Greg is making a movie about the Pilgrims for his history class. Pretty soon all of the adults in his house take over writing the screenplay. Greg’s pretty pissed about it and I guess fails to see that he’s getting away with not doing his homework and also not getting in trouble.
It’s only a matter of time before the entire production is out of Greg’s hand. Carol wants to dress all of the girls in color because of the color film, even though Greg insists that pilgrims only wore black and white. All of his sisters demand the same part and say they won’t be in the movie unless they’re cast as the lead “Priscilla.” Bobby and Peter are pissed that they’re forced to play pilgrims, when they would much rather play racially stereotyped braves.
Greg kind of freaks out but like in a really Brady-fashion. And his awesome parents are completely understanding. They’re not even mad that he got mad because they realize they were being jerks. This concludes our instructional video on how to have a healthy fight with your family.
Also, Greg casts Jan as the lead just like he always wanted to. (Ha, Marcia.) Then Mike has to explain to Peter and Bobby that the pilgrims stole all of the Indians land and you can tell he feels a little awkward about it. It’s 1970 now so things are about to start getting really guilty for the white folks.
Anyway, they finally get the movie done and Greg puts everything in slow-motion. So it’s basically a pantomime. And it’s basically the greatest film ever made, as far as I’m concerned. Like Florence Henderson really missed her calling at a 1920’s dramatic actress.
Very Special Thanksgiving Lesson: Don’t boss your kid around, but do let him boss the rest of the family around.
It’s Halloween-time in the Brady home and the two youngest Brady girls are certain they’ve seen a ghost. And they insist that they heard it in the attic too. I feel like they really should be more skeptical since they all worked together to 
Carol & Mike over-hear the boys laughing in their room down the hall, and realize who the “ghost” is, but you know kids will be kids so who gives a crap. Marcia never believed the ghost was real and has already deduced that the boys are to blame. So she encourages the girls to sneak around and look for evidence. They find a slide projector and discover that they have a slide of one of the boys wearing a sheet. Okay, so Jan and Cindy aren’t so dumb. I mean a slide projection in the middle of the night would be pretty creepy.
So the next night at dinner, the girls trick the boys into spending the night in the attic. They bet their allowance that the attic is haunted, and of course the boys accept the bet–thinking that the girls are idiots. Mom and Dad Brady permit this to happen because they’re always 2 steps ahead of their children and figure the girls are plotting to get even. The Bradys love some good, healthy plotting.
So then they all join forces and decide to scare Alice. This just goes to show that the Brady kids are really total jerks. This woman cooks for them, cleans up after them, gives them prime life advice, and–in Jan’s case–saved her from near certain depression by showing her even an iota of attention. Basically, Alice is a freaking saint and this children are assholes.
But don’t worry, they get what they deserve. They screw up the timing so it’s their parents who arrive home first, not Alice. Of course, they see through this shenanigan immediately but it’s very dark in the house, so they have to track down the kids. Mrs. Brady stupidly leaves her prize-winning bust of Mr. Brady’s head on that partial wall divider that goes around the back of their couch, dividing the living room from the entry way. Well, to be fair the house is super dark–so maybe she thinks it’s safest where she knows she won’t trip and fall while carrying it.
The only problem with that plan is that Alice arrives home while the lights are still out and thinks a creepy man is sitting on the Brady’s couch. So she shatters the bust to pieces with one swift blow to the back of the bust’s head. Then the Brady kids learn their lesson because they’re not actually total assholes.
We open the episode with the Brady’s auditioning to sing on a television show. They get the spot on the show, and–even better–they’re spotted by an agent. They’re super excited about getting representation, and Greg goes down to her office to make a deal for the group. But as it turns out, they’re only interested in Greg. It’s just like when Michael Jackson didn’t need his brothers as a kid performer, but his brothers needed him so he stuck with the band–except Greg doesn’t do that. He accepts the solo deal. The other Brady kids are devastated.
But Alice tells them that they’re kind of being jerks to Greg. The agent didn’t want the rest of them, and it’s not fair for Greg to miss out on a great opportunity just because some record agent thought he was better than the rest of them. So they apologize to Greg and wish him well. The Brady’s are such nice kids. They resolve things so quickly and so easily. Part of the deal is that Greg has to perform as “Johnny Bravo.” And Cindy promises to start his first fan club.
Meanwhile, the Brady parents freak out over Greg’s future. They want him to go to college, but they don’t want to force him. They’re hopeful for his music career, but realize it’s very hard to succeed in the business or have any kind of lasting career. But Greg ultimately decides not to go to college, and heads back to the record company.
Well, if Mom and Dad Brady had taught Marcia about the right thing to do, she would keep the date with Charlie. She could also tell Doug that she was so excited to go to the dance with him that she totally forgot about Charlie. This means she’s going to a. keep the date with Charlie like she should and b. flatter the hell out of Doug even though she’s canceling on him, which means he’s definitely going to ask her for a rain check.
But no, that’s not how this story goes. She spends all of her time with Doug now and chats forever with him on the phone. It’s after one of these phone chats, that she walks out into the backyard to talk to Peter and Bobby–and that’s when we get the infamous football to the face scene. And after that we have to hear Marcia complain for the rest of the episode because she’s no longer pretty for her date. I mean it’s not like the first time she’s met Doug. Can’t he just use his imagination? And if not, then can we just agree he’s a jerk?
Little Bobby Brady is obsessed with Jesse James. Oh, cool! An outlaw! Well, the principal at his school calls the Brady’s in to rain on his parade because it turns out Jesse James was a “cruel and vicious killer” who has been turned into a “folk hero.” But it turns out that he’s been brining his cap gun to school and “holding up” the other students, so it seems like things are getting out of hand.
But the movie doesn’t depict Jesse James accurately. Instead of showing him shooting everyone in a bank in the back, he doesn’t use a gone at all. I guess he uses the Jedi Mind Trick to make them hand over the money, which really is pretty hero worthy. Apparently, Mike and Carol Brady are western history buffs because they can point out every part of the movie that glosses over Jesse’s horrible actions. So now Bobby thinks Jesse is cooler than ever.
Mike goes to the library and checks out a ton of non-fiction books about Jesse James to read in his spare time. It’s so nice that a busy architect with six kids can give all of them so much individual attention. He then invites the author of one of the books over to the house to help with Bobby. OMG JESSE JAMES KILLED THIS GUYS FATHER.
That’s dark, Brady Bunch. Then Bobby has the nerve to tell this old man that he doesn’t believe him. But when this guy tells Bobby in detail about how Jesse James shot his father with his hands up, face to the wall, and unarmed, Bobby begins to feel a little guilty about his obsession. That night, Bobby has a dream that Jesse James shoots all of the Brady’s in the back while Bobby looks on in terror.
Anyway, Jan Brady’s freak out happened a little earlier in life than mine. While cleaning out some old junk, the Brady’s find a picture of Jan that Jan doesn’t remember. But it turns out it’s actually a picture of Carol Brady’s Aunt Jenny (Imogene Coca)–who happened to look exactly like Jan as a child. So Jan writes to her and asks that they exchange current photos of each other. When Jan gets Aunt Jenny’s photo in the mail, she freaks out because she thinks she’ll be ugly in 40 years. Well geez, Jan she doesn’t look that bad. Jan decides she’ll grow up to be a missionary because she’s ugly, and that is all that is left for her in life. But when Aunt Jenny comes to visit, she has to confront her fears face to face.
All of the kids think Aunt Jenny is super cool. She’s a wealthy, world traveler who knows loads of famous people. But Jan treats her like crap. Carol and Mike try to explain away Jan’s behavior as shyness, but Aunt Jenny doesn’t buy it. They finally tell her that Jan thinks she’s ugly and worries she’ll grow up to be ugly to. Aunt Jenny is super cool about it and sits Jan down to talk about how plastic surgery is always an option, but she is just fine with her looks because they make her unique. She also gets loads of marriage proposals that she always turns down, which seems to reassure Jan more than I wish it did. Then she decides she wants to grow up to be just like Aunt Jenny and her parents try to tell her (once again) that she can’t predict how she’ll turn out as a grown up.
As the poll from last week’s Friday Face-Off proves, this crowd is more of a “Come on, Get Happy” than a “Sunshine Day” group. That’s right, The Partridges won the Friday Face-Off, but I’m going to throw you Brady fans a bone today. As I said when I started the Reboot-O-Rama series, I’m not just attempting to complain about television and kids these days, but it’s really all been an elaborate ploy to write a post about The Brady Brides.
The Brady Brides is a terrible series that I somehow caught in reruns as a kid and determined to be the best thing ever and potentially “better than The Brady Bunch.” In hindsight, this was patently false. This show is bad. The jokes are flat. It’s weird that Maria and Jan live together with their husbands after their infamous double wedding. And all of the other, more interesting, Brady children are absent except for in the pilot movie.
But so rarely do we get a piece of kitsch quite to this level, that I think it’s high time we all stood back and appreciated The Brady Brides in all of it’s glory. Take for example today’s episode, in which Marcia and Jan decide that their adult mother cannot spend the night alone in her ranch house while their dad is on a business trip. So against their husbands’ better judgement, they invite Carol to stay over.
Then Carol comes over and they all sit around discussing the girls failures–Jan when she felt sorry for Marcia’s goldfish as a kid because they were cold and wet, so she dried them off and let them “sleep” in her bed–and Marcia who didn’t realize she needed to unbox the TV Dinner she had tried to make the night before. Then her husband Wally says, “Marcia’s best cooking is never done in the kitchen.” And they make out in front of Marcia’s sister and mother. Carol stares at them (nonplussed) and Marcia giggles and tells Wally to cut it out because Carol is watching–to which Wally replies, “Well, she’ll just have to wait her turn.” …
Then a cop brings a neighborhood boy over to the house because his mother isn’t home. And then the cop gets caught up in a game of “who’s on first” with who is married to whom and who is the mother-in-law. Ugh. Then all of these white people tell this black child that they don’t like him out on the streets at night (ugh the poor child with the absentee mother–social commentary!) and all of the white people care for the minority child. So they put the child in the bed with the two men even though Wally definitely isn’t wearing anything under that robe.
I’d like to point out that I have noticed a couch and a love seat in addition to the cot in the living room. The small child could easily sleep on the love seat and Carol Brady could sleep on the couch which looks way more comfortable than the cot. BAM solved your problem Bradys. But no, they want to make this episode into a particularly awful rip-off of Three’s Company. 
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.”
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 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. 
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.
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.
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.
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