Hope Sterling: Hi, hello, good to be here, okay I cannot — I have been sitting on this since yesterday and I need to say it immediately.
Finn Brooks: You texted me like four times last night so I already know this is going to be unhinged.
Hope Sterling: Ke Huy Quan — Goonies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the man, the legend — was in a CBS sitcom in 1986 called Together We Stand, and like, nobody remembers it exists. It is not in his filmography summaries, it just... isn't there.
Finn Brooks: Wait, okay, but you're already skipping the insane part —
Hope Sterling: I'm getting there!
Finn Brooks: The show itself is a zombie — like, Together We Stand only exists because Sherwood Schwartz, Brady Bunch creator, pitched a multiracial family concept to ABC in 1974, ABC said no, and then he just... kept it alive for twelve years until CBS finally bit.
Hope Sterling: Twelve years! And it starred Elliott Gould and Dee Wallace and ran September 1986 to April 1987 — like, less than a full year — and then just evaporated.
Finn Brooks: The only reason anyone googles it at all is because Ke Huy Quan got famous again and suddenly people are combing through every credit he ever had.
Hope Sterling: But hold on — googling credits is the wrong rabbit hole, because like, what even IS this show? Where did it actually come from?
Finn Brooks: Okay that's — that's the part I keep wanting to scream about. Because it's not just a pitch that got rejected. It's a backdoor pilot. And I feel like nobody knows what that actually means so — okay, imagine a trailer baked inside the movie. You watch it, you love the side characters, the studio goes 'wait we could spin that off,' and boom, new series. But if they pass? That little trailer just... lives inside the movie forever and goes nowhere.
Hope Sterling: Oh that's — oh that's such a good way to put it.
Finn Brooks: So Sherwood Schwartz writes this episode — Kelly's Kids, Brady Bunch season five, episode fourteen, January 4, 1974 — and it's not just a cute standalone. It's a pitch. Disguised as a Brady Bunch episode. The neighbors, Ken and Kathy Kelly, adopt three boys, one African-American, one Asian, one white. Multiracial adoptive family. In 1974. On network television.
Hope Sterling: Stop — that is a bold concept for 1974, like genuinely bold.
Finn Brooks: ABC just... passes. And Schwartz calls it — this is his word — 'a serious disappointment.' Not 'oh well,' not 'we'll revisit it,' serious disappointment. Which tells me he actually believed this was the one.
Hope Sterling: Okay but wait — I want to push on this a little? Because like, was ABC wrong? Or did they just look at 1974 audiences and go, yeah, no, this isn't the moment? Because those feel like different things to me.
Finn Brooks: No that's — actually that's the exact right question and I don't think we can fully answer it. Because the backdoor pilot aired, it wasn't like they buried it. Audiences watched Kelly's Kids. ABC just decided not to greenlight the series. Whether that was cowardice or just reading the room correctly, we genuinely don't know.
Hope Sterling: Which means the concept sat there for twelve years, just waiting, which is honestly either visionary or — I mean, honestly it might be both?
Finn Brooks: Both, for sure — but here's what actually locks the 'visionary' read in for me. Picture a CBS development assistant in 1985, right, and someone slides a pitch document across their desk, and it has like, the Brady Bunch logo still on the header. Stamped 1974. Eleven years old. That document lived somewhere. In a drawer, in a filing cabinet, whatever — Schwartz kept circulating it.
Hope Sterling: Stop — an eleven-year-old pitch that still had Brady Bunch letterhead on it?
Finn Brooks: That's the development cycle thing — it's not one pitch and done, it's just, the same DNA keeps mutating and circulating until somebody bites. And CBS bit. September 22, 1986, Together We Stand premieres. Exactly twelve years after Kelly's Kids aired.
Hope Sterling: That's — wait, that's his partial win, right? Like, Schwartz was right that somebody would eventually say yes. He just had to outlast the noes.
Finn Brooks: Partial win, totally. But then — okay this is where it gets complicated for me — the show gets reworked mid-season. Like, CBS is already dissatisfied enough that they're overhauling it while it's airing. That's not a tweak, that's a network going, we made a mistake.
Hope Sterling: And it's done by April 24, 1987. Like, that's — what, eight months? Less than eight months total.
Finn Brooks: And several produced episodes never even air. Which is — I mean, that's not just cancellation, that's erasure. Someone wrote those scripts, shot those scenes, and then they just... didn't exist for anyone watching at home.
Hope Sterling: Okay and Ke Huy Quan is in those episodes — we actually don't fully know which ones aired and which ones didn't, and that part honestly gets way darker when you follow his whole thread through this story.
Finn Brooks: Three-stage chain. Rejected spinoff, reworked series, unaired episodes — and he's sitting right in the middle of it.
Hope Sterling: But that chain — okay, the three stages — I keep wanting to call it a sad story and like, I'm not sure it totally is? Because Sherwood Schwartz got his concept made. Twelve years later, but he got it made.
Finn Brooks: No, I love that instinct, BUT — belief and rightness aren't the same thing. Like, he believed in Kelly's Kids enough to carry it through a full development cycle into 1986. And the answer was still basically no. CBS just... said no slower. With a mid-season retool and a bunch of unaired episodes instead of one clean rejection.
Hope Sterling: Oof. Yeah. That's — that's actually more brutal.
Finn Brooks: ABC said no in one sentence in 1974. CBS said no across eight months, a retool, and episodes that never aired. Which version of no is worse? I actually think it's CBS's.
Hope Sterling: And Ke Huy Quan is just — he's sitting inside that slower no. Like, Indiana Jones, The Goonies, and then this footnote that didn't even fully make it to air. Nobody connects those dots until he wins an Oscar thirty years later and someone goes digging.
Finn Brooks: Which is the real question, right — would anyone be talking about Together We Stand at all if he hadn't become famous again? The three-stage chain, the Kelly's Kids backdoor pilot, Schwartz's twelve years of circulating the same DNA — none of it gets a second look without Ke Huy Quan as the entry point.
Hope Sterling: The verdict is — Schwartz was maybe both? Like, the concept was genuinely progressive for 1974, I'll give him that. But the show not landing twice kind of answers the visionary-versus-stubborn question, doesn't it.
Finn Brooks: Both, yeah — but weighted toward stubborn. The concept didn't land, either time. What we're actually looking at is just what TV's graveyard looks like up close: rejected spinoff, reworked series, unaired episodes. Thirteen years of effort. And one very famous kid in the middle of it that nobody noticed until it was ancient history.
Hope Sterling: My thing — the detail I cannot shake — is that Together We Stand premiered September 22, 1986, and was basically gone by April 24, 1987. Like, Sherwood Schwartz waited twelve years for a yes and got eight months of air. That's the number that gets me every time.
Finn Brooks: Mine is the unaired episodes. Still out there, somewhere, in a vault. A show that was forgotten before it was finished — I mean, that's honestly, that feels like the perfect ending for a concept that CBS said no to slowly.
Hope Sterling: Okay, so — toast to Sherwood Schwartz, who carried Kelly's Kids from 1974 all the way to CBS, got his multiracial family concept on the air, and the only reason we're here is because Ke Huy Quan got famous again and someone went digging through every credit he ever had.
Finn Brooks: And those unaired episodes are still out there. Which, honestly? Feels right. Good talk.
