Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (46 page)

EPISODE 66: "JAN'S AUNT JENNY"

The Bradys spend the weekend happily (we did everything happily) cleaning junk out of the attic, and come across a decades-old
photograph of Carol's aunt Jenny. Incredibly, the photo looks
exactly like Jan!

At this point, Jan (who we've already learned is insecure about
her looks) figures that if she could get hold of a current photo of
the old gal, she'd have a good idea of what she will look like forty
or fifty years down the line.

A couple of weeks later the photo arrives, and Jan learns that
she'll someday grow up to look just like ... Imogene Coca!
YIKES!!! Surprising no one, Jan goes off the deep end (again) and
gets thoroughly bummed about her future face. However, after
she meets Aunt Jenny, Jan's mood swings 180 degrees (again),
because it turns out that the old bag is really a pretty cool chick. She travels the world, is totally hip, and even gives the Bradys
something they've always needed-a cast from breaking her leg
signed by many famous people.

Henderson,
Plumb, and
Imogene Coco.
(©1991 Capital
Cities/ABC, Inc.)

WRITER: Michael Morris

DIRECTOR: Hal Cooper

• Everybody knows how brilliant Imogene Coca was with Sid
Caesar on "Your Show of Shows," but she was also terrific in "It's
About Time," Sherwood Schwartz's sci-fi sitcom, in which she costarred with another comic genius, Joe E. Ross (best known as Car
54's Gunther Toody).

•This show introduces a couple of grooming changes in the
Brady kids. First, we'd recently done a show about Jan getting
glasses, and from this episode forward, you'll notice that she wears
them in every show. That's because Eve ended up nearsighted,
too. Also, this episode marks the beginning of my totally frustrating and vain attempts to keep my rapidly curling hair straightened
and under control. It looks goofy, and over the next few shows, it
got a lot worse before I finally gave up.

EPISODE 67: "CINDY BRADY, LADY"

Cindy's sick of being a little kid, and miserable that she can't do
anything to speed up her aging process. Enter Bobby, who comes
to the conclusion that Cindy would feel more grown up if she had a secret admirer. So, trying to cheer the kid up, he starts sending
her anonymous gifts.

The monkey wrench gets tossed into the works when Cindy
tells her secret admirer (it's Bobby disguising his voice on a pay
phone) to visit the house and say hello. That's it; Bobby's sure he's
a goner.

Desperate, he comes up with a plan to save his neck, and bribes
his buddy Tommy with a "gen-yoo-ine Kennedy half-dollar" to
pose as the elusive secret admirer. Mike finds out about the scam
and nearly blows a blood vessel, but things turn out fine because
Tommy decides that he really wants to see Cindy again, and even
gives Bobby's four bits back.

WRITERS: Al Schwartz and Larry Rhine

DIRECTOR: Hal Cooper

• The kid who plays Tommy in this episode is a familiar-faced
actor named Eric Shea. He can be seen on "The Odd Couple," in
The Poseidon Adventure, and you've heard his voice a million
times in "Peanuts" cartoons as Linus.

EPISODE 68: "THE POWER OF THE PRESS"

A "high concept" episode. Peter gets his own column in the
school paper, starts calling himself "Scoop" Brady, neglects his
studies, gets a D minus on his science test, writes an extremely flattering column about his science teacher in hopes to upping his
grade, gets turned down flat, and in the end learns a lesson about
hard work and the power of the press.

WRITERS: Bill Freedman and Ben Gershman

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

EPISODE 69: "SERGEANT EMMA"

When Alice goes on vacation, we Bradys mope around wondering how we'll survive a week without her. That is until Alice's identical cousin Emma shows up, takes charge, and proves that "looks"
are perhaps the only thing the two have in common.

Alice is wonderful, Emma's a beast. Alice is a sweetheart,
Emma's unbearable. Alice is sweet, Emma's Butch. Actually, Emma
has spent her entire adult life in the army, and in no time has the
Brady house reeling with her strictly enforced military regime. Six
A.M. workouts, chipped beef on toast for "chow," bedroom inspections, and an early-evening lights-out leave the Brady civilians worn
out and depressed.

They endure Emma for Alice's sake and even turn their "Welcome Home, Alice" party into a going-away party for Emma
when the old gal stumbles on to their preparations and misinterprets. Needless to say, the Bradys would never hurt Emma's feelings, and when the Sarge's moved to tears by their (misintepret-
ed) kindness, everyone learns a lesson about tolerance and loneliness.

In the end, Alice lets the Bradys know that she's thrilled they
liked Cousin Emma so much. She explains that Emma has a hard
time making friends and (for some inexplicable reason) usually
rubs people the wrong way. However, since the Bradys were so
crazy about her, she'll be back for three weeks when Alice goes on
her next vacation!

You may not be surprised to learn that Ann B. Davis plays both
roles.

WRITER: Harry Winkler

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

*As odd as this may seem, in real life Ann B. Davis does little or
no cooking (although I think she knows how to make toast).
Believe it or not, she also admits to being "not very good with children."

EPISODE 70: "THE FENDER BENDERS"

Uncle Fester's back, and Carol's crashed into him. Actually,
Jackie Coogan isn't playing Uncle Fester but rather a moneygrubbing slimebag named Harry Duggan.

The plot has Carol backing into Duggan's car in the supermarket parking lot. The damages are minor, and they both agree to
take care of it by themselves. However, a couple of hours later,
Harry storms the Brady house, row claiming that Carol smashed
into his car, maimed him, and had better give him a lot of money
to cover the damages.

The Bradys don't buy his act. They toss him out the door, and it
isn't long before Duggan's doing his "Owww, my neck!" routine by
showing up in court wearing a huge neck brace. Things look grim
bad for the Bradys until our hero Mike throws his briefcase onto
the floor behind the dastardly Duggan. The crash startles the fortune hunter, he cranes his neck around to check out the noise,
and an entire courtroom full of gawkers (not to mention the
judge) find out that he's phony.

WRITER: David P. Harmon

DIRECTOR: Allan Barron

EPISODE 71: "MY FAIR OPPONENT"

In a hybrid of Pygmalion and Frankenstein, Marcia makes over
Molly, the school's stereotypical geeky ugly-duckling type, and
helps her run for the maniacally coveted position of Filmore Junior
High School Banquet Night hostess. However, Marcia's creation
soon turns on her, becoming an unbearable, cliquish, nose-in-theair jerk.

Things really start to boil when Marcia attempts to stop the
monster by beating it out for Banquet Night hostess. But when
Molly swipes Marcia's brilliant campaign speech, she also swipes
the election out from under her.

As we near the end of our episode, however, Molly is hit with
one of those miraculous only-on-The Brady Bunch" changes of
heart. She apologizes, fesses up about the stolen speech, and fixes
it so that they can both go to the banquet as co-hostesses.

Then we all packed up and went to Hawaii.

WRITER: Bernie Kahn

DIRECTOR: Peter Baldwin

• Banquet guest of honor "Colonel Dick Whitfield" gets his character name from the real-life husband of Frances Whitfield, our onset teacher.

EPISODE 72: "HAWAII BOUND"

Year four starts off by placing the Bradys in paradise.

There's really ... uh ... not much plot to the next three
episodes, but who cares.

The Bradys are flying off to Hawaii. Why? Simple. Mike has
designed a high-rise that's currently being built in Oahu, and his
architectural firm has decided that he and his whole family should
drop by and check it out (wow, that's some firm!).

Anyway, we get there, and the Bradys walk you through an
eleven-minute travelogue touring Hawaii. Bobby finds a tiki on
the beach, laughs when he's told that it's cursed, but then
changes his tune when big brother Greg enters a surfing competition, wipes out on a wicked wave, and disappears into the tropical
foam.

Did Greg drown?

Tune in next week and find out.

WRITER: Tam Spiva

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

• If you've read pages 59 through 69, you know all about how
that wave nearly drowned me for real, how a monster outrigger nearly drowned all the Bradys, and how the tropical ambience
helped me finally lock lips with Maureen.

The Big
Kahuna...about
to wipe out.
(Barry Williams)

EPISODE 73: "PASS THE TABU"

Okay, you guessed right Greg doesn't drown but Bobby is now
convinced that his tabu tiki is indeed a harbinger of really bad luck,
and heaves the thing into the sea.

Enter Jan, who's strolling along the sand when she comes
across ... the tiki! She picks it up, pockets it, and, thinking he'd
lost it, returns it to Bobby.

Once the tiki's back, Bobby wants no part of it; but Peter, convinced that maybe it is harmless after all, starts wearing it on a
string around his neck. The necklace lasts about seven hours.
Halfway through the night, Greg wakes up to find Pete's pajamas
covered by the tiki ... and a giant poisonous wolf spider.!i! Yikes!

Mr. Spider gets tossed, but the tiki's not so easily disposed of. The
mysterious island native Mr. Hanalei tells the boys that the only way
to remove a tiki's curse is to return it to its original burial ground.

WRITER: Tam Spiva

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

Large livin' at
the luau.
(©1991 Capital
Cities/ABC, Inc.)

In the "Tiki Caves."
From left, a crew
member, Chris
Knight, Vincent
Price, Mike
Lookinland, Barry
Williams, Uoyd
Schwartz.
(© Karen Lipscomb)

*The "poisonous spider" wasn't deadly, but it did have large
fangs. In fact, when it came time to shoot the bug scenes, our "spider wrangler" held up shooting until he could place a tiny piece of
styrofoam over each pointy little fang.