. The other is about two families with kids of all ages, who come together under one roof and must learn to get along.
Fans of both shows would likely never confuse one for the other, but to the series creator? According to his son Lloyd Schwartz in a recent interview, Schwartz saw The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island as the same basic show. Here's why:
“In essence, people from different places have to come together and make it work. That’s what Gilligan was. In that case, [Schwartz] wanted to get people from very different strata of life and put them together in such a way that they couldn’t get away from each other and had to make it work. That’s the same thing with a family. Once you put a family together, you can’t get away. I think many people respond to that basic idea."
It's the pefect message to end the year, so next time you're watching the Brady kids experience a growing pain or a castaway struggling to relate to another, keep in mind that Sherwood Schwartz would want you to see the two plots as pointing to the same message. According to Lloyd Schwartz, "He always said, ‘God, we’ve got to get along. We’re all in this together,’ and he was talking about the world in general. I think that’s why [his shows] resonated for so long.”
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