Ladies, and gentleman this will be the final installment of Friday Face Off! (For now. Mostly because I can’t think of any other match-ups at the moment.)
Last week’s very special winner is: THE GOLDEN GIRLS! No one should be surprised by this. You’ve all already expressed your undying love for The Golden Girls.
And today, we see the final showdown of the age old question “Who is better, The Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch?” Both shows traveled to Ohio to visit the Kings Island Theme Park. They both live in Calfornia, but I guess Disneyland wasn’t cutting it for them.
The Partridge Family: I Left My Heart in Cincinnati
The Partridges are actually at Kings Island for a gig. These people are always working. They don’t even have time for a family vacation.
Keith won’t go on any of the rides after the show because he gets motion sickness and is afraid of heights.At this point in the show, David Cassidy was so popular and perfect, I think they had to start giving him ridiculous character flaws to explain why he was playing minor gigs in a family band instead of being the massive teen idol he was in the real world. Kind of like how they make pretty and fabulous women klutz’s in romcoms. Like “Oh she’s so unsuccessful even though she’s smart and gorgeous because she runs into things and falls over a lot.”
So it’s kind of like “Oh he’s stuck in a family band that plays at theme parks because he’s decided he can’t handle leaving the hotel room. This guy could never fly in a private jet to arena shows.” Then a hot PR woman (Mary Ann Mobly) shows up and wants to make their stay at the amusement park awesome, so Keith kind of has to follow his hormones and leave the hotel room.
Anyway, this lady is old enough to drink vodka on the rocks and we’re all led to believe that David Cassidy is 17 in this show, so he ends up trying to impress her by diving into the pool. He belly flops and Danny has to fish him out of the pool. Eventually, he rides all of the rides to impress this woman, and we get to endure this as a very long montage with 70’s department store music.
We come to learn that Danny is also in love with Mary Ann Mobly, and Keith is all like mom go tell him he’s just a child! And she’s all like Keith can you not see the irony here? And Keith is all like OMG I AM ALSO A CHILD! So then Keith decides to talk to Danny about why neither of them can date this thirty year old woman. Danny is refuses to listen to Keith, but Mary Ann Mobly ends up going on a “date” with their 8 year-old little bro anyway. They go to see Dracula Bites the World. Then we’re stuck watching another ridiculously long montage, but this one at least has David Cassidy singing.
The Brady Bunch: The Cincinnati Kids
The Bradys are also at Kings Island for work. Mike needs to present some architectural plans to the Kings Island folks. We are now five minutes into the show, and I feel like all we have seen is montages. But we do see Jan, Marcia, Alice, and Carol slide down a massive luge-type slide and it’s pretty much my only goal in life at this moment to alice be able to slide down that slide.
Greg meets a girl named Marge and decides to chase her around the park. Then everyone rides roller-coasters. Bobby and Cindy eat too much junk food. There may not be as much plot here, but as far as promotional episodes go, I’m way more interested in this amusement park as presented by The Bradys than The Partridges.
Oh wait here come the plot. Jan buys a stupid poster for a kid she babysits for and harasses her dad into combining his drafts into one cylinder instead of two, so she can use the other for her stupid poster. CLEARLY THESE TWO CYLINDERS ARE GOING TO GET MIXED UP, RIGHT?? So yeah, Mike Brady takes a Yogi Bear poster to his meeting and has to track Jan down in less than half an hour. THIS IS BEFORE CELL PHONES, PEOPLE!
Jan is busy driving Marcia around in the fancy old cars that Keith drove Lori in when The Partridges made this same visit. In the meantime, she’s lost the poster. WHICH IS REALLY THE ARCHITECTURAL PLANS! But once again, this is a clever promotion because The Bradys have to go through all of the rides looking for where Jan might have dropped the cylinder. Jan finally finds the cylinder in the bottom of a boat, and now it’s a footrace to deliver the plans in time. The Bradys relay race the cylinder to the manager’s office. But don’t worry, they make it just in time.
about on this blog. In light of how I’ve dedicated the shortest month of the year to the 70’s, this week’s very special movie of the month is the most very special movie of them all, Go Ask Alice. Based upon the “anonymously” written (by Beatrice Sparks) “non-fiction” book of the same name, this pack of lies tells you all about the freaky-deaky world of drug addiction.
“White Rabbit” is playing, so things should start to get good soon. Eventually, Alice makes friends with Beth. Beth is a super nerd, but it’s okay because she’s smart. It’s not okay that Alice is a super nerd because Alice is not smart. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard because being a super nerd is awesome. Then Beth goes away to summer camp and Alice is lonely and bored.
Alice meets a cool girl from school at a clothing store and the cool girl invites her to a party. Here we go! This is not a drill, people! They play a game called “button, button.” This game is really just that everyone but one dude gets soda with acid in it. Everyone knows the game but Alice, so she’s super naive and doesn’t know she’s tripping until the cute boy next to her explains everything. At this point, she’s become a drug addict. Obviously.
pregnancy scare.” Additionally, she is now anorexic. That’s another bi-product of acid addiction. But being an addict, really improves Alice’s fashion sense.
When one of their friends gets arrested, Alice and the cool girl (what’s her name?) take over as drug pushers at the junior high. And now it’s time to try Speed! Additionally, Alice’s boyfriend is only into her when he is high, which is a major bummer. Then Alice really compromises her morals by selling drugs to a twelve year old who is pushing them into grade school.
The moral of this story is that you should always listen to Andy Griffith. Anyway, Alice gets home and everyone seriously tries to get Alice to do/sell drugs again. Someone even passes her pills while handing back a graded paper. Beth won’t invite her to her party because of her “reputation.” The girl can’t win!
Things break down into a weird altercation, in which Alice is babysitting an infant because the original sitter did not show up. Then the original sitter rushes in from a rainstorm, high out of her mind. She freaks out and attacks Alice for stealing her job. Alice calls the girl’s mother because she’s about to straight up murder her, and the next day at school all of the drug addicts harass her. Then the crazy girl from the night before (who is at school right now??) tells her that she’s going to trick Alice’s little bro into doing drugs by giving him “candy.”
Anyway, things do end up pretty good for Alice. She goes to rehab, rekindles her friendship with Beth, and dates a really nice college boy. And then she dies. Of an overdose. And no one knows if it was murder or not.
Crap. What a week. I’m so tireeeed. I’ve been sitting in my bed for the past 3 hours doing that thing where you just kind of like stare at Hulu or like the empty space just beyond your computer screen and think, “How is my brain possibly still conscious and functioning?” And yet, there is some weird synapse that keeps firing and it’s that synapse that forces you to stay awake against all human odds? That’s science right?
But since he’s a god-among-men, everyone caters to his ever need and wish, so much so that Richie worries he will be totally helpless for the rest of his life. And so he rips Fonzie a new one during the family dinner because Fonzie asks Joanie to salt his potatoes for him. And Richie is like DO IT YOUR DAMN SELF, FONZIE even though he has only been blind for like a week and maybe it takes some time and emotion to react to that kind of thing.
Fonzie loses his shit and like can’t handle it. Then he asks God why he allowed this to happen to him. “I thought I was your favorite person,” he said. I mean I get that Fonzie is cocky, but that’s like way beyond the point of acceptable charm here. That’s like probably the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But then he get’s down to business and puts the bike together from memory.
The Partridges are on tour in New Mexico and eating at a restaurant that has managed to defy the health inspector even though it is infested with flies. This is the best part of this show I think. I mean here they have David Cassidy but in the Partridge-Universe they are only famous enough to be playing at Shriner’s clubs and hotel bar’s.
Then this runway girl proceeds to tell them a ton of stupid lies about her past. She seriously is failing at subtlety. Also, she speaks strangely. I think young actresses must have still taken weird speaking lessons in the early 70’s. Anyway, when the stop to spend the night she bails. They’re not in Albuquerque (2nd time spelling it correctly on my own!) but she says she has some Basque shepher friends she needs to visit (ugh okay). And Shirley Jones is all like you’re full of it but I can’t make you stay if you don’t want to. When really it’s like, I’m sorry Shirley Jones, but at this point you’re probably endangering the welfare of a child and may need to call some type of local authority.
But it doesn’t take long for the police to find the Partridges. They tell the cop that they don’t know where she went. But if he had only checked their bus he would have found the missing girl sleeping and snuggling her guitar case. So bohemian. Anyway, Shirley sends the kids away to “freshen up” for the concert and tells the runway to chill with them. Meanwhile, she and Reuben go to the local police station to figure out what was going on. It turns out that this girl always runs away from her grandparents in Nebraska because she wants to live with her dad in Albuquerque. Upon learning that she’ll be locked in a holding cell until her grandparents can come collect her, Shirley asks if she can keep the girl with her and contact the grandparents herself. And you know, when you’re a small time family-band celebrity, you operate under a different set of rules.
So of course the police make Shirley responsible for this child and allow her to take her to Albuquerque to meet her grandparents. But when the Partridge kids say that the runaway has been taking a very long shower, Shirley barges in and finds the bathroom empty. So basically this is the stupidest most avoidable situation The Partridge Family has ever found themselves in. The producers must have really wanted to reuse that
I’ve recently gotten really into Hindsight on Vh1. It’s like a romcom + best friends + time travel. So like a really really great chicklit book that you can watch weekly. Also, the first episode is free on itunes if you want to test the waters. The best part (about the time travel) is that you get to chill in the 90’s without being like “AH THIS IS A THING FROM THE 90’s!” It’s sort of like Back to the Future in that regard. But honestly it’s probably mostly like Peggy Sue Got Married because it’s all about this woman who regrets her first marriage and passes out and wakes up in her own body but like 20 years prior. So yeah, I think this has been a really solid and coherent review. I hope you think so too.
“Now in 1621 the Pilgrims had this wonderful harvest…” (cue ripple screen affect to signify dream/fantasy sequence…)
The Very Special Blog 