Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (49 page)

At the same time, Marcia's had it with trihabitation. Jan and
Cindy have driven her nuts, and she wants out of the babe-filled
bedroom. Carol's solution? "Why not fix up the attic and move in?"

Predictably, the sparks fly, Greg and Marcia butt heads, and all
appears hopeless.

However, the half-hour ends on a happy note. Marcia lets Greg
have the room, at least until he goes away to college the following year.

In the tag, Cindy whines that since she's the youngest, she
won't get to sleep in the attic until 1980!

WRITERS: William Raynor and Myles Wilder

DIRECTOR: Lloyd Schwartz

•Nepotism Alen! This episode was directed as well as produced
by Lloyd Schwartz. It was taped at the high point of the romance/
grope-athon between me and Maureen, and shooting was tense
(see p. 84-87).

EPISODE 95: "SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN
BRADYS"

By episode 95, we had really begun having to stretch for story
lines. In this case, Cindy somehow manages to talk the entire
Brady family into appearing in her production of "Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs" (with Sam the Butcher as Dopey ... ouch!). The
results are humiliating.

Waking up
"Snow White."
(© Paramount
Pictures)

WRITER: Ben Starr

DIRECTOR: Bruce Bilson

-As the Bradys are embarrassing themselves onstage, look closely at their audience. In the first row, smiling a broad smile, is a
handsome, white-haired older woman. This is Frances Whitfield,
who served as teacher/legal supervisor/referee to the Brady kids
throughout the run of the show. We loved her like crazy.

EPISODE 96: "MAIL ORDER HERO"

Season five premiered with a sports star and a fashion statement. Joe Namath in a leisure suit? Sounds unbelievable, but it's
true, and on display in the dead center of this episode.

In a reworking of the "Marcia meets Davy Jones" story, Bobby
brags to his friends that he's best pals with Broadway Joe. They
demand that he put up or shut up, and Bobby gets desperate.
Finally, Cindy comes up with a plan, and writes a letter to Joe
that portrays Bobby as a near-death basket case, and good-hearted Joe decides to pay a visit.

Despite the plot, this was one of the most enjoyable episodes
we ever filmed. Joe was terrific. I already mentioned that
Florence Henderson was nuts about the guy, and in the end
threw herself at him in the Bradys' Astroturf backyard (see p. 78).
He let us kids take advantage of him too, and tossed about a hundred and eighty thousand passes to Chris, Mike, and me.

WRITER: Martin A. Ragaway

DIRECTOR: Bruce Bilson

EPISODE 97: "THE ELOPEMENT"

The Brady girls drop a bomb: Alice is getting married!!! They
know it has to be true because they overheard Alice on the
phone talking to Sam about elopement. When Alice asks for
Saturday off, and Sam calls Mike asking about where a newlywed
guy might find nice affordable housing, that seals it. The whole
family goes crazy and starts making plans for a surprise wedding
reception.

Oops! Come Saturday, the Bradys all jump up, yell "Surprise!,"
nearly scare Alice and Sam into early strokes, and find that the
whole thing was a mistake. Alice's cousin Clara was eloping (she
had called asking if Alice would serve as her witness), and she
needed Saturday off because she and Sam had a big bowling
match to attend.

The Bradys decide that they'll never jump to conclusions
again . . . at least until next time.

WRITER: Harry Winkler

DIRECTOR: Jerry London

(©1991 Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.)

On "Barton's TV
Talent Review."
(© Paramount
Pictures)

EPISODE 98: "ADIOS JOHNNY BRAVO"

This week, we Brady kids are polluting the airwaves yet again,
this time singing on something called "Hal Barton's TV Talent
Review." I wear plaid pants and a leisure suit jacket, but the rest
of the kids don't look quite so ... hip.

Enter wily and va-va-voom-ish talent agent Tami Cutler, who's
seen our act and wants to make Greg-and only Greg-a superstar. She tells him that he's "totally cosmic and happening,"
which her brown-nosing lackey/assistant Buddy affirms with an
enthusiatic "Righteous!"

Greg mulls over the offer, weighs the alternatives, and does
the right thing ... he dumps the rest of the group. Tami gives
him a sparkly/spangly, nearly Elvisian costume, and when he performs again, he gets mobbed by a swarm of wild young babes.
His head swells, he changes his name to Johnny Bravo and
decides to blow off college and become a full-time show-business
legend.

But it all caves in when Greg finds out he's really just a precursor of Milli Vanilli: Tami's been mechanically "sweetening" (i.e.,
fixing) his voice.

That's it. Greg keeps his artistic credibility, kills Johnny Bravo, and once again becomes that nice, normal, level-headed, Vanilla
kid that we've always known.

WRITER: Joanna Lee

DIRECTOR: Jerry London

• Claudia Jennings, who plays Tami Cutler, was the 1970
Playboy Playmate of the Year, and went on to appear in loads of
cheesy car-chase B movies.

EPISODE 99: "NEVER TOO YOUNG"

Against his better judgment, Bobby gets himself kissed by a girl
(Melissa Sue Anderson from "Little House on the Prairie"), sees
fireworks (quite literally, thanks to the special effects guys), and
goes wild for more. Problem is, after a second smooch (and more
skyrockets), Bobby finds out that the object of his osculation may
have given him a sexually transmitted disease ... the mumps.

Uh-Oh ... if Millicent comes back positive, the whole family
could catch Bobby's mumps and have to miss out on the
Saturday's gala Roaring Twenties party.

WRITERS: Al Schwartz and Larry Rhine

DIRECTOR: Richard Michaels

EPISODE 100: "PETER AND THE WOLF"

There's this girl, Sandra, and Greg's crazy about her, but she
can't go out with him unless he can find someone to double up
and keep company with her visiting cousin, Linda. "Uh-oh," Greg thinks. "Visiting cousin? Can't get her own date? Heeeeere, poochy,
poochy, poochy."

Celebrating our
one hundredth
episode.
(© Paramount
Pictures)

Greg's pals all feel the same way, and (since men are scum)
none of 'em will touch this blind date with a ten-foot pole. Finally,
desperate to snag Sandra, Greg turns to Peter and asks him to
make the supreme sacrifice and date the dog.

Peter, who's never had a date of any kind, agrees, and it's not
long before he's sporting a phony mustache (to look older) and
trying desperately to act as cool as Greg.

Date night comes, and as it turns out, Linda's even hotter than
Sandra! Peter's thrilled, but terrified, and soon his nervousness,
not to mention his detachable mustache, clues the girls into the
fact that Peter's a phony.

They don't let on. Instead, they make a plan that's sure to drive
Greg crazy, and it works like this. The foursome heads off to a
pizzeria, where both girls throw themselves all over Peter, kissing it
up big-time.

Pan around the room, and we've got trouble, because seated in
the corner are Mike, Carol, and Mike's "clients from Mexico," the
Calderons. They see the improper osculatory behavior and are
outraged. Finding out that the offenders are Brady kids only makes
it worse.

Finally, Peter fesses up, tells the whole story, apologizes to the
Calderons, and smooths over the bumpy Brady brouhaha.

WRITER: Tam Spiva

DIRECTOR: Leslie H. Martinson

• I always looked forward to the episodes where Greg had
dates, in the hopes that I'd get to work with someone "hot."
However, I had a rival in Lloyd Schwartz who'd cast those parts,
beat me to the punch, and generally did most of the post-episode
dating himself.

EPISODE 101: "GETTING GREG'S GOAT"

Greg hooks up with Raquel, and then hides her in his room
overnight. Sounds more like an episode of "Three's Company"
than "The Brady Bunch."

Actually Raquel's a goat, and the mascot for the Coolidge High
School football team. Greg's stolen her to avenge the theft of
Westdale's bear-cub mascot. With no place safe to stash the illgotten goat, Greg tucks her away in his attic bachelor pad, where
he hopes she'll lay low until the coast is clear.

She doesn't. She eats Greg's clothes, smells terrible, and when
Mike overhears Greg yelling "C'mon, Raquel, stop it," he jumps to the extraordinarily un-Brady-like conclusion that Greg's got a girl
in his room! They then have an exchange that seems like something lifted directly from Jack Tripper and Mr. Roper:

Greg and
"Raquel."
(© Paramount
Pictures)

MIKE: Greg, I think we need to talk about Raquel.

GREG: Yes, sir?

MIKE: I know you're seventeen years old and you do
have a right to privacy, but did you really think you
were going to get away with

GREG: I don't know, I brought her up there last night,
and thought I'd sneak her out in the morning.

MIKE: She was up there ALL NIGHT?!?!?!

GREG: Yeah, but to be honest with you, I can't wait to
get rid of that beast.