Welcome back to VSE: Hawaiian Style! Today two blended families face off in the ultimate Hawaiian vacation challenge. Let’s start with a brief summary shall we?
In The Brady Bunch, Mike Brady’s architectural firm pays for he and all of his family (including their housekeeper) to spend a few weeks in Hawaii so he can supervise a construction site. Talk about fringe benefits, right? Unless, you’ve been living under a rock for all of 
your life, then you probably know that the youngest boy, Bobby, finds a “cursed” amulet at the construction site. He mistakes it for a good luck charm, but it seems to be wreaking havoc on his family’s entire vacation. It makes poor housekeeper/nanny-person, Alice throw her back out when she wears it during a hula lesson. And it even near-murders his oldest brother, Greg, in a freak surfing accident. The entire family races into the water to try to find in the current except for Carol, but she’s only his step-mom anyway, right? An another note, the kids learn a lot about Pearl Harbor and even visit the USS Arizona. They check out the local flora an fauna along as well, managing to pick up a tarantula on the way–that’s the amulet again! The Brady’s finally find out that the only way to get rid of their bad luck is to return the amulet to the sacred ground from whence it came.
Okay let’s jump twentyish years in the future to another blended family with Step by Step. You can tell that this is a totally distinct series because instead of the mom having three girls and the dad having three boys, the dad has 2 boys and a girl and the mom has 1 boy and 2 girls. See how much more normal and believable that is? The Lambert-Foster family wins an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii. One of the girls, Dana, is all piss
ed that she has to go to Hawaii because it will interfere with her study schedule. But don’t worry, she falls in love in Hawaii and becomes the center of this two part episode. She decides after a few days that she wants to marry this dude (he’s a 22 year old rich entrepreneur so you can see the attraction). Meanwhile, Suzanne Somers can’t relax on vacation and keeps trying to create tasks for herself. I think this is the most realistic part of this episode. The rest of the kids enter a sandcastle building contest, which is a challenge for them because they are from Wisconsin, but it’s pretty boring so that’s the last I’ll mention of it. Dana’s mom freaks out because she’s worried Dana will get married without her permission (which I didn’t know was possible at seventeen but I guess it is in the TV world?) Ultimately, Dana and her boyfriend (whose name I don’t even know) decide to split up because he doesn’t want her to go to college. So that’s pretty crappy. Yeah I think she made the right choice here.
Point Break Down:
The Brady Bunch: Music (1 pt) + Vacation Attire (1 pt) +Integration of Hawaiian Setting (1 pt) +Overall Plot (2 pts) = 5 pts
Step by Step: 0 pts
This was a terrible episode all around and The Brady Bunch wins by a landslide.
Very Special Winner: The Brady Bunch
The Very Special Blog 
I had a Very Special Brady Day after watching the Brady Bunch Hawaiian Style episodes – points should be awarded by star studded cast – Vincent Price and Don Ho! Go Bradys!
I totally failed to notice that was Vincent Price. I should definitely have given them a bonus point for that. Don Ho is largely why they won their music point though! Thanks for bringing up Vincent! He’s great!
I totally forgot about Step By Step until I saw this post. All hail, TGIF!
I remember liking Step by Step even though it wasn’t the best. This episode was terrible though. I’m not sure if they just don’t stand the test of time, or if this was a bad episode. Maybe my taste has improved over the years haha…probably not though.