Ellen: Joe's Kept Secret

Ellen: Joe's Kept Secret

ABC

January 15, 1997

Sitcom

DVD
B

Ellen's realtor Margaret (Nancy Lenehan again) talks her into getting a nook for her house.  So Joe has his friend Madeline (Florence Henderson) pulls some strings for Ellen to get a building permit.  But it turns out that Joe, who's been secretly seeing Madeline for four months, is a kept man.  Ellen talks him into giving back Madeline's gifts, but soon finds herself under Madeline's spell, and we see Ellen transformed into a well-dressed shopaholic.  There are some lines here that play off not only Ellen's closeted state but also Henderson's Brady past, and overall Dava Savel's writing is good.  Even the Spence subplot, where he considers getting a tattoo to apologize to Paige for ruining her kitchen, isn't bad.

Rick Hall makes his second appearance as Contractor #1.  Paige is absent, presumably still in Canada on the Bob Saget project.  John Tracy, whose TV directing career goes back to the '70s, including two Bosom Buddies episodes and one Who's the Boss? episode, here does his only Ellen episode.

Brady Bunch Home Movies

Brady Bunch Home Movies

CBS
May 24, 1995
Documentary
DVD
B-

Pardon the pun, but this is a little unfocused.  Is it, like Bradymania two years earlier, a look at the "phenomenon" of BBunch?  Is it a look at what the cast did before and after the series?  Is it a behind-the-scenes presentation, including of the "home" movies the kids shot after Robert Reed bought them hand-held cameras?  A little of all of that I guess, sometimes paired with odd background music, e.g. "Tequila."  I do like the tribute to Reed and that they got six of the surviving eight onstage together.  (Maureen and Eve's segments were shot separately, but it is interesting to see that they were actually much better friends than you would now think.)  Note that a couple clips from Day by Day appear, as do clips from the various spin-offs.  I'm not tagging all the other folks who appear, including co-producer of this special Lloyd Schwartz and Bob Cummings in a clip from his '50s show, but yeah, again Jerry Houser has to be omitted.

Roseanne: Suck Up or Shut Up

Roseanne: Suck Up or Shut Up
ABC
January 4, 1994
Sitcom
DVD
B-

This episode, with its teleplay by Borns & Gandolfi, based on a story by someone who didn't work on any other of my shows, is mainly notable for its celebrity cameos.  Florence Henderson plays a local businesswoman (also named Florence) that Roseanne sucks up to for the restaurant, although it becomes a challenge when D.J. quotes Roseanne's mockery of the woman's weird son.  (Henderson was then 59 but didn't look it, so I guess it's just plausible she could be the mother of a preteen.)  And in the tag, Anthony Geary and Genie Francis appear as Luke & Laura, and the Becky switch is lampshaded.  The other plot thread has Mark getting fed up with school but Becky, on Roseanne's advice, pushes him until he leaves her.  It seems like such a waste that Mark was sent to school, while straight-A Becky is working at Bunz.

Selma Archerd, who had acted with Henderson before, on the "goat" episode of The Brady Bunch and in A Very Brady Christmas, here has her first of two Roseanne roles, as Lucille.  Note that Chuck is currently the Lobo bartender, and again I have to omit Pickens from the overcrowded tags.

Bradymania: A Very Brady Special

Bradymania: A Very Brady Special
ABC
May 19, 1993
Sitcom
VHS
B-

Frothy look at The Bunch, hosted by the ageless Florence Henderson, with Alice and four of the six "kids" commenting at the end.  (No prizes for guessing which Brady girls didn't show up.)  Not only are there tons of clips from BBunch, but we see tributes/parodies, including a bit of the Day by Day episode.

Director Malcolm Leo also did The Best of "Hollywood Palace" in 1992, which we haven't yet gotten up to in my videocassettes.  As always, the tags are too crowded to mention anyone beyond the regulars, but note that Allan Melvin and Marcia Wallace appear in clips from the show, as do Michael J. Fox on Family Ties and Sara Gilbert and Roseanne on Roseanne.  And Barr and President Bush I both appear as themselves in a comedy routine and an economic speech respectively.

Local LA News Reaction to "The Brazen Bunch"

Jerry Dunphy, one of the
journalists on this breaking story. 

Local LA News Reaction to "The Brazen Bunch"
KHJ & KTLA
October 18, 1991
News
VHS
C+

Los Angeles news coverage of Barry Williams revealing his long-ago date with Florence Henderson, on Geraldo that day.  Well, it seemed like a bigger deal at the time.  (And this was before Barry's book was published.)

The Bradys: The Brady 500

The Bradys: The Brady 500

CBS
February 9, 1990
Dramedy
DVD

D+

Talk about only for the completist!  The main problem here is the writing, by Sherwood and son Lloyd.  It's bad on several levels, including individual lines that no one could believably deliver, and I guess it's to the credit of the cast and director Bilson, who helmed four of the episodes of the final season of The Brady Bunch, that this isn't worse than it is.  Let's take it "kid" by "kid" because all six get an undercooked plot thread here:

1. Greg is still with Nora, still an obstetrician, but he starts thinking of changing specialties until a very convenient childbirth (his soon-to-be sister-in-law's nephew's) maybe (?) changes his mind;
2. Marcia, incredibly mis-recast as Leah Ayres (seriously, I kept forgetting who she was in the midst of all the Brady boys' wives and girlfriends), is still inexplicably with Wally, who lost another job, so they move in with her folks, but offer to move out but then stay and mostly react to other people's drama, and somewhere in here Wally gets a job we didn't even know he interviewed for;
3. Peter has been Flanderized into a lying slut, I think based on the fifth-season episode where his lookalike causes him to juggle two dates in one house, and the Variety pilot where he has dates with two girls who are friends, but he gets caught there, while here there are no consequences to him dating co-workers; and this is after he breaks off his fourth (!) engagement, this time to Christmas's Valerie, who's been mis-recast as poor Mary Cadorette and made into a heartless Yuppie;
4. Jan is still with Philip and they're having fun trying to conceive, after almost nine years of marriage, but she is pushing 30, so they're heartbroken about not having a baby, so they adopt a Korean girl who's afraid to hug her new grandmother (and Florence Henderson is so over the top, yes, even for her, that you can't really blame the little girl);
5. Bobby's thread gets more attention than most, as you might guess from the title, as we spend 20 minutes or 20 years following his racing career and everyone's attempts to see his big race, "The Riverdale 500" (an Archies reference?), and then he has a crippling accident, so the family reacts to that, and he recovers some but may have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, but his previously never heard of girlfriend, Veejay Martha Quinn as Tracy Wagner, shows up and a scene or two later they get married;
6. And Cindy is a d.j.* who starts dating her boss, Gary Greenburg (Ken Michelman, who was Harker on M*A*S*H and doesn't seem to be old enough at 34 to be the father of a 15-year-old, let alone to play Cindy's "older man"), even though it's unclear at first (to her as well as the audience) what his marital status is (widowed) and even though it's supposed to be a big deal that he's Jewish, and yet their first date is to a hot dog stand.

(The two Brady grandsons are recast, too, but that matters less.)

The adults react to all these threads and don't at this point have their own subplots.  (Trooper that she is, 63-year-old Ann B. Davis makes with the slapstick now and again.)  Everything is so skimpily and off-handedly dealt with that VB Christmas starts to look like War and Peace in comparison.  And while the original series wasn't exactly realistic, it worked on its own level.  I watched this series at the time but felt no inclination to tape it.  And so I can't tell you if, to take the most infamous example, Marcia's one-episode alcoholism, is as bad as they say.  This is bad enough.

Moments I sort of liked:

• The Cindy/Gary chemistry isn't bad;
• Jan/Philip brings the sexy times;
• The Peter & Bobby bond is nice;
• and Dabbs Greer as the Minister reminisces, with helpful footage, about himself officiating over the chaos at Mike and Carol's wedding.

As always, many apologies, especially to stalwarts Jerry Houser (Wally) and Ron Kuhlman (Philip), that I'm limited in the number of my tags for these ginormous Brady casts.  John Wheeler, who played three different characters in the original series, shows up briefly as Wally's new boss, Joe Fletcher.  Hope Juber (AKA Hope Sherwood AKA Hope Schwartz) also had three BBunch roles and here is Erica Hopkins.  Stu Nahan, who's the Track Announcer, had been similarly typecast as Sportscaster #1 in The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island.  Leonard R. Garner, Jr. returns as Bobby's pit-crew friend Howie and disappears from the episode soon after the accident.  Nick Toth and Barbara Mallory reprise their VB Christmas roles as Mr. and Mrs. Powell, the couple in the delivery room, giving arguably the worst performances in either production, especially her, no small accomplishment.

*This is ironic in light of last year's controversy over her hate talk, but then it's also ironic to hear Carol talk to Peter about his love life, considering Florence's vocal disapproval of one of Chris's four marriages.

1989 Emmy Awards [excerpt]

1989 Emmy Awards [excerpt]
Fox
September 17, 1989
Awards Show
VHS
C+

Florence Henderson and Robert Reed present an award and then "the Bradys meet the Bundys," i.e. Katey Sagal and Ed O'Neill.  The material they're given is kind of stale, and considering all we know about Henderson now, it's not especially shocking to see her come on to O'Neill.  Still, it's definitely a moment in TV history.

TV's Perfect Moms

TV's Perfect Moms
Nickelodeon
1989
Documentary
VHS
B-

Again, I'm not really sure what genre to put this under, but I think it is closer to a documentary than anything else.  Hostess Kerns talks about growing up with the "perfect" moms of the past and how her character on Growing Pains deals with that legacy.  Henderson and Billingsley provide insight into what it was like to play such moms, including the effect this had on their real families.  At times this feels like a plug for the Nick at Night line-up-- Mr. Ed for instance makes the cut-- but it's pretty well put together and it is nice to see these shows, even if I'm not a big fan of most of them.

Note that Kerns refers to the '90s, which I think Who's the Boss? started doing in '88.  People were a lot more impatient for this decade to end than the '60s or '70s as I recall, although honestly I don't think any of us fathomed what the '90s would actually be like.

Day by Day: A Very Brady Episode

Day by Day: A Very Brady Episode
NBC
February 5, 1989
Sitcom
VHS
B

If anyone remembers this usually bland sort of spin-off of Family Ties it is for this very episode.  And I would've gone with a B+, but, ugh, the parents are boring!  (The mother, Kate was played by Linda Kelsey, who was Lt. Mickey Baker on M*A*S*H but may be best known for Lou Grant.)  No wonder son Ross (the eventually ironically cast Christopher Daniel Barnes, Greg Brady in the '90s big-screen parodies) wants to escape into The Brady Bunch.  Not that he's a very observant viewer.  Not only does he have no idea who Benedict Arnold is (and B.A. is name-dropped at least as much as Raquel Welch on Bunch), but he's somehow developed the erroneous impression that Mike and Carol were permissive parents.  True, they rarely yelled at their kids, but they would never shrug off an F on a History paper.

That aside, once we get into Ross's dream, where he's Chuck Brady (a nod to Happy Days I believe), it's almost as much fun as the studio audience thinks it is.  (Really, they sound like they're having the laughter and applause equivalents of orgasms.)  Some of it's just sheer affection and delight when any Brady cast member enters the still '70s-looking room, and we do get to see six of the nine, including Bobby in a mustache and Marcia extremely pregnant.  To the credit of writer Andy Borowitz (who did five Square Pegs episodes, including the one with Bill Murray) and moonlighting-from-Who's-the-Boss? director Asaad Kelada, the Bradys and Alice are given things to do and say, genuinely funny lines and movements that they overact with obvious joy.  (Yes, Robert Reed, too.)

My guess is, given the episode title, this was commissioned right after the surprise hit of the Christmas TV-movie.  While not as "OMG, they got that in, too!" as the '90s movies, putting a cynical late '80s teen into this setting allows for Ross to be our surrogate and react to things like the "serious" instrumental music that plays during advice scenes, and indeed his own succumbing to the Brady wardrobe and "perm."  Bear in mind that in '89, mocking the Bunch in this affectionate way was still relatively new.  (The staging of episodes as The Real Live Brady Bunch, with Jane Lynch and Andy Richter, was still a couple years off.)  So that's part of what's going on with the studio audience, too, the shock of recognition.  I think even a casual Bunch viewer would still get a kick out of this, almost three decades later.  And, yes, that is a post-SNL and pre-Seinfeld Julia Louis-Dreyfus lusting after Greg Brady.

A Very Brady Christmas

A Very Brady Christmas
CBS
December 18, 1988
TV-Movie
DVD
C+

Sherwood Schwartz and his son Lloyd wrote this reunion, while director Peter Baldwin helmed seven episodes of Bunch, as well as The Brady Girls Get Married  (and incidentally The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island and twelve episodes of The Bob Newhart Show).  And to some extent there's continuity with the original series, and with Get Married.  But there are also inconsistencies, including but not limited to:

• I can accept Fake Cindy (Jennifer Runyon, of Charles in Charge and a guest shot on Who's the Boss?), but why is she still in college seven and a half years after she started?  There's no implication that she's taken time off to work or travel or what have you.  At least they let Bobby progress to grad school.
• Conversely, it doesn't seem like enough time has passed for Marcia to have two kids that old.  (In Get Married, she denied to Jan that she was pregnant, but maybe she was.)  And Greg has managed to meet Nora (played by "new Gidget" Caryn Richman), get married, and have a son who looks about seven.  (Zachary Bostrom, who plays Kevin, was almost eight.  He would be an unrelated Kevin on Who's the Boss?)
• Alice could never drive on the old show, and yet she goes to meet the visitors at the airport, then they come home separately, while Alice gets there last, with all the luggage!

Other than that, the writing is hokey and implausible, even by Brady standards, partly because serious, complex issues like adultery, divorce, and unemployment are brought up and then solved easily.  (Consider that such dilemmas as braces, dating scheduling mix-ups, and disagreements with teachers used to get twenty minutes each.)  On the other hand, when Mike has a conflict with client Ted Roberts (Phillip R. Allen, not chewing gum like he did as his psychatrist characters on The Bob Newhart Show and Bosom Buddies), it ends with Mike trapped in a building as Runyon flashes back to Susan Olsen's Christmas memories.

Ann B. in glasses and some random people in the back row

On the plus side, you do get to see everyone (except Olsen) reuniting.  More dubiously, you get Peter saying "hell," some of the "kids" smooching their respective romantic partners, and the Brady house in blander, '80s colors.  This is preferable to the Gilligan reunion movies, in that the regular cast interact to some degree, but I'd rather watch the Day by Day parody/homage of Bunch, which is truer to the spirit of the series.

Due to the overstuffed cast problem, worse than on the original series, I obviously can't tag everyone, but Jerry Houser and Ron Kuhlman are back as the husbands of the Brady brides.  Keep an eye out for Selma Archerd (2nd PTA Lady on Bunch and the Queen of Diamonds in the 1985 Alice in Wonderland TV-movie) as Mrs. Crane, Gerry Black (Ron on What's Happening!!) as the Police Chief, Bart Braverman as Bobby's Mechanic friend, Barbara Mallory (Helen on What's Happening!! and Cindy Smith in Rescue from GI) as Mrs. Powell, and Nick Toth (later Capt. Johnson on Roseanne) as Mr. Powell.  When Sam shows up at the end, dressed as Santa, he's played by Lewis Arquette, who was a Judge in Rescue from Gilligan's Island.

It's Garry Shandling's Show: The Schumakers Go to Hollywood

It's Garry Shandling's Show: The Schumakers Go to Hollywood
Showtime
November 20, 1987
Sitcom
VHS
B

Ed Solomon co-wrote this fourth episode of Season Two with Tom Gammill and Max Pross, both of whom worked on Saturday Night Live in its fifth season.  Grant wins a poetry contest, with a free trip to Hollywood, from Sherman Oaks.  There's arguably more fourth-wall-breaking than usual in this one, from Grant and Pete going to a taping of IGSS to the studio audience singing the opening song and dancing to the closing song.  Florence Henderson appears as herself, still looking great at age 53.  Note that Jackie is absent, busy with her new baby.  (Yes, she had a baby since the last episode I watched.)

The Brady Girls Get Married

The Brady Girls Get Married
NBC
February 6, 1981
TV-Movie
VHS
B-

After two years, Jan becomes engaged to her boyfriend, Philip Covington III (Ron Kuhlman)*.  Her parents are nonetheless surprised, mostly because Marcia is still single.  Then Marcia confides in a sympathetic stranger, Wally Logan (Jerry Houser), who suggests they get married.  She thinks he's crazy but she is attracted to him.  So after a week of a whirlwind romance, they get engaged.  Now Mike and Carol are really surprised.  The "girls" (now about 24 and 21, since Cindy is 18 and has just started college) decide on a double wedding, although their fiances are complete opposites and it's hard for even the sisters to agree.  The wedding goes through after some bumps, and the four of them even end up buying a house together.

Sherwood Schwartz and his son Lloyd co-wrote this special and Peter Baldwin, who had directed seven episodes of the original series, directed it, so it's probably not surprising that this is as cheesy as can be, complete with laugh track.  Still, for a fan it's pretty much what you would want, especially at this point in the Brady saga.  It has every single member of the main cast, for the one and only time.  It includes clips from early episodes, for extra nostalgia.  It updates us on everyone's career or college situation.  And it's about as canonical as it can get, after the acid trip of The Variety Hour.

It's easy to tell that, Reed's arguments with the Schwartzes aside (check out the acid in the way he jokes about watching Gilligan's Island), the genuine regard and love of the nine cast members for each other comes through.  Even McCormick and Plumb, who would have a falling out many years later, look happy to work together.  Reed, I should also note, looks proudly at Henderson when she does her solo at the wedding.  As for Kuhlman and Houser, I think they fit in just fine.  At the time, I would've preferred Wally's laidbackness, but Philip has grown on me over time, and even in his first appearance, there is a dry wit to him, so that he's not just a blend of college professor and uptight WASP.  I can see why this was a ratings hit, although the follow-up series, The Brady Brides, was not.  The humor is a little racier here than on the original series (especially Wally's "nude scene") and in fact my strongest memory of Brides was the Newlywed Game episode, where Philip ends up blurting out, "Thighs and breasts!"  (It's on the Internet if you're curious.)

Of the two movers, Bert Rosario, who plays Maxie, was Reuben Ortiz on The Bob Newhart Show, while Stuart Pankin, who's Frank, would be Doug Shaffer on Who's the Boss?  Philip's mother is played by Jean Byron, who was Patty's mother on The Patty Duke Show.  Wally's mother is played by Carol Arthur (Dom DeLuise's wife) and she was Mrs. Lawrence on What's Happening!!, while Wally's father, James Gallery, had recently appeared on M*A*S*H as Murray Thompson, and would be Kip's uncle the next season on Bosom Buddies.

*As usual with the Bradys, I can't tag everyone involved.  Sorry, Ron!

The Brady Bunch Variety Hour: #4

The Brady Bunch Variety Hour: #4
ABC
March 4, 1977
Variety
DVD
C+

By this point, the show, which was airing irregularly, had been revamped.  The Bradys got yet another house, Rip Taylor was added to the cast, and the tackiness had been toned down.  Not that it wasn't still tacky, but the jaw-dropping was less than on the Pilot.  This episode has Greg, who must be 21 by now, wanting to move out and the family devastated by it.  The worst part of the writing though is probably all the frigging explanations, where everyone, including the audience, is considered to be moronic.  (Mr. Brady doesn't know what "siblings" are?)  The musical numbers are blander.  This might've been a C but a few of Robert Reed's line readings sound realistic, and Vincent Price gives it his all.  (Greg of course fails to recognize his former kidnapper.)

Besides the Kroftettes, the Krofft regulars include Van Snowden, who was on The Bugaloos and Lidsville, and I think here he's playing Pufnstuf, the gosh-what-a-casting-coup musical guest.

The Brady Bunch Variety Hour: Pilot

The Brady Bunch Variety Hour: Pilot
ABC
November 28, 1976
Variety
DVD
B+

The grade obviously doesn't so much reflect quality as the level of my eyes bugging out and my ears doing double-takes.  Yes, I watched this at the time.  Duh, it was the Bradys and I even watched the variety shows for the Captain & Tennille (I loved the "Bionic Hat" sequence) and for Shields & Yarnell (mimes).  Catching an edited down version of this on Nickelodeon about fifteen years later, with a suitably cheesy introduction by Casey Kasem, enough time had passed for me to watch in disbelief.  Honestly, if I hadn't lived through the '70s, I would think this was all, as the Bradys would've said, a put-on.  Let me just copy down from my mental list, and forgive me if I've left anything out:

• Blindingly glitzy sets and costumes in a rainbow of colors;
• Mostly good singing, matched with ridiculous choreography and/or cheesy orchestration;
• "The Hustle" and "Shake Your Booty," with special guest star Alice;
• Special guest star Tony "I do everything professionally" Randall reciting poetry to people in animal costumes and telling Bobby, "Well, up your nose with a rubber hose";
• More ABC plugs than they even dared to do on Welcome Back, Kotter, including the in-joky "Barbarino in a bubble" reference, while Robert Reed is sitting right there saying nothing;
• Marcia complaining that Dad bent her Led Zeppelin album, so Greg tells her about when Mom and Dad were their age in the '50s, seguing to
• A sequence set in a roller rink, where the Brady guys ogle the Brady girls, but it's OK because they're playing other characters, with names like Pitsy and Hickey, and everyone except a coked-up McCormick thinks the way to sound '50s is to have a vaguely New York accent;
• Donny & Marie as the Donz and his sister (it sounds like Carol calls her the Nazz, but that can't be right) show up and deliberately fall on the floor while skate-dancing, unlike Williams, whose earlier spill looks unscripted;
• Bizarre line readings, from Marie sounding vaguely Chinese on "The Donz really wants to be liked" to Carol's "Do you think your father likes wearing tights?  [Awkward pause] No," as well as,
• Bizarre lines, like Marcia's suggestion that her critical siblings stop "hitting on dad";
• A Risk game parody for the scene where Peter (who's now in college and "majoring in girls") learns the lesson that "the trouble with lying is you always get caught";
• Greg claiming their old house didn't have a bathroom (it was actually the toilet that was missing); 
• Fake Jan "at that emotional age";
• Flashbacks to the Bunch pilot and "Kitty Karry-All Is Missing," so we get a glimpse of Eve Plumb;
• A Rocky Horror reference; 
• Underwater fire-fighting clowns.  Underwater.  Fire-fighting.  Clowns.  UNDERWATER FIRE-FIGHTING CLOWNS!!!

So why not an A- or higher?  Well, there were lulls where I didn't question my sanity, or theirs.

The Love Boat [movie #1]

The Love Boat [movie #1]
ABC
September 17, 1976
TV-Movie
VHS
C

The main reason to watch this, other than to see how much tinkering had to go on in this first of three pilots to make the transition from book to regular series, is of course the cast:

• Donald Richardson is played by Don Adams;
• Eleven-year-old Arnold is played by 14-year-old Jimmy Baio, who was a year away from Soap;
• George Havlicek is played by Tom Bosley, who had not yet worked with Jimmy's cousin Scott;
• Thomas Ford, the Captain (I'm pretty sure it's Allenford, but that's what IMDB says), played by Ted Hamilton, on M*A*S*H the previous year and later to be a Pirate King in The Pirate Movie; 
• Monica Richardson is played by Florence Henderson; 
• Stan Nichols is played by Gabe Kaplan;
• Willard is played by Harvey Korman; 
• Iris Havlicek is played by Cloris Leachman;
• Hal Linden, Barney Miller himself, appears; 
• Danny DiMarco, the Lounge Performer, is played by Richard Stahl, who'd done a That Girl, a Bob Newhart, and would later be on Soap;
• Ellen Carmichael is played by Karen Valentine; 
• O'Neil, the Doctor, is cast against type with Dick Van Patten;
• Isaac, the Bartender, is played by Theodore Wilson, who popped up on a lot of '70s TV, including recently What's Happening!!

Also there's even more of a BNS connection:  Ric Carrott, who was Ronnie, here plays Richard Garrett III, while Karen Ish, who was Mrs. Heinsohn, here is Dena DiMarco.  And Joseph R. Sicari was Dennis the Encylcopedia Salesman, while he's Nino, the Steward here.

Not counting the beginning and ending, the stories are less interwoven than would be the case on the series.  The first story is "Mona Lisa Speaks," written by Carl Kleinschmitt, who had done five episodes for That Girl, two for M*A*S*H, and one for Welcome Back, Kotter, so he had a bit of experience writing for Kaplan, whose role is goofier than on WBK, with Korman as his straight man.  Stan thinks he's met his dream girl, until she turns out to have a voice like Mae Questal.

Then comes "Mr. and Mrs. Havlickek Abroad," with Bosley and Leachman as a nouveau riche couple from Muncie.  This is by Bob Illes and James R. Stein, who'd later co-write for What's Happening!!  George punches out his daughter's rich fiance, thinking the guy's a phony.  Unless this movie got chopped up by the time it hit cable in the '90s, there's no resolution or make-up scene.

Next is "Are There Any Real Love Stories?," arguably the best of the bunch, mostly due to Linden and Valentine's acting.  This one was written by Dawn Aldredge and Marion C. Freeman, who had recently written for What's Happening!!  It surprisingly mentions abortion, a term not often heard on The Love Boat.

Last is Kleinschmitt's "Till Death Do Its Part" which has good performances by Adams and Henderson, who bicker well, but it leaves a bad taste that he tries to kill her and she finds out and blames herself.  And then she seduces him out of getting a divorce!

There are two directors, Richard Kinon and Alan Myerson, giving even more of a BNS connection.  And the split direction adds to the hodge-podge effect of the movie.  I haven't said much about "your crew," but suffice to say that they can't hold a candle to Lauren Tewes et al.

The Brady Bunch: The Hair-Brained Scheme

The Brady Bunch: The Hair-Brained Scheme
ABC
March 8, 1974
Sitcom
DVD
B

The script by Charles Stewart, who'd also write one for Three's Company, was seen as so implausible by Robert Reed that he refused to participate.  He'd raised objections before but this was the breaking point.  Nonetheless, I can enjoy it as much as I did as a kid.  Greg's dilemma is silly (and in a post-punk world, orange hair hardly seems like a crisis) but it is funny.  And I like that the three youngest have a lot to do, with the two money-making schemes interlocking by accident at the end.  This time, Oliver is assistant to Bobby and Cindy and he gets a lot of lines, including, yes, the one where he uses the word "sex."  So I'm glad that Reed bowing out means I can finally tag Rist.

This time, Barbara Bernstein and Hope Sherwood play Greg's classmates Suzanne and Gretchen.  Brandy Carson had played another nameless Woman on an earlier episode, and would be a Nurse on Soap.  John Wheeler was the Postman and Mr. Dimsdale before and is Second Man here.

This final season averages out to a B-.  It stays in that C+ to B range, so it doesn't hit some of the highs or lows of earlier seasons.  I don't know how it would've done in a sixth year, especially if Reed left for good, but as it stands, the series remains pretty good.  And of course we haven't seen the last of the Bradys by any means.

The Brady Bunch: The Hustler

The Brady Bunch: The Hustler
ABC
March 1, 1974
Sitcom
DVD
C+

This last Freedman & Gershman Brady story has Bobby beating Mike's boss Harry Mathews (Jim Backus in a role closer to Mr. Howell than his previous Brady character) at pool.  It's also the last Bunch episode to feature Robert Reed, but more about that next time.

Susan Quick, who's Gloria Thompson here, made two appearances on That Girl as Heather Dolan.  Lennie Bremen plays a Truck Driver again on this series.  Michael Kane directed only two other things, one of which was the pigeon episode of Gilligan's Island.

The Brady Bunch: The Snooperstar

The Brady Bunch: The Snooperstar
ABC
February 22, 1974
Sitcom
DVD
B-

Harry Winkler's last Brady script seems to have been sitting around for a few seasons, since not only does Cindy read Marcia's diary, but she falls for Marcia's trick that Cindy has a chance to be "the new Shirley Temple."  When Mike's client Penelope Fletcher (Natalie Schafer, playing a different version of a rich woman than Mrs. Howell*) shows up, Cindy thinks this must be the talent scout.  At this point, Marcia shares some of her diary entries with Jan, who's more of an equal now that they're in their teens.  And Oliver is Cindy's sidekick here, although he's more often Bobby's.

*I can't do any extra tags, but this is Schafer's 100th program I've reviewed.

The Brady Bunch: Top Secret

The Brady Bunch: Top Secret
ABC
February 15, 1974
Sitcom
DVD
C+

Allan Melvin makes his last appearance as Sam, whom Bobby and Oliver suspect of being a double agent.  I suppose this episode could've had Bobby and Cindy suspecting him, but Cindy and the other Brady ladies think that Sam is going to propose to Alice.  Here in the fifth season, Cindy is still noted for tattling and snooping, although she says, "I'm older now," and thinks she can be trusted with a secret.  As for Sam, we find out he was in the Army.  (Melvin was a regular on The Phil Silvers Show, so it feels plausible.)

Don Fenwick, who plays Fred Sanders, recently was a young doctor on The Bob Newhart Show.

The Brady Bunch: Two Petes in a Pod

The Brady Bunch: Two Petes in a Pod
ABC
February 8, 1974
Sitcom
DVD
B-

This last of five Sam Locke & Milton Pascal Brady stories has the common Schwartzian motif of the inexplicable lookalike.  (That Alice's Cousin Emma is the most plausible should tell you something.)  Fifteen-year-old Peter meets a classmate who looks like him but with glasses.  He and Arthur play a prank on the Bradys, which leads to the scene where Knight acts infatuated with Plumb.  Then when Peter has two dates for one night, he needs Arthur to keep one of them.  Oliver (Robbie Rist)'s role in this episode is minor, mostly just tacked on to the scenes with the younger kids.