Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (43 page)

WRITER: Elroy Schwartz

DIRECTOR: Robert Reed

• Robert Reed directs his first Brady Bunch episode, and did a
very credible job.

*Brady Mistake! There's a huge mistake in this episode, and it's
all Lloyd Schwartz's fault. Watch closely and you'll notice Bobby,
Mike, and Carol leaving the house in a blue convertible-and then
returning in a brown station wagon! I teasingly asked Lloyd how
he'd managed to screw up, and after he punched me in the arm,
he came up with this story:

"Yeah, it was my fault. The episode called for Bobby to be very
excited about going to a cartoon show, and everybody left in the
convertible. Now, I was involved in the postproduction of the
episode, and I knew that we needed a shot of that car coming
home from the cartoon show, with the headlights on. I also knew
that we already had that exact shot of the convertible in our stock
library, but when we ordered it up, I never really looked at it. So
we just slapped it into place without ever noticing that we'd
goofed and picked up a shot of the brown station wagon by mistake.

"So we finished the episode, it airs on ABC, and none of us
notice the mistake. But then I get a call one day from some guy
who says he was watching the show and noticed a mixup with the
cars. So he asks me `Why was that?' and all of a sudden it finally hits
me that it was a screw up. And I tell him, `Well, the truth is, I blew
it. I put the wrong shot in,' and I was honest, and thought, `That's
the end of that.' But then a couple of weeks later, there's a big
headline in the National Enquirer. that reads PRODUCER ADMrrs, `I
BLEW IT!' Turns out that the "concerned viewer" who called me was
actually a reporter from the Enquirer."

EPISODE 47: "DOUBLE PARKED"

Woodland Park is about to be bulldozed, and all the Bradys are
up in arms ... except for Mike. No, he's not hiding a playgroundhating dark side; he's been hired to design the courthouse that
will ultimately knock out the park.

Uh-oh. It's an odd "Brady Bunch" in that the family members
actually take opposing sides on the matter and actually even argue
with each other. But in the end, with Brady-like simplicity, Mike's
solution to the Courthouse/park problem was to move the
Courthouse to a garbage dump site. A compromise is reached, and
everyone ends up happy once more.

WRITER: Skip Webster

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold

*Jackie "Uncle Fester" Coogan shows up and appears in a tiny
little cameo, signing a "Save Woodland Park" petition for Alice.
He'd play a much bigger (and creepier) role in "Brady" episode 70,
playing slimy Harry Duggan, suer of Bradys.

EPISODE 48: "ALICE'S SEPTEMBER SONG"

Here we learn that under all that hair spray, starch, Tang, and
Windex, Alice does indeed have a sensuous side.

Briefly, right around the time Sam the Butcher starts taking our
favorite maid for granted, Alice gets paid a visit by a handsome,
middle-aged but still-studly old boyfriend named Mark Millard.
Sam becomes history, and Alice goes gaga for the guy, until ...

He tells her about a "hot tip" in the market and says that if
she'll give him all her savings, he can double 'em in practically no
time. (Millard must have been really cash-desperate. I mean, how
much could Alice have stashed away?) In a lucky twist, Alice mentions her hot tip to Mike, who quickly checks out both the tip
and Millard. When he finds out that they're both phony, Alice
realizes that Mark never really wanted her at all. He just wanted
her bucks.

She also realizes that even a boring but honest old schlub like
Sam is a pretty good catch, and it's not long before the two have
kissed and made up, and Sam's slipping her the discount meat
once more.

WRITER: Elroy Schwartz

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

-In what may have been Alice's only hot date, she stays out
with Mark Millard until (oh my God!) 1:30 A.M.! The Bradys wait up
... until finally she comes home glowing, mooning about her romantic date but strangely (and uncharacteristically) mum about
its details. Could our little Alice have (gulp) given up the
booty? We'll just have to wonder ... and hope.

Brady cast
photo: Season
three.
(©Paramount
Pictures)

EPISODE 49: "GHOST TOWN U.S.A."

Season three begins when the Bradys get their motor running and head out on the highway, looking for adventure and
whatever comes their way.

All right, so the motor was in the family station wagon, and
the highway led straight to the Grand Canyon, but it was as
close to Easy Rider as the Bradys would ever get.

Rolling toward the Grand Canyon at a cautious and sensible
fifty-five miles per hour, the Bunch spends their first day on
the road singing car songs, and their first night on the road
camping out in a real Old West ghost town. Once a thriving
gold-rush boomtown, this burb has long since outlived its usefulness and fallen into a rundown state of disrepair. It's dusty,
grimy, and completely deserted ... except for its ghosts ... and
Zaccariah.

Zaccariah T. Brown (as played by the fabulous Jim Backus) is a filthy and foul-smelling old prospector who still hasn't
given up on pulling a mother lode out of "them thar hills."
He's also certifiably nuts.

Zaccariah
Howell III?
(©1991 Capital
Cities/ABC, Inc.)

Zaccariah leaps to the imaginary conclusion that the Bradys are
in town to jump his equally imaginary claim. With that in mind, he
does what any stark raving lunatic who's been out in the desert
sun too long would do: he cons the family into touring the town
and ends up locking all nine of 'em in what remains of the old
town's jail.

Then, ditching his donkey, he steals the Bradys' car and
heads for the hills, leaving the family to rot in their cell. Nice
guy, huh?

Anyway, Mike uses his architectural ingenuity, and it's not
long before he's lassoed the jailor's key ring off its post,
opened up the cell door, and sprung the Bunch from the joint.

But they've merely jumped out of the frying pan and into
the fire, because the now carless, foodless, and waterless
Bradys are stranded in the desert with little hope of surviving
the elements.

Mike goes looking for help, but as the episode ends it
doesn't look good.

WRITER: Howard Leeds

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

-You don't have to strain your brain to figure out the connection between Sherwood Schwartz and Jim Backus. What would
"Gilligan's Island" have been without Thurston Howell III?

Actually, the Schwartz-Backus bond goes back even further, all
the way to Sherwood's first job in TV. He cut his television teeth
writing a pretty funny "Lucy" rip-off entitled "I Married Joan,"
which starred the brilliant Joan Davis as the wacky 1950s sitcom
housewife, and co-starred the equally brilliant Mr. Backus as her
consistently befuddled spouse.

*The "ghost town" was actually the old "Bonanza" set, formerly
used by the men of the Ponderosa. This is the episode we were
filming when Governor Rockefeller came to visit.

EPISODE 50: "GRAND CANYON OR BUST"

As the second installment of the Bradys' "Grand Canyon
Trilogy" opens, it looks bad for America's happiest family. Mike's
off in the desert, aimlessly looking for help, and the rest of the
pack is trying to cope with the harsh desert sun.

But then, just when things seem blackest, Mike charges in like
the cavalry, not on a galloping steed but in the family's Vista Cruiser (the one that the nutty prospector Zaccariah stole last
week). Somehow (it's never made quite clear) Mike caught up
with Zacchariah, convinced the old guy that the Bradys were no
threat to his hallucinatory claim, and even talked him into giving
back the family land yacht.

The Bunch,
effectively
blocking the
view of the
Canyon.
(© Karen
Lipscomb)

The mule
train.
(© Karen
Lipscomb)

Saved from becoming a buzzard buffet, the Bradys clamber into
the car and are once again on their way to the Grand Canyon.

This time they make it, and soon, we bump into the classic
Brady scene wherein the entire clean-cut clan mule-trains it to the
bottom of the canyon. Once there, they pitch camp for the night,
get ready to hit the hay, and realize that Bobby and Cindy are ...
missing!

The Bradys wander off in search of the dopey duo, and the
cliffhanger hangs for another seven days.

WRITER: Tam Spiva

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

EPISODE 51: "THE BRADY BRAVES"

Wandering waifs Bobby and Cindy seem doomed. They're
hopelessly lost in the Grand Canyon (without even a gift shop or
snack bar in sight), and if they don't get help soon, they might
even (dum-da-dum-dum) ... DIE!

Enter Jimmy Pakaya. He's a fine young Indian brave who's tired
of his Native American heritage and wants to be an astronaut. He
wants a life off the reservation, and away from his grandfather's
glorious stories of Indian past. He is busily running away from
home when he conveniently bumps into our hapless little heroes.

Jimmy makes a deal with his new pals. He'll blaze them a trail
back to camp if they'll feed him, keep him a secret, and help him
run away. They spit-shake, and in no time they're hugging it up
with Mike, Carol, Alice, and every other Brady within squeezing
distance. Meanwhile, Jimmy hides behind a tumbleweed.

Later that night, Cindy and Bobby stockpile food (beans in a
flashlight) and then clumsily attempt to slip it out to their brushcovered pal. They are (of course) caught, and Jimmy's nabbed in
the bust as well. He's angry and uncooperative at first, but one of
Mike's patented lectures (entitled "Running Away and Hurting the
Ones You Love") is all it takes to start the young brave weeping
and thinking about going home.

They make plans to hike to the reservation the next morning,
but cancel them when Jimmy's grandfather shows up.

Turns out that Chief Dan Eagle Cloud (played by Jay "Tonto"
Silverheels) has been frantically searching for his runaway grandkid. He comes across the Bradys' camp, scares Alice, finds his
grandson, and then he too is subjected to a lecture from Mike
("That Inescapable Generation Gap and How to Survive It").