Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (40 page)

EPISODE 31: "CONFESSIONS, CONFESSIONS"

The boys were playing in their bedroom and the ball went
down the hall and over the banister into the living room (ignoring
Mike and Carol and Alice's warnings) and ends up busting his
mother's favorite vase into about three bazillion little pieces.

Peter freaks, convinced that he's in big trouble and that the old folks will punish him by cancelling his weekend camping trip.

Desperately looking for a way out, Peter tries gluing the vase
back together, but when Carol fills it with water, the floodgates
open, and it looks like Peter's proverbial goose is cooked.

Or is it? One by one, all five innocent Brady kids start trying to
save Pete's ass and camping trip by confessing to the dastardly
pottery slaughter.

WRITER: Brad Radnitz

DIRECTOR: Russ Mayberry

EPISODE 32: "THE TATTLETALE"

The episode Susan Olsen hates: Cindy turns stoolie and finks
on her schoolmates, her brothers and sisters, and even causes the
(temporary) breakup of Alice and Sam when she tattles that she's
just seen Alice hugging the mailman.

The mailman? Yep. He'd just delivered a registered letter telling
Alice that she'd won a contest and one of five fabulous grand
prizes will soon be hers. All she's got to do is sit back and wait for a
second registered letter that'll contain her winner's certificate, and
the details of what she's won, and where to pick it up. Alice is
overjoyed and plants a big bear hug on the mailman.

Cindy, who's on the phone with Sam at the time, rats her out.

We then go to commercial, come back, and find that Alice is all
dressed up and ready for a dance date with Sam. The only problem is, the boorish butcher never shows. Alice calls to find out why
he's a no-show, and he says that maybe she should "go dancing
with the mailman," and hangs up.

Clueless, Alice wonders aloud about Sam's behavior, and an
eavesdropping Cindy explains everything.

Annoyed, Mike steps in, lectures Cindy about how wrong it is to
be a tattletale, and make her promise never to fink again. She
agrees.

At about this exact point in time, Tiger comes barreling through
the living room with Marcia's homework clenched in his drooly
mouth. "That's it!" bellows Mike with uncharacteristic volume. "If
that dog steals just one more thing, I'm gonna ship him off to
Siberia!"

A worried Cindy goes to bed.

The next day dawns, and as Alice and Carol go food shopping,
the postman rings for the second time. Cindy answers the door,
signs for Alice's second registered letter, and watches in horror
as-Tiger steals it! She runs after the dog but aborts the plan when
she spies the grocery shoppers returning home.

The phone rings.

Alice picks it up, and it's the contest people. They tell her that
she's won a hi-fi stereo set, and that to pick it up she's got to take
her winner's certificate to Lloyd's Stereo Center by midnight
tonight.

"Huh?" asks puzzled old Alice. She hasn't even seen her winner's certificate. "Did anyone sign for a registered letter?"

"Yeth," says Cindy. "But that'th all I can thay."

Cutting to the chase, the grown-ups interrogate Cindy and she
reveals that Tiger's run off with the thing. One quick search later,
they've found it in the doghouse, and Alice is sprinting off to claim
her booty.

And that's that.

This episode started causing trouble for Susan the Monday
morning after it aired. She went to school and found that none of
her friends would talk to her. They'd seen Cindy the squealer on
TV and were convinced that Susan was a big rat too.

"I hated catching shit for what Cindy did," says Susan today.
"And after that episode, I just wanted to strangle the brat."

WRITERS: Sam Locke and Milton Pascal

DIRECTOR: Russ Mayberry

-The reference to "Lloyd's Stereo Center" was a gag aimed at
associate producer Lloyd Schwartz.

EPISODE 33: "CALL ME IRRESPONSIBLE"

Greg wants a car. Soooo ...

1. Greg gets a job with Mike at the architectural firm.

2. Greg loses Mike's important sketches (a theme that would
become recurrent in Bradyville).

3. Greg gets fired.

4. Greg's dad goes to bat for the dopey kid.

5. Greg gets rehired, but Greg loses another set of plans.

6. Greg goes out and finds the second set of plans anyway, just
to prove what a reliable kinda guy he really is.

WRITER: Bruce Howard

DIRECTOR: Hal Cooper

EPISODE 34: "THE IMPRACTICAL JOKER"

Jan goes off the deep end (again) and can't stop playing practical jokes. She douses her sisters with rubber spiders, splatters Alice
with disappearring ink, and, as a topper, steals Greg's scienceproject mouse, Myron, and stashes him in a wicker laundry hamper.

Ten minutes later, Myron's chewed his way out of the basket and he's wreaking havoc throughout the house. Alice sees him,
does the requisite "Eeeeeeeek!", and calls the exterminator from
atop the dinette set.

The kids catch on that Myron's M.I.A. and scramble through the
house looking for him-just in time to find that the exterminator's
already completed his job. Myron must be mooshed, and Jan
learns a hard lesson about taking a joke too far.

But that's not all (we haven't had our "happy resolve" yet).
Backyard barking sends the kids running to Tiger's doghouse,
where we find-Kitty Karryall? Nope-Myron! Alive, healthy and
none the worse for wear.

WRITER: Burt Styler

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

•This particular story line spawned some real-life practical jokes
among us Brady kids, the best of which began when I casually
mentioned to a couple of the nosier members of the brood that I
had a huge secret. I told them that my secret was very private, very
embarrassing, and that I positively didn't want anyone to know
about it.

Next, I simply sat back and waited as the news of my deep dark
secret spread throughout the Brady kids, tweaking their curiosity
and ultimately driving them crazy.

Eve Plumb was first to jump at the bait. The grapevine told me
that she was dying to find out about my secret, and for that reason
she became the first to know about my ... glass eye.

With a lot of melodrama and mock sincerity, I told her about
how difficult it was for me to carry my burden, and of course she
didn't believe me. "Deeply offended" by her lack of trust, I told her
that if she really wanted me to prove that I had a glass eye, I would
gladly pop it out of my eye socket and let her hold it. Suddenly Eve
wasn't so skeptical anymore, and she queasily balked at having me
"pop out or shut up."

However, over the course of the next couple of days, Eve's fear
of seeing a human being pop out an eyeball gave way to an intense
and building curiosity. Four and five times a day she'd corner me,
ordering that I remove the eye, hand it over, or admit that I was a
liar. This went on for almost two weeks, and I knew that my credibility was fast becoming dirt. I'd have to act, fast.

And then it hit me. My dad was friendly with an optometrist,
who after some begging lent me a genuine phony eye. I pocketed
the prosthesis and practically ran to the Paramount set, laughing
at the thought of horrifying Eve.

Four o'clock came, and Eve once more charged up to me with
her demand: "Gimme the eyeball!"

"All right, all right," I replied, "if you really want me to prove it, I
will." Hiding a smile, I called over some witnesses, cupped the
glass eye in my hand, and reached up toward my real eye. I then
asked the now grimacing Eve to hold out both hands, because
"sometimes the eye comes out covered in eyeball guts, and I don't
want you to drop it." Eve was turning white, but she still hung on,
convinced that at any second I'd confess that this whole thing had
been a joke.

I didn't, and after a lot of screwing around by my eye socket, a
lot of squishy sound effects, and one last exaggerated yank, I
dropped the glass eye into Eve's hand. It stared up at her.

She screamed ... and screamed, and screamed, and screamed
some more. She screamed long, she screamed loud, and above all
else she screamed in that brain-piercing falsetto that only teenage
girls can muster.

Bulls-eye.

• Watch for Oscar Rudolph's Method-acting mouse (see p. 89)
and Bob Reed's inebriated interaction with the same (p. 56).

• Bob Reed hated this episode so much that it prompted his
first-ever scathing memo. Here is what it said:

I want to show you a completely typical example of a problem
that occurs with predictable regularity on "The Brady Bunch" and
contributes heavily to:

1. downgrade of quality

2. inconsistency in style and performance

3. loss of time due to rewriting and quibbling on the set

4. creation of tension in cast and crew

5. bad performances by frustrated actors

The scene in question is a Tag Scene written for the usual
theme tie-up, incorporating the equally usual "ha-ha ending." In
this instance, it is dependant upon two pre-set plot ingredients:
the child, Jan, having been established as a "practical joker"now repentant, and, a Teaser Scene involving a gag replica of an
ink spot which our young antagonist has placed upon Alice's coat
successfully fooling the family into believing was a real ink stain.
Now, read the Tag.

BRADY BUNCH-"Impractical Joker"-Rev. 8/13/70 45.

TAG

FADE IN:

84 (OMITTED) * 84

Carol and Jan are peeling and/or cutting up fruit for a fruit cup
in a large bowl.

JAN

(peeling a banana)

It's sure a lot easier to peel bananas than it is potatoes.

CAROL

One of these nights we just might try French fried bananas.

86 ANOTHER ANGLE *86

Alice enters, carrying a uniform over her arm and some towels.

ALICE

Any more towels for the laundry?

CAROL

(suddenly reacting) Alice-your uniform ...

ALICE

What about it?

CAROL

There's an ink spot on the pocket.

She looks at Jan knowingly, thinking it another of her jokes.

She investigates, and discovers a large ink spot on the pocket
of the uniform she carries over her arm.

as she and Carol look at Jan.

CAROL

(continuing)

Jan, really ...

ALICE

(a smile)

Couldn't resist one last little joke, huh?

JAN

Mother-I didn't do ...

ALICE

(interrupts)

I know how to take care of these kind of ink spots!

JAN

(protests)

But, Alice ...