In 2008, I wrote: “We need to see LGBT parents not only creating families, but also raising children with all the ups and downs of families everywhere. When we see an LGBT version of The Brady Bunch, we’ll know we have made progress.” Is The Fosters, ABC Family’s new drama about a multiracial lesbian couple and their biological, adopted, and foster kids, that show?
The Fosters premiered last night, and I have a fuller review of the first episode in my Mombian newspaper column this week. I’ll post that here once it appears in print, but I thought I’d offer an additional brief reflection on the Brady Bunch question while you’re still digesting all the great posts from Blogging for LGBT Families Day.
In one scene of The Fosters’ pilot, Stef says, “We are not the Brady Bunch.” She’s right, to the extent that they’re not as cheesy, corny, or Pollyannaish as that show.
The Brady Bunch, however, was stepping into fairly new territory when it launched in 1969, simply because it was showing a blended family, not one not created entirely from the same biological mom and dad. Mike Brady was a widower; Carol’s status as widower or divorcée wasn’t clear (which in itself indicates the subject was touchy). The show, in its first season, dealt with the adjustments the children had to make to each other—similar to the adjustments we see in The Fosters. And its last season showed an episode, originally intended to be a spinoff series, in which the Brady’s neighbors adopted three boys who were White, Black, and Asian, respectively—and encountered a biased neighbor. The Brady Bunch may have a well-deserved reputation for saccharinity, but it had its moments of exploring what it meant to be a non-traditional family.
The Brady Bunch was more purely a kids’ show than The Fosters is—but as I explain more in my column, one of the strengths of The Fosters is that it is one of the few shows to depict a same-sex couple with teens instead of toddlers, and one of even fewer to show much of the action from the teens’ perspectives. As such, it should appeal both to us parents and to our older children, who may find reflections of themselves in some of the characters. That’s very welcome—and perhaps echoes the reason so many children found The Brady Bunch appealing. They could relate to the characters.
So: Tone-wise, no. The Fosters is a serious drama, not a sitcom like The Brady Bunch. But like The Brady Bunch, it’s about a non-traditional family living in California with a lot of kids, who sometimes grapple with “issues of their time” and sometimes just bicker about homework and dating. To that extent, it is the show I hoped for five years ago.
One further question that lingers in my mind: ABC and ABC Family are owned by Disney. Could the success of Modern Family and (one hopes) The Fosters mean the House of Mouse will soon consider being LGBT-inclusive in its programming for younger children? That’s my hope for sometime within the next five years.