Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (45 page)

Again, this is seemingly small, but it is typical of careless dialog
sans transitions. The consequence of which is, we as actors have
to spend time on the set searching for something and abandoning
time for perfecting performance for which there is no time anyway. This is writing at its simplest level, we have a right to expect
someone to know enough or care enough to have it done.

Sc. 14

1. Mike's response to Farnum. "Kooky" is an inapt term. "Oddball," maybe or "Nuts"; "Laughable"; "Ridiculous"; "Cliche," but
not "Kooky."

Sc. 16

1. Typical weak scene ending with a limp gag-line.

Sc. 17

1. Needs qualification. The decision to give them money is too
easy and unconsidered. Weakens family sense of prudence and
responsibility.

Sc. 22

1. Mike: "I can't make heads or tails of this legal double-talk,
etc." Nonsense, Mike is an adult in business and capable of
understanding contracts.

2. The soap sequence. Carol should introduce the conflict.
Again, she has the information, not Mike. To have her overlook the
fact that we don't use the product, or to have her say nothing
about it, makes her seem thoughtless, careless or stupid.

3. All the soaps are one-syllable names. Sounds phony and is
an obvious author's device.

4. The whole soap sequence, i.e., "Help," "Champ," "Best,"
"Safe" etc. allows Carol to become unreal and cutesy-pooh to no
avail. The limpest sort of gag sequence.

5. Mike's speech should read: "Probably not, but I think they
should and I think we should. Otherwise, we're frauds."

6. The end of the scene offers too definite and over-positive a
course change. Needs qualifying. "I think I oughtto call Farnum,
etc.," and "I'll talkto them in the morning."

7. The end gag is unplayable. Tearing the contract is out of character and unmotivated-another author's device.

8. In order to make pieces of a contract small enough to flutter
like confetti, the business would take far too long and consequently leave a hole as well as place too strong an emphasis on a
decision that is not that pressingly important.

S c. 34-37

1. Desperately needs qualification. It is totally unbelievable that
parents would deliberately turn children loose to their own
unmonitored devices to purposely dirty and probably damage
clothes, if not themselves. Not in a family of nine with some sense
of frugality, if not caution. Every middle-class viewer with children
would scoff in disbelief. To laugh at a situation is one thing, to
laugh at it and believe it could happen is something far more
desireable. The things the kids do could happen, but not believable the way its been given to happen.

Sc. 40-41

1. Alice's forgetting which pile is which is unbelievable and
forces the following scene to become painfully anti-climatic.
Should be compressed into one scene.

Sc.45

1. Mike's line: "We don't know much about acting" is like referring to "movies" in the movies. It brings the audience out of the
fantasy. Never remind them what they're seeing isn't the truth.
Could read: "We've never done this before."

Sc. 49

1. Myrna is the exact antithesis of the author's description. No
method actress would spout dialogue like "lots of energy," "bigger than life," etc.

Sc. 50

1. Ludicrous. My God, if Alice has been mopping the floor, as
indicated, the mop is wet! Yet, she "clasps it" to her breast, "kisses it," etc. Nothing is made of it at all. This is an unfortunate but
typical example of how scenes too often get to final with ridiculous inconsistencies or impossiblities.

Sc. 57-etc.

1. Unjustified strain of believability that our "director," when
met with failure in one "scene," can immediately without preparation go to another. Should there be a dissolve or a flip or some justification in dialog?

Sc. 63

1. Mike's line should read: This is my house,"-take the edge
of sarcasm off.

Sc. 64

1. Carol: "I guess we'll just have to wait until Mr. Brady gets
home, etc." Ninnyism. Once again, Carol becomes a nincompoop.
If Carol can read a grocery list, she can look up a given reference.

The Character of Skip Farnum

Skip Farnum, our foil, is a paper thin, one-dimensional version
of the old pot-boiling cliche of the Hollywood director, updated by
someone's version of the 'mod' dialect. In 45 speeches, he has
been given almost as many cliches ranging from "like real," "rap"
(twice), "flip" (twice), "lay it on," "cool it," "squares," "gig," and
the inevitable theatrical labeler of the au courant young,-"dig"
(twice).

The theory seems to be, if a little bit of character dialog will
help the character, a whole lot will make him.

An old tenet of the theater is that comedy character is based
upon behavior aided by plot involvement and sometimes, though
not always, dialog.

This performance will entirely depend on what the actor and
director can bring to it, while being severely hampered by dialogue and aided by no behaviour at all, with the exception of framing a scene through his hands.

We are led to believe he is "one of the biggest directors in TV
commercials," and yet, we never see him really direct. What a
disappointment! In his big scenes, he does little but react to us
and respond with one-liners. Meanwhile, the comedy-burden of
the scene is left to us, the family, and in the case of Mike and
Carol, by severely over-acting which if done to the height it is
written will cause suspension of belief and character. We are not
that dumb.

Think of the funnier, or at least more real and consistent situations we could have been given.

Myrna is written as "definitely a method actress." Mike and
Carol under tutelege could end up doing a "method" approach to
commercials, or even improvising, or trying to. This could be far
funnier, less predictable and certainly more consistent with the
character.

Farnum says he wants us "natural" "unrehearsed" and yet he
gives us scripts to learn and we are seen to go through it three
times without variation except heightening of the "Ham." It's too much. We can only get broader which is no surprise by the third
time, and endangers the believability of our characters. If he gives
us no scripts at all, and we have to make it up, then it falls right in
with Myrna's approach, improvisation and ultimate conflict with
what he sees as "realistic"-which obviously isn't.

This way Farnum could actually direct us, show us how he
wants it, do it for us. He's the broad character, give him a chance
to use it instead of just saying it.

In short, it seems to me, the problem with this script is not in
the plot situations. It could all happen. Where the rub comes is in
how it is brought about. The troubles are: totally unmotivated
behavior; as ever-weak dialog; and over-written cliched characters. The script reads as if it were put together by a commitee,
with each guy responsible for a different area ...

ROBERT REED

EPISODE 60: "CLICK"

Mike and Carol actually disagree about something ... Greg.
Seems that Greg wants to join the high-school football team, and
while Mike's all for it, Carol's afraid he'll get hurt. Finally, after
Mike and Greg give her a long song-and-dance about the relative
safety of organized scholastic athletics, Carol okays Greg's participation.

Uh oh, just after Greg joins the team, and goes to practice, he
busts his ribs. Carol does an "I told you so" routine, and Greg stops
taking gridiron hits and starts taking gridiron snapshots as the
team's official photographer.

I still think that was a wimpy compromise.

WRITERS: Tom and Helen August

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

EPISODE 61: "THE NOT-SO-ROSE-COLORED
GLASSES"

Well, Jan's gone whacko yet again! She needs glasses but is
just too neurotic about her appearance to wear them. Blurry
eyed, she leaves school on the wrong bike, squints as her grades
start to go south, and finally crashes her bicycle through the kids'
group portrait that Mike had taken for his and Carol's wedding
anniversary.

After that, the glasses stay on, and the kids sneak out. They have the picture retaken and swap it for the busted one, but eagle-eyed
Mike realizes the switch when he notices Jan's wearing her glasses
in the new shot-she wasn't wearing them in the original photo.

WRITER: Bruce Howard

DIRECTOR: Leslie H. Martinson

EPISODE 62: "BIG LITTLE MAN"

Puny little Bobby has had it up to here (my hand is under my
chin) with people goofing on him because of his height. So when
Sam absent-mindedly calls him "Shrimpo," he goes off the deep
end and starts hanging from his closet rod in the hope of stretching himself out.

One day later, Bobby's thrilled, and convinced that he's grown a
full inch and a half. That shrinks to an inch when Marcia admits
that she moved the height mark on his bedroom wall down a halfinch, to help him feel good about himself. That drops to zero
when Jan and Cindy each fess up that they did the same.

Bobby bums, but then his tiny stature ends up saving the day.

Helping Greg close up Sam's butcher shop, Bobby proves that
his brain is also tiny when he locks himself and his brother in
Sam's zero-degree meat locker. All looks lost until Greg busts the
locker's small window and only little Bobby can fit through the
opening, saving both of their lives.

This is another one of those episodes that people seem to
remember especially fondly.

WRITER: Skip Webster

DIRECTOR: Robert Reed

EPISODE 63: "GETTING DAVY JONES"

This may be is possibly the most popular "Brady Bunch"
episode of all.

Marcia is the president of the Davy Jones Fan Club at Filmore
Junior High, and she's made her pals a solemn vow that she can
get Davy to appear at their prom.

Marcia's completely clueless as to how she'll actually go about
fulfilling that pledge, but gamely gives it her best shot. She tries to
catch up with Davy at the local TV station ... and fails. She dresses
up like a bellboy, with Greg in tow, hoping to surprise him in his
hotel room (probably not the first girl to do that), and even chases
the Monkee to the local recording studio.

Twice more Marcia bites it big-time, and gets unceremoniously
tossed out of both establishments on her can. However, as she
whines about her predicament to Davy's manager.

Davy just happens to catch her entire whiny, moany sob story
on his headsets.

Before long, it's time for another celebrity to pay an unexpected
visit to the Brady pad. Davy shows up, explains overhearing
Marcia's tale at the recording studio, agrees to play the prom, asks
her to be his date, sings to her; and as the episode closes, he's
swapping spit with the gal. (All right, so maybe it's just a coupla
pecks on the cheek.)

Anyway, if the Museum of Broadcasting ever calls looking for a
"Brady" episode to put on display, this may be the appropriate
choice. Either this or the "Oh, my nose ..." thing (Episode 90).

WRITERS: Phil Leslie and Al Schwartz

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

• Here's an odd little slice o' trivia. Listen closely to this episode
and you'll realize that Marcia Brady has the same schoolteacher as
that evil Brady twin ... Bart Simpson! Yep, Marcia Wallace (who'll
always be best known as Carol Kester Bondurant, the red-haired
secretary from "The Bob Newhart Show") played Marcia's teacher
Mrs. Robbins. She now supplies the voice for the equally creepy
Mrs. Crubopple, thorn in the side of American pop icon, Bart
Simpson.

EPISODE 64: "DOUGH RE MI"

What can you say about this particular episode except "Ay-Yi-YiYi-Yi"?

We enter the Bradys' half-hour universe to find Greg holed up
in his room, hard at work writing the song that he hoped would
"really break" his recording career. It's called "We Can Make the
World a Whole Lot Brighter," and he assures us it's great!-The
only problem is that Greg doesn't have the hundred and fifty dollars that it's gonna take to get his masterpiece recorded.

Peter than hatches a plan wherein all of the Brady kids will
sing on the recording and split the costs six ways. Sounds great,
... until the other five kids get a load of Peter's awful voice
(which is funny, because even in real life Chris Knight can't sing
worth a lick). Turns out Peter's voice is in the pubescent process
of changing, and is uncontrollably jumping from octave to
octave.

At this point the loving Brady siblings get together and decide
to dump the dead weight from the group. Peter's crushed-until
an extra-sensitive Greg figures out a way to keep everybody
happy. He locks himself back up in that room of his, sits down,
and creates an equally awful song called "Time to Change," all about growing up and finding yourself (sounds like Springsteen),
and showcasing the wretched voice of Peter Brady.

WRITER: Ben Starr

DIRECTOR: Allan Barron

•Both "We Can Make the World a Whole Lot Brighter" and
"Time to Change" would appear on the second Brady Kids record
album entitled Meet the Brady Bunch (I wonder where we got that
idea).

EPISODE 65: "THE BIG BET"

Greg makes like a real older brother and verbally abuses
Bobby, belittling his puny stature and lack of muscle power. He
also declares that he could do twice as many chin-ups as his teenytiny brother. Bobby snaps, and challenges Greg to make good on
his boast or spend one week as his personal slave.

Greg laughs, accepts, and forgets about the whole thing, while
Bobby goes the Jane Fonda route and exercises like a man possessed. Come contest day, Bobby kicks butt, and Greg unhappily
spends the next seven days as his indentured servant.

WRITER: Elroy Schwartz

DIRECTOR: Earl Bellamy

-Nepotism Alert! Sherwood's daughter Hope makes the first of
her three appearances as Rachel, main squeeze to Greg. Working
with the boss' daughter, I was on my absolute best behavior.