What's Happening!!: The Burger Queen

What's Happening!!: The Burger Queen
ABC
November 20, 1976
Sitcom
DVD
B

This Orenstein and Turteltaub story was one of the two I most remembered the show for.  (The other is the ABC sitcom homage in the final season.  Oh, all right, and the Doobie Brothers two-parter is high on the list, too.)  I mean, look at this guest cast:

• Robbie Rist, now 12, as John Stevens
• Dick Van Patten as Mr. Claxton
• David "Larry Tate" White as Mr. Reynolds.

Even at eight, I was impressed.  (I'm not sure if I got the in-jokiness that Rist is playing an overexposed child star around the time that he became Ted Baxter's son and of course a couple years after his stint as Cousin Oliver.)  Watching the episode now, I'm most struck by the catharsis offered by 10-year-old Dee directing her snark not just at hapless Rerun but at the white dudes in suits.  Every time she says, "Jackass meat," the studio audience is delighted.  Plus we get to see both Shirley and Rerun dress up as absent Mama.  This is the first of four WH episodes directed by Dick Harwood.

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.