Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (44 page)

After that, it's time to celebrate. The chief bestows "honorary
Indian" status upon each Brady; then they all perform Native
American dances, and ... it starts to rain.

Just kidding.

WRITER: Tam Spiva

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

EPISODE 52: "JULIET IS THE SUN"

In another Brady-kid school-play episode (this time it's Romeo
and Juliet), Marcia lands the lead role and drives the family mad
when her head swells up as big as Alice's bottom. She becomes
snotty, rude, abusive, and not very ladylike or Brady-like at all. She
even revises Shakespeare!

Enter Carol, who's visited the play's dress rehearsal, and seen
Marcia verbally cut-down her four-eyed, fat-boy Romeo. She
becomes thoroughly disgusted with her daughter's star-trippy attitude. With uncharacteristic severity, she pulls the rug out from
under Marcia's ego by grounding the girl and yanking her out of
the play entirely.

Marcia's crushed, but uses her punishment to reflect upon just how big a jerk she's become. Finally, when the student assigned to
play the much more modest role of Lady Capulet comes down
with last-minute mumps, the thoroughly humbled Marcia offers to
play the part.

WRITER: Brad Radnitz

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

EPISODE 53: "THE WHEELER DEALER"

A simple episode wherein Greg buys a beat-up old Volkswagen
convertible from his sleazy pal Eddie. He hopes to fix it up, but naturally, it turns out to be a clunker (must be a foul-up in the
fahrvergniigen).

Anyway, Greg finally comes to the conclusion that this buggy
Bug will never get up to speed and that he just may have acted too
hastily in his quest to buy a car.

WRITERS: Bill Freedman and Ben Gershman

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

• Look closely at the guy playing Ronnie and you'll find Charles
Martin Smith. He's the nerdy-looking character actor who'd go on
to just about steal American Graffitti out from under Richard
Dreyfuss (he played Toad) and The Untouchables out from under
Kevin Costner (he played the nerdy G-man accountant). He also starred in the (too) realistic Disney nature film Never Cry Wolfyou know, the one about the guy who lives all by himself in the
Arctic wilderness eating live mice? Anyway, this was his first acting
job ever.

Charles Martin
Smith. (© Karen
Lipscomb)

EPISODE 54: "THE PERSONALITY KID"

Q: What's for dinner?

A: Pork chops and applesauce.

Brady fans worthy of their bell-bottoms know this episode
inside out. Peter goes to a pal's party, ends up a neglected wallflower, and decides that he has absolutely no personality. So, with typical Brady resolve, he slaps on a personality makeover and transforms himself into Humphrey Bogart. Why? I don't know; but
when that idea goes bust, our pal Pete invests in a joke book and
makes like Henny Youngman. Anyway, Pete gets the idea that his
lousy jokes are great and throws himself a bash. He expects that
he'll be the life of the party but succeeds only in being annoying.
Finally, Pete's pals can't take it anymore and ask him to quit acting
so goofy and just be himself.

Peter finally learns that his own personality suits him best.

WRITER: Ben Starr

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

•Near Nepotism Alert! This doesn't qualify as a full-blown alert,
but it comes close. Ben Starr (no relation to Ringo) was a very
good pal of Sherwood Schwartz, with their friendship dating all the
way back to the thirties, when they both wrote gags for Bob Hope.

EPISODE 55: "HER SISTER'S SHADOW"

Jan's gone neurotic again. This time she's jealous of her overly
perfect sister Marcia. Marcia's teachers love her, Marcia wins
awards ... "All I ever hear is `Marcia, Marcia, Marcia'!" weeps the
nearly hysterical Jan. Enter Carol, who probably should've just
slipped her a Librium but instead dispenses some motherly advice.
She tells Jan that instead of focusing on Marcia's achievements, she
ought to try and do something good on her own.

Bad advice. Two days later Jan's tried out for the school pompom club, been mercilessly cut, and thrown into an even more
desperate funk than before. However, at about the same time that
Alice starts hiding the razor blades, Jan's patriotic school essay
('What America Means to Me," no less) wins an award for its high
grade of 98.

Uh-oh. Jan scans a closer look at her essay and realizes that her "98" was really supposed to be only a "93," and that she really
shouldn't have won that award. Crushed again, Jan (being a Brady)
refuses to accept her unearned adulation, and during what was
supposed to be her acceptance speech she exposes the mistake in
front of a cafetorium full of schoolmates.

But happily, the episode ends on the stable side of Jan's mood
swings, as she's praised for her honesty, applauded, and just plain
thrilled to be alive once more.

WRITERS: Al Schwartz and Phil Leslie

DIRECTOR: Russ Mayberry

EPISODE 56: "THE TEETER-TOTTER CAPER"

The Bradys have to attend ugly old Aunt Gertrude's wedding,
but Bobby and Cindy weren't invited ("too little"), and they're not
going to take it! Sick of being left out because of their age, the two
mini-Bradys set out to show the world that anything adults can do,
they can do better. They decide to set a world's record, and head
to the backyard seesaw, determined to break the current teetertotter mark of 124 hours.

They fail miserably (actually, they fall asleep at the plank), but a
newspaper story about their attempt brings them instant fame.
Even Aunt Gertrude calls to invite them to the wedding, but with
un-Brady-like vindictiveness, they turn the old biddy down flat.

WRITERS: Joel Kane and Jack Lloyd

DIRECTOR: Russ Mayberry

EPISODE 57: "MY SISTER, BENEDICT ARNOLD"

Okay, this is it! Flip your hair into your face and do the following cheer in an incredibly lifeless monotone, while you're gasping
for air like you've got emphysema. Ready? Here we go:

Super-geek Warren Mulaney takes Greg's spot on the first-string
basketball team, beats him out in the race for class president, and
then has the audacity to try and score with Greg's very own sister
Marcia. Greg forbids her to date the lowlife, but she stabs her
brother in the back and, just to drive Greg crazy, goes out with
Warren anyway.

That means Brady war! Soon, Greg has found Kathy Lawrence,
the girl who beat Marcia out for the cheerleading squad, and has
her eating out of his hand, even bouncing around the Brady living
room doing cheers for him.

Not surprisingly, Marcia hits the roof, and when things blow up,
they each end up admitting that they didn't even like the person
they were dating, and that they were just using them to make each
other mad. Then during the commercial, they take off all their
clothes and do the wild thing on the orange Formica counter top.

Just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Actually, in the
end, happiness reigns once more at the Brady house, with Greg
and Marcia friendly again, and even Kathy and Warren crazy about
each other.

WRITER: Elroy Schwartz

DIRECTOR: Hal Cooper

EPISODE 58: "THE PRIVATE EAR"

Peter borrows Mike's new tape recorder, starts eavesdropping
on the other kids, and in less time than it takes to sing our theme
song, chaos reigns in that cozy suburban-tract Brady house. Each
Brady kid suspects another of being the slimy snooper, and when
they finally find out that Peter's the culprit, they devise one of
those patented Brady-kid schemes to get even.

It starts with a bogus taped message that Mike and Carol are
going to throw a surprise party for Peter (for getting a B-plus in
geometry). Peter believes it, counts on it, and then is dumbfounded and hurt when nobody shows up. We sensitive Brady kids feel
bad.

But not to worry: Mike and Carol have also heard the phony
message, and they've postponed a weekend ski trip in order to
actuallygive Peter that B-plus-in-geometry bash.

WRITER: Michael Morris

DIRECTOR: Hal Cooper

EPISODE 59: "AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR
SPONSOR"

The Bradys go to the supermarket and become TV stars ...
almost. Actually, soap magnate Skip Farnum (played by Paul
Winchell-the Jerry Mahoney/Knucklehead Smith guy) sees 'em
out shopping and decides that they'd be the perfect real-life family
for his soap commercial.

The Bradys are at first skeptical, then thrilled, then fired after
Carol's aspiring-actress friend Myrna (pronounced "Meeeeerna") gives them some horrendous advice about "Method acting." Mike
and Carol overact terribly, the kids show up filthy because they
know Safe soap will get them clean, and Alice shows up in gaudy
pincurls because "Safe soap makes doing the laundry so easy, I had
plenty of time to do my hair."

Paul Winchell
as Farnum.
l©1991 Capital
Cities/ABC, Inc.)

Needless to say, corny hippy-cliche Farnum gets one gander at
the Bradys' Stanislavskian disaster and gives 'em the boot.

WRITER: Albert E. Lewin

DIRECTOR: Peter Baldwin

• Robert Reed hated this episode so much that he took typewriter in hand, and hunted and pecked out the following memo.

NOTES:"And Now a Word from Our Sponsor" Brady Bunch,
August 25, 1971

Once again, "The Brady Bunch" takes an inconsistent literary
leap from semi-real situation comedy into thinly motivated farce
bordering on slapstick.

It's the old 1930's "Movies enter the lives of Mr. and Mrs.
Average America" plot in which our loveable, down-to-earth family is unwittingly hit by a tidal wave of Hollywood lunacy-nearly
torn from their middle-class moorings, but thanks to their good
humour, stability and unflagging good sense, not only withstand
the barage, but emerge high, dry and unsullied in their victory.
Morale: Mr. Average American Man is really the National Hero.
(Warm embrace, chuckles and ... we fade out.)

It's been done a thousand times, and if well written, could
probably work again, at least in a dated sense. "And Now A Word
From Our Sponsor" is not well written.

Sc. 13

1. In order to elicit some conflict, the author has given Mike an
arbitrary skepticism unmotivated by the amount of information he
has been given. Carol has had the first-hand experience and
would more probably have cause to doubt Farnum's veracity. The
scene would work just as well that way, and the phone call could
still be made by Mike.

2. Carol's lines "phony-sincere; sincere-sincere" are ninny lines.

3. Mike's expository speech "Art Emhoff works in one of the
biggest advertising agencies in town, etc." is typical of constantly
overdone exposition. Cut out the everlasting appositives. Should
read, "Art Emhoff is in advertising, and if anybody knows about ...
Skip Farnum, it'll be Art." Over-exposition and appositives almost
always create incredulity of character.

4. Mike's phone conversation has no phatic communion in it
i.e., normal everyday dialog. He, Art, has been established as a
friend. You don't call a friend out of the blue, and go right to the
problem without, "How've you been," or "How's your golf game,"
or "How's your wife," and you don't hang up without the same
thing.