Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (38 page)

So, the kids decide to combine books for one good item, but
then can't agree on what to get. They guys want a rowboat, and
the girls (stereotypically) are just dying to get their hands on a
sewing machine. Neither side gives in, so Mike and Carol have to
make the decision.

Here's where the bizarre parenting comes in. Instead of preaching compromise, our normally sane parental units lose their minds
and allow the kids to build a house of cards, with each kid adding a
card in turn. Whoever knocks down the house loses their stamp
booklets, disappoints their gender mates, and probably becomes
scarred for life.

After a long, tense playing-card construction project, Tiger
jumps on Greg, Greg falls into the table, and the girls win.
However, once the gals actually get to the store (again stereotypically), they go soft and end up getting a present that everybody
can share: a color (ooooooh!) TV.

WRITER: Burt Styler

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

'Brady Mistake! Watch this episode closely and you'll notice
that during the climactic "house of cards" scene, Jan's hair changes
styles. In the front shots she is wearing her hair in a pony-tail. In
the side angle shots her hair is worn down. Lloyd Schwartz was
responsible for the error, and explains it with the credible alibi:
`bops!"

EPISODE 12: "A-CAMPING WE WILL GO"

The Brady guys are sure that their camping trip is going to suck
when Mike gives them the horrible news that (gulp) the girls are
coming-even Alice. Depressed but (as always) obedient, the boys pack up and prepare to be miserable, but after suffering through a
series of wacky mishaps (including piling into the girls' tent and
causing it to collapse) and gobbling through Alice's emergency picnic basket, everybody realizes that co-ed togetherness might just
work out after all.

WRITER: Herbert Finn and Alan Dinehart

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

• Chris Knight's favorite episode, although he's quick to admit
that being outdoors on location for a week probably made it a lot
more fun to shoot than it is to watch.

• This episode came smack in the middle of the Olsen/
Lookinland "marriage." Keep an eye open and you'll find they're
kinda making eyes at each other in most of the episode's highly
populated shots.

EPISODE 13: "VOTE FOR BRADY"

Classic "Brady Bunch"! Greg runs for student-body president ...
against Marcia!

"Greg Brady... this means war!" spews the angry but foxy Brady
gal, and before long all six kids are duking it out, trying to get their
biological sibling elected. Finally, after Mike and Carol's lengthy
lecture on family unity, Marcia crumbles (Brady gals ain't big on
guts) and lets Greg run unopposed.

WRITER: Elroy Schwartz

DIRECTOR: David Alexander

*Nepotism Alert! Elroy Schwartz is Sherwood's younger brother.

EPISODE 14: "EVERY BOY DOES IT ONCE"

Bobby watches a "Cinderella" on TV, then goes completely
mental, drawing comparisons between himself and the fairy tale's
poor, downtrodden little blond babe. She's got an evil stepmother-and so, Bobby convinces himself, does he.

Enter Carol, whose simple, but horrendously ill-timed request
that Bobby sweep out the fireplace sends the kid reeling. Things
get worse, until finally, after he scuffles with his "evil stepsisters"
and a new pile of hand-me-downs comes his way, Bobby decides
he's had enough and prepares to run away.

At the same time, Carol begins sensing that Bobby feels unloved
and she calls Mike at work to discuss it. Mike blows off a meeting,
and the two senior Bradys come to the conclusion that Bobby's
feelings can best be dealt with by ... buying the kid a bike.

Huh? Flash forward and Mike and Carol are in the bike store (I
guess Mike took the rest of the day off). They're kicking Schwinn
tires when the basic impropriety of their impending purchase finally hits em. Buying Bobby a bike, they realize, would simply be buying his love.

They rush home bikeless and find Bobby all packed up and
ready to bolt. Mike sits the little guy down on his bed, and we
launch into another one of those now famous (albeit simplistic)
Brady heart-to-hearts.

Mike asks Bobby what he's gonna do to make a living.

"I don't know-I never thought about it," replies Bobby. "But
I'm pretty good at finger-painting and gluing."

With that assurance, Mike takes Bobby's suitcase in hand,
assures him that he'll get along just fine in the real world, and they
head toward the front door, where they find ... Carol. She's
packed a suitcase too, and tells Bobby that she loves him much
too much to ever let him run away alone.

Now convinced that his stepmom isn't evil, and that he's loved
like crazy, Bobby's decides not to throw over the Brady plantation
for the mean streets after all.

WRITERS: Lois and Arnold Peyser

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

EPISODE 15: "THE VOICE OF CHRISTMAS"

Christmas is coming! There are presents to wrap, trees to decorate, holly to hang, and for Carol, choir practice to attend. This year
Carol's been given the honor of singing "0 Come, All Ye Faithful"
at Christmas-morning services. She's absolutely thrilled, and the
Bradys are coasting toward their "first united Christmas ever!"
until-

Disaster! With only one day till Christmas, Carol loses her voice!
She can't whisper, she can't talk, and worst of all, she won't be able
to sing with the church choir!

Everybody bums, and it looks like this is gonna be a black
Christmas.

Enter Cindy. She meets up with a department-store Santa
(who's played by Hal Smith, who used to play Otis, Mayberry's
town drunk, on "The Andy Griffith Show") and asks him not for a
present, but for her Mom's voice to come back.

Santa takes one look at those blue eyes and blond pigtails, forgets everything he learned in Santa school, and guarantees delivery on her request. Sure that she's fixed everything, Cindy heads
home and waits for the miracle.

Lo and behold, we wake up Christmas morning to find that it worked! Carol's carol is saved, and the Bradys have their best
Christmas ever after all.

WRITER: John Fenton Murray

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

-The first of two "Christmas miracles" in the ratings. Up until this
particular episode aired, "The Brady Bunch" was just sort of lamely
dog-paddling in the Nielsen pool, trying (at times desperately) to
stay afloat. This episode changed all that. It drew terrific numbers
and started the show on the road to large-scale popular success.

• Brady Mistake: Listen very closely as Carol miraculously regains
her voice on Christmas morning. Just before she bursts into her "0
Come, All Ye Faithful," you can distinctly hear the sound of an offcamera pitch pipe giving her a musical cue. It should have been
erased in the editing process but was overlooked.

EPISODE 16: "MIKE'S HORROR-SCOPE"

Carol gets edgy when Mike's newspaper horoscope makes it
quite clear that a "strange and fascinating woman" is about to enter
his life. Turns out she's Beebe Gallini, a red-headed and bosomy
sort of ersatz Coco Chanel. She's strange all right, fascinating too;
and in her odd (and unplaceable) accent, she orders Mike to
design her new cosmetics factory in "powder-poof peenk," with a
"fluffy roof."

WRITER: Ruth Brooks Flippen

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

*Abbe Lane, who plays Beebe Gallini, enjoyed minor celebrity
as an actress and singer but is probably best known as Charo's predecessor as wife/protege of Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat.

EPISODE 17: "THE UNDERGRADUATE"

Greg goes into that goofy, catatonic sitcom-kid-in-love routine
after falling hard for his teacher Linda O'Hara. He's moony, distracted, and completely nuts about the gal, until he finds out the
she's going to first base with none other than L.A. Dodger Wes
Parker! Oofl

WRITER: David P. Harmon

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

• Wes Parker played first base for the Dodgers and was a pretty
big baseball star in 1970. (Current Mets first baseman Eddie
Murray might make a good modern-day equivalent.) He knocked off his scenes in just one day; but Mike, Chris, and I made the most
of that one day, whining at the poor guy incessantly until he finally
cracked and agreed to play catch with us. We also stuck him up for
batting tips, sliding techniques, and, of course, autographed balls.
Perks of the trade.

EPISODE 18: "TO MOVE OR NOT TO MOVE"

How come a successful architect always lived in a house with a
wife, six kids, and only three bedrooms? I get asked that question
all the time, and about the only reason I can figure is that
Sherwood Schwartz must've taken this episode very seriously. The
six of us kids start bellyaching about how small the house is, living
three to a bedroom and six to a bathroom. That prompts Mike to
take note of the cramped quarters, and put up the For Sale sign.

At the same time, the six of us realize how dopey we've been,
how much we really love our overcrowded digs, and how unhappy
we'd be if we had to move. That triggers yet another Brady-kid
scheme; and before you know it, Cindy and Bobby are running
around the house clad in sheets, pretending to be ghosts and
attempting to frighten off any prospective purchaser of Le Chateau
Brady.

WRITER: Paul West

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

EPISODE 19: "TIGER! TIGER!"

By now, Tiger had long been terminally retired, but Sherwood
Schwartz had an old script laying around that was all about the disappearance of the Brady dog. Sherwood realized that even though
the story revolved around the dog, he wasn't actually seen on camera all that much. So, with a look-alike to the original Tiger, we
pulled it off, and kept Sherwood from having to throw out a perfectly passable script.

The Bradys find Tiger missing, and immediately set out to bring
him home. They run a newspaper ad, offer a reward ($42.76,
chipped in by the kids), and finally spread out over the neighborhood on foot, on bikes, and in cars looking for the shaggy-haired
vagabond.

No luck, and the Bradys become uncharacteristically depressed
... until Peter hits pay dirt. He's found Tiger alive and well and
busily fathering his newborn set of puppies.

WRITER: Elroy Schwartz

DIRECTOR: Herb Wallerstein

• Bobby has a couple of lines in the episode wherein he worries that Tiger's been run over ... kinda creepy given the original
Tiger's real-life demise.

EPISODE 20: "BRACE YOURSELF"

Marcia gets braces and gets depressed all in one afternoon.
Convinced that her metal mouth has left her hideously deformed
and horrendously ugly, Marcia doesn't listen to the common sense
of her parents, and goes off the deep end when her school-dance
date, Alan, dumps her at the last minute. He's got a legitimate
excuse-parents going out of town and dragging him along toobut the now neurotic Brady babe won't even hear it. Instead, she
runs up to the girls' room and bawls like crazy.

Flash forward, and Marcia's been fixed up with three different
dates by three different well-meaning Bradys. All three show up,
hoping to take Marcia to the school dance-and so does Alan.
Seems he canceled his out-of-town trip shortly after he flipped
over the handlebars of his bicycle, requiring a dentist's visit andyou guessed it-tinsel teeth.

He and Marcia share a metallic laugh and a dance; and judging
from how nuts they seem about each other, we can assume that an
aluminum-flavored make-out session was their nightcap.

WRITER: Brad Radnitz

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

• Fairly noticeable in this episode (and about one hundred others) is the fact that there was never any glass in the sliding doors
that separated the Bradys' rec room and backyard. Also obvious is
the fact that the backyard "grass" was actually a primitive form of
Astroturf that had to be repainted regularly and was completely
unforgiving if you had to slide on it. Band-Aids over the top of
green-smudgy scabs became standard issue on the set.

EPISODE 21: "THE BIG SPRAIN"

Carol's crotchety old aunt Mary comes down sick, and the
Brady mom shows her true saintly colors by packing up and leaving
home to nurse the old bag back into shape. It's no problem,
because Alice can take care of the family, right? Wrong! Alice's tennis shoe finds the Brady kids' Chinese checkers, and she ends up
taking a major header, spraining her ankle in the process. Now what?

This. Mike puts all six kids to work. The boys (sort of) learn how
to clean house. The girls (sort of) learn how to use the kitchen.
Alice (sort of) learns to relax. And even Sam the Butcher proves
himself slightly more sensitive than his sides of beef by skipping the Meatcutters' Ball (doesn't that conjure up images of light blue
tuxedos and cocktail wienies?) just to cuddle up with his ailing
main squeeze, Alice.

WRITER: Tam Spiva

DIRECTOR: Russ Mayberry

• Speaking of Sam the Butcher Allan Melvin-did you know
he was the voice of Magilla Gorilla?

EPISODE 22: "THE HERO"

Peter's hanging out in the local toy store when he sees a huge
wall unit full of shelves getting ready to collapse onto a hapless little girl's head. With a heroic dive, our pal Pete saves the day-not
to mention the toy shop owner's business-and the little girl's
life.

Scan forward and you'll find that the girl's grateful mom has
spread the word about Peter's heroism in the local newspaper.
Scan forward again and you'll find that Peter's grown a major attitude, and that his overdeveloped ego is driving his siblings, parents, and housekeeper nuts! Things come to a head when Peter
gets fifty bucks for winning the paper's monthly "Outstanding
Citizen" award, throws a party in his own honor, and nobody
comes. He's stunned into self-awareness, and it isn't long before
Peter the Great once again becomes plain of lovable Pete.

WRITER: Elroy Schwartz

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph