Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (42 page)

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

EPISODE 38: "THE NOT-SO-UGLY DUCKLING"

Jan's fragile little ego takes yet another beating, when the object
of her first-ever crush falls madly in love-with Marcia.

Yep, Clark "Mr. Dreamy" Tyson gets tingly over Marcia, and Jan
flips out, blaming her lack of sex appeal on (of all things) freckles! When, after an incognito visit to the drugstore, lemon juice fails to
lift the spotty little buggers, Jan becomes even more irrational and
invents George Glass, a make-believe boyfriend, to keep her company.

Finally, Carol finds out that the only reason Clark wasn't crazy
about Jan was that she dressed like a frump, and not in the dazzling feminine couture of Marcia.

That does it, a quick wardrobe makeover, and it isn't long
before Clark's tingling returns and points itself straight at Jan.

Is the moral here that you can judge a book by its cover?

WRITER: Paul West

DIRECTOR: Irving Moore

• Would you believe, there now exists a New York-based rock
band named the Eve's Plumb?

EPISODE 39: "TELL IT LIKE IT IS"

Carol's acting weird ... which in the Brady house is cause for
panic. She's been staying up late, locking herself in the den, andtyping. Oh, my God.'

Turns out she's writing a story about her crowded house for
Tomorrow's Woman magazine, a publication that could make
Kitty Kelley puke. That's because Carol's honest, realistic portrayal
of her chaotic household is rejected by the magazine as "too sensational," but her whitewashed, cleaned-up, extra-double-bland
"Portrait of a Perfect Family" rewrite is accepted enthusiastically.

The editors show up unexpectedly at the Brady house with a
photographer in tow and are flabbergasted (yes, "flabbergasted")
to find the place a madhouse, at least by Brady standards. The
house is rocking with such utter pandemonium that they consider
dumping Carol's story completely.

But since this is "The Brady Bunch," a happy ending is ensured.
The magazine's editors decide that Carol's original draft was truthful after all, and deserves feature-story status in next month's issue.

WRITER: Charles Hoffman

DIRECTOR: Terry Becker

EPISODE 40: "THE DRUMMER BOY"

The title character in "The Drummer Boy" is Bobby, who's
learning how to bang the skins, and driving the Bradys insane in
the process. It's a funny little subplot, but it has almost nothing to
do with the outing's main storyline:

Yet another sporting superstar pays a visit to the Bradys. This time it's hulking L.A. Rams defensive end Deacon Jones, and he's
out to make Peter feel like a "real man." Sounds scary, but it's actually completely innocent.

Chris Knight and
Deacon Jones.
Check out those
pants! (©1991
Capital Cities/ABC,
Inc.)

Y'see, Pete's an enthusiastic member of both the school glee
club and the school football team. He enjoys 'em both, but when
his teammates start calling him a sissy (ooh, ouch!), he's ready to
quit singing for good.

Enter Deacon Jones, who just so happens to be visiting with
Pete's coach. He notices that Pete's upset, finds out why, and then
proceeds to lecture the kid about how "real men" can sing and
play football too. And when Deacon tells Peter that he himself
loves to sing, Pete is happier than ever to make like a bird.

WRITERS: Tom and Helen August

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

• Check out the ultra-hip, ultra-ugly bell-bottoms that Deacon
Jones wears. You've got to see 'em to believe 'em.

EPISODE 41: "WHERE THERE'S SMOKE"

This outing stands right up there as one of the two or three alltime classic episodes of "The Brady Bunch." It's a simple story
about Greg being caught ... smoking (aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!!!).

Once upon a time there was a nice young boy named Greg
Brady, who so desperately wanted to look cool in front of his hip
new musician friends that he caved in to peer pressure, went
against his better judgment, and actually did the unthinkable ... he
smoked a cigarette.

Thankfully, it wasn't a "reefer" (which would, of course, have
instantly doomed Greg to an irreversible descent into junkiedom);
but when you're a Brady, even one lousy butt is cause for big trouble.

Greg finds that out when Jan and Cindy spy his evil puffing, and
Marcia squeals about it to the old folks. They're horrified at the
thought of Greg's heinous deed, and they really let him have it
with the worst of all Brady punishments ... a lecture.

They yammer at Greg about the evils of smoking, and when he
admits that he wasn't really smoking, "just going along with the
guys," they let him off the hook with a warning.

Flash forward, and we find that Greg and his musician friends
have formed a far-out new rock band called the Banana
Convention (cooool) and that they've been spending all their afternoons and weekends rehearsing for their first gig. Everything's
going great until ...

Greg comes home from rehearsal to find that his mom is now
the chairman of the PTA's antismoking campaign (ugh). That's
embarrassing enough, but Greg's uneasiness quickly turns to horror when he throws his jacket on the couch, and out plops a pack
of cigarettes (aaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!!! once again). Now Greg's
gotta be dead meat, yes?

No! Greg tells Carol that he has no idea how those cigarettes
got into his pocket, and in an absolutely amazing show of faith,
she actually believes him. But the question remains: where did
those cigarettes come from?

Alice suggests that reconstructing the crime might unveil the
truth. It isn't long before we've rerun the whole sordid little
escapade and realized that ...Greg came home in the wrong jacket!

A Brady reputation is saved, and when we've deduced that the
jacket actually belonged to Tommy, the Banana Convention's
drummer, we Bradys threaten to rat the guy out to his mom.
Crushed, he decides to tell her himself.

WRITER: David P. Harmon

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

•Unfortunately some of that method-acting from my youth had
rubbed off on me. Shortly before this episode was filmed, I tried
for the first time to quit my own nasty nicotine habit. However,
during rehearsals and filming of the smoking scenes, I didn't fake
my inhaling. Soon I was back to my lung blackening pack-a-day.

I had been smoking since I was twelve, but didn't light up on
the set in front of the cast and crew. Instead, I'd sneak off to the
men's room to be cool. I think my numerous bathroom visits had
our staff convinced that I suffered some type of kidney dysfunction.

Happily, after many more quitting attempts, my lungs became
Marlboro free on September 20, 1984 at 10:00 A.M.

EPISODE 42: "WILL THE REAL JAN BRADY
PLEASE STAND UP?"

A scant four episodes after her Clark Tyson breakdown, Jan's
self-image suffers yet another neurotic episode. This time she's
tired of being a middle child, unhappy about looking just like her
sisters, and totally distraught over her perceived inability to stand
out in the Brady crowd.

Her solution? In overstated Jan Brady fashion, she runs out to
the local department store and buys herself a long brunette wig.
She's convinced that it makes her look mysterious and alluring,
but as her brother's guffaws hint, it makes her look really goofy
(Bobby cracks "she looks like she's got a skunk sleeping on her
head").

Jan's final hair-induced indignity comes when she wears the
new hair to Lucy Winters's birthday party and gets laughed (literally) right out the door!

Crushed, Jan comes home and wants to die. But wait, en masse,
those rotten and ridiculing party kids have undergone a group
change of heart. They show up on the Bradys' doorstep, "I'm sor-
rys" get passed around, Jan's real hair receives rave reviews, and
that middle Brady gal is happy once more-at least for a little
while.

WRITERS: Al Schwartz and Bill Freedman

DIRECTOR: Peter Baldwin

*You might recognize Jan's friend Lucy. Her real name's
Pamelyn Ferdin, and she's got one of those familiar but nameless
TV faces, and seems to have appeared at least once on every sitcom ever made. She is, however, probably most familiar to devoted couch potatoes as Edna Unger, Felix's daughter, on "The Odd Couple," which was filmed next door to "The Brady Bunch" on the
Paramount lot.

EPISODE 43: "OUR SON, THE MAN"

Greg at his grooviest.

Sick of being a kid, Greg moves out of the boys' bedroom and
into Mike's den, which he turns into a groovy psychedelic bachelor
pad (complete with beaded curtains and black lights) almost
overnight.

Now a bona fide "man," Greg spends his next school day coming on to an older woman-a senior ... wow!-but ends up getting dissed for a hippie. That does it. Even more quickly than
Mike's den became Greg's "far-out space," the Brady big bro
becomes the world's cleanest-cut hippie.

Sure, he's got the fringed suede vest, the afro, the headband,
the shades, the tie-dyed bell-bottoms. And sure, he walks around
the Brady house saying things like "I dig your scene, baby" and flipping peace signs at a befuddled Alice. But deep down we all know
he's still that same goofy guy we all came to love.

So does that babe-ish senior. She sees right through Greg's hippie
disguise, and when he asks her out again, she simply laughs at him.

Smacked back down to earth, Greg realizes the weirdness of his
ways, and transforms himself back into a Brady. The fringe and the
Afro disappear, and so does the bachelor pad when Greg decides
that he actually kinda missed Bobby and Pete, and moves back into
their room.

WRITER: Albert E. Lewin

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

EPISODE 44: "THE LIBERATION OF MARCIA
BRADY"

This time the Bradys take on that hotbed of seventies controversy ... women's lib!

When a roving news crew bumps into Marcia and asks for her
thoughts on the equality of the sexes, she replies with "Anything
that a man can do, a woman can do better."

The newscast airs, and when the Brady men get wind of her
comments, they laugh heartily (surprisingly sexist, even with the
time-warped early-seventies perspective) and challenge her to put
up or shut up.

Marcia, of course, puts up, and joins the boys' outdoors club,
the elite but rugged Frontier Scouts. That act of forced desegregation drives the Brady boys absolutely nuts, and they immediately begin hatching a plan for revenge.

Revenge comes when Peter, in a green dress and matching
knee socks, joins Marcia's favorite club, the Sunflower Girls. He
gamely tries to make a go of his point-proving transvestism, but
when he's asked to sell cookies door-to-door, (with a sales pitch of
"I am a little Sunflower, sunny, brave, and true / From tiny bud to
blossom, I'll do good deeds for you"), the public ridicule breaks
him. He quits.

However, on the other side of the chromosomal pairing, Marcia
gives Frontier Scouting her all, and when she actually pitches a
tent, sparks a campfire, and completes their grueling long-distance
nature hike, everyone is impressed. The guys even admit that
maybe, just maybe, women are men's equals after all.

WRITER: Charles Hoffman

DIRECTOR: Russ Mayberry

EPISODE 45: "LIGHTS OUT"

Cindy sees a magician do the old disappearing-assistant trick,
and freaks. She's sure that the poor woman's been lost in the dark,
never to be seen again, and becomes deathly afraid of anything
having to do with "magic."

At the same time, Peter just so happens to be working up his
own magic act for the big pageant at school. (It's amazing how
many school plays/pageants/frolics the Bradys appear in.) He too
has a disappearing babe trick, which Mike and Carol hope will
convince Cindy that there's nothing to be afraid of. Unfortunately,
however, the phobic Brady flatly refuses to even look at it.

Finally, the day of the big audition arrives, but disaster strikes
when Peter's comely assistant (namely, Jan) twists an ankle at the
last minute and can't perform.

Enter Cindy, fully bedecked in a glowing "magician's assistant" costume that Alice hastily threw together ("I pulled the
wings off her fairy pixie outfit"). Cindy's loyalty toward her
brother has triumphed over her fear. She "disappears" and
"reappears" on cue, and once the whole thing's over, even asks
to disappear again.

WRITER: Bruce Howard

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

*The people who play the judges at the school auditorium
were actually the stand-ins for Florence and me.

EPISODE 46: "THE WINNER"

Every single Brady has won a trophy ... except Bobby. That
makes the little guy fanatically determined to win one of his own.
Throughout the episode, he tries to win trophies in a yo-yo
marathon, a magazine subscription race, and even an ice-creameating contest, failing miserably each time.

It looks like our pal Bobby is just gonna have to adjust to life as
a trophy-less loser ... until the rest of the Bradys joyously present
him with his very own gold-plated trophy signifying that he is
indeed "the world's greatest Bobby Brady."