Though it’s now considered one of the classic American sitcoms, when it originally aired, The Brady Bunch never made it into the top 30 most popular American TV shows — and according to Eve Plumb, who played middle daughter Jan Brady, the show was also “not considered relevant.”

In a 2023 interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Plumb said of the show, “You have to remember, The Brady Bunch was really not popular or considered interesting at the time. It’s only after the fact that all of these themes and digging into it and discussing and figuring it out has happened. … [The series] was not considered relevant. It was considered saccharine, and the concurrent shows were like Mod Squad and other hard-hitting TV shows, so we were seen as filler. … It was considered very safe, and I think that was our lane and we stayed in it.”