Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (51 page)

Bad idea. Marcia breezes through the course, while Greg ...
well, let's just say that he laundered a lot of groovy polyester dresses that month.

WRITER: George Tibbles

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

EPISODE 109: "MISS POPULARITY"

Jan tries to give her low self-image a shot in the arm by competing in her school's "Most Popular Girl" contest. Driven to win at all
costs, Jan makes campaign promises that she has no intention of
keeping, lies to her classmates, underhandedly smears her opponent's name, and in general acts like a real politician.

The student body gets one look at Jan's slimy modus operandi
and promptly ... elects her.

Scan your VCR forward and when Jan's pals start asking her to
fulfill some of her grandiose campaign pledges, and she can't deliver, they're not pals anymore.

Fast forward one more time and Jan's apologizing for her sleaziness in a speech to the whole school, and promising to uphold
every single one of her campaign promises.

The Bunch with
astronaut James
McDivitt and
"Kaplutians"
Frank and Sadie
Delfino.
(© Paramount
Pictures)

She is, after all, a Brady.

WRITER: Martin A. Ragaway

DIRECTOR: Jack Donahue

EPISODE 110: "OUT OF THIS WORLD"

Peter and Bobby have suddenly become UFO fanatics, even
going so far as to corner real live Apollo 9 commander James
McDivitt-he believes that he saw a UFO while in space-after his
appearance on a local talk show. They ask him about his close
encounter, ask for his autograph, tell him to keep up the good
work, and then head home for some of Alice's famous pot roast
("It's out-of-this-world, too!" guffaws Alice).

After supper, the two would-be Carl Sagans decide to sleep outside and monitor the night sky for "visitors." The other kids make
fun of them, but Bobby and Pete are undaunted, and before long
they've spotted a genuine UFO. At least that's what they think.

Actually, it's Greg playing a (rather childish) trick on the overactive imaginations of the stargazers. With a flashlight, a clothesline,
some plastic sheeting, and a sound-effects whistle, he's created a
fairly believable UFO.

They buy it-and photograph their find as proof of its existence. After a lot of yelping and excitement, the boys hit the sheets and nod off. On a far-out dream sequence, Bobby meets some tiny
little extraterrestrials.)

Come morning, Carol develops her boys' UFO pix and finds
that they really did get shots of something. She shows 'em to Mike,
and things get out of hand when he calls in ... the Air Force.

Things get even crazier when Greg comes home and realizes
that his prank has now gained national military significance. He
immediately confesses, but while Greg's upstairs, demonstrating
his homemade UFO to Mike, he unwittingly causes the Air Force's
Captain McCarthy to believe that he too has had a close encounter
of the third kind.

Mike
Lookinland and
Frank Delfino.
Susan Olsen
and Sadie
Delfino.
(Courtesy
Sherwood
Schwartz)

Chaos ensues and multiplies, until finally the air is cleared, the
dust settles, Peter and Bobby are disappointed, Captain McCarthy
is outraged, Mike's embarrassed, and Greg is grounded.

WRITERS: Al Schwartz and Larry Rhine

DIRECTOR: Peter Baldwin

• Bobby's Martians (actually, they say they're from "Kapluton,"
so I guess "Kaplutians" would be correct) are played by Mr. and
Mrs. Frank and Sadie Delfino, the two "little people" who spent
five years acting as stand-ins for Bobby, Cindy, Peter, and Jan.

Why not just use kids? Lloyd Schwartz explains it:

"From the beginning of the show we used little people as standins for the kids and we did it for a couple of logical reasons. They
didn't have to worry about school, they could work longer hours,
they did a good job, and they became very valuable members of
the crew. But the problem was that as the kids grew, Frank and
Sadie didn't. It finally got to the point where they had to walk
around the set with customized boxes which they'd stand on, to approximate the kids' height. For example, Frankie had a "Bobby"
box, and a "Peter" box that was a little bigger. Sadie had the female
equivalent. But they couldn't move around the set on these boxes,
and that caused all sorts of problems whenever we had to rehearse
any action scene.

After the crash,
me ... and my
car.
(Barry Williams)

"Finally, during the third or fourth season, somebody from ABC
came up to me one day and said "Fire them," and I said, `Fuck off,
we'll put up with it, they're part of the family.' Every once in a
while, if you look very closely at an episode, you'll find them as
extras in a scene. But the really perfect part for them was in this
episode, playing the friendly `Kaplutians."'

And by the way, if you're at all interested in couch-potato-type
trivia, Frank's line "One small step for spacemen, one giant leap for
Kaplutians" was ad-libbed by Frank as we shot. So was Sadie's
"C'mon, honey ... let's go". They threw 'em in to break up the
crew, and were so successful that they left 'em in.

-All through this thing, you'll notice that Greg's got a Band-Aid
draped over his bottom lip. Zit? you ask. Chapped lip? Hickey?
Nope, it was none of those things; I had merely put my face
through the front window of my Porsche, and needed the bandage
to cover up my unsightly (not to mention painful) stitches. Ouch!!

We rehearsed this episode just before Thanksgiving in 1973,
and when we had the thing up to speed, we all said our goodbyes
and headed home for a gluttonous holiday.

Come Thanksgiving day, I got up bright and early, got into my
brand-new speed wagon, and not a mile later had a head-on collision with a station wagon ... piloted by a young woman who was
driving toward me while facing backwards and talking to her dog!

I hit my brakes. She hit my front bumper. I split my lip on the
steering wheel, then cracked the windshield with my forehead:
one split second, one rearranged face. (By the way, just try being
seventeen years old, and explaining to the cops that any accident
wasn't your fault.)

Ninety-six hours later, Monday rears its ugly head once more.
I'm patched up and on my way back to work, afraid that they'll
have to write me out of the show, or hopefully come up with a
story line to explain my disfigurement.

Once I got to the lot, Lloyd Schwartz took one look at my lip,
promptly squealed "Eeeee! Yuck!" and decided that Greg had cut
himself shaving. "What does Greg shave with?" I wondered. "A
lawn mower?" Anyway, they slapped a band-aid on my head and
that was that.

Two scar-removal surgeries later, that "shaving cut" is still
noticeable on my lower lip.

EPISODE 111: "TWO PETES IN A POD"

Pete's got a double, and we've got a story line.

Rushing through the school hallways one day, Peter bumps (literally) into a kid who looks exactly like him (only with nerdy black
glasses). Together, they team up for what can best be described as
"Brady pranks aplenty." The matched pair are yukking it up and
reveling in their ruckus, until ...

Uh-oh. Mike's set up a blind date between his boss's daughter
and Peter on the same night that our pal Pete has made a date with
Michelle, "the grooviest, most absolutely far-out chick in school!"

When date night finally arrives, phony Pete hooks up with the
blind date, while the real Peter hooks up with that ultra-babe
Michelle. Paths cross, befuddled double-takes abound, chaos rules,
and an extra-wacky time is had by all!

WRITERS: Sam Locke and Milton Pascal

DIRECTOR: Richard Michaels

This episode marks Robbie Rist's real first appearance as the
Bradys' cousin Oliver. Episode 112 is all about Oliver's moving in
with the Bradys, but we shot this episode first and aired the two in
reverse order.

The role of Cousin Oliver was a brainchild of Paramount president Doug Cramer. He felt that the Brady children had become
somewhat ancient by TV-kid standards and that someone younger
should be introduced into the cast to appeal to the five-and-under
crowd. Sherwood resisted but finally gave in.

Robbie Rist first came to Sherwood's attention when he was
asked to interview for the attempted Brady spin-off, "Kelly's Kids."
Although the role he auditioned for ultimately went to Todd
Lookinland, Robbie had made a good impression on the casting
types at Paramount.

Most everyone agreed that the addition of Cousin Oliver was
unnecessary, and he had a tough time trying to fit in with "the family."

EPISODE 112: "WELCOME ABOARD"

There's gonna be an obnoxious new addition to the Brady family
... Cousin Oliver. Apparently, Oliver's parents have been sent off to
a South American jungle/architectural site, and the round-headed
little guy has nowhere else to go.

The Bradys welcome the remarkably untraumatized little Oliver
with open arms and shouts of "Welcome to your new family!" But
it isn't long until he wears out his welcome and convinces the kids
that he's a jinx.

First he splatters Greg with ketchup; then it's off to the back yard, where Bobby's busily mowing the Astroturf. Oliver tries to
lend a helping hand but succeeds only in tripping our pal
Bobby and launching him headfirst into the backyard flower
pots. "Hmm," the Brady kids surmise, "maybe this kid is bad
luck."

The next twenty-four hours see Oliver completely unravel Carol's
newly knitted afghan, smash Marcia's ceramics project, and ruin Mike's
architectural mock-up. Now the kids are convinced! He is a jinx.

We break for commercials, but come back to find that Oliver
too now thinks he's bad luck-so bad, in fact, that he's refusing to
come along with the family when they visit a real live movie studio.
However, after some more of the Bradys' patented "reverse psychology," Oliver reluctantly agrees.

Good thing, because the Bradys' party of nine (including Alice,
but minus Mike, who supposedly had to work) makes the last one
through the gate the park's one millionth customer! Oliver was the
lucky millionth, and because of that his entire party gets to appear
in a real movie!

The "movie" turns out to be little more than a turn-of-the-century-flavored pie fight, wherein you'll find us in period costumes and
really, truly heaving pies at each other (another reason why there's
no Bob Reed here). Watch closely and you'll see me accidentally
slamming a pie into Mike Lookinland's head, and Eve cramming a
nice banana cream into Maureen's nose.

But in the end, Carol locks her sights on Oliver, aims a coconut
custard squarely at his head, once more yells "Welcome to the fam-
ily!"-and with a gleeful yelp, pops him one in the mush.

WRITERS: Al Schwartz and Larry Rhine

DIRECTOR: Richard Michaels

-Nepotism Alert! Lloyd Schwartz shows up in a cameo once
again. This time he's clapping the slate on the movie set.

EPISODE 113: "THE SNOOPERSTAR"

I remember thinking, "Gee, this would have been a
good script if we'd done it four years ago. "