Imagine my surprise to see that, not only were the Bradys not vacationing anywhere, they were starting the season with a musical episode! To open the fifth season with The Bradys singing was a poor decision. In fact, the very first shot, of the very first episode, was the kids singing! What show was this? In the past, we were patient , and mildly interested in these musical digressions. But they were tucked away mid-episode, and mid-season. This song opening the new season was jarring. Plus, we had become accustomed to the new season being episodes shot on location. The Bradys started seasons with vacations to The Grand Canyon and Hawaii. To be expecting a road trip and be hit instead with a not great musical number was too much. It was off brand. We had accepted the Bradys kids singing as a small, not unenjoyable, part of the overall Brady package. To be asked to accept this, was asking too much. There was a fear that, like The Partridge Family, would these Brady Kids be singing in every episode from now on? Besides, everyone knew The Partridge Family did it better, and did it first.
While it's always funny to blame cute Cousin Oliver for causing the demise of The Brady Bunch, to take this as a fact is just not accurate. He only did six episodes, and I think, fit quite well into The Bradyverse. Never a huge ratings hit, The Bradys often teetered on cancellation. Now, five years in, this show about kids, was now a show about teens -- who sing.
I can relate to your feelings. My best friend and I, at eleven years old, were distraught when we heard the Brady Bunch would not be making new episodes. We could only watch our favorite show on weekday mornings, and that was few and far between because we were in elementary school. I think they stayed on ABC mornings through the summer of 1975, and my friend had heard through the wind that a local station would be "picking them up" that September in the afternoons, and after school! We were still getting our daily Brady fix, albeit in reruns that we had mostly already seen, but not enough to get them embedded word for word in our heads yet. That came soon after. We always thought,"What are they going to do with that house, and what are those kids going to do now that they've quit filming?" We were always on the lookout for a Brady to see how they had grown. By the time the Variety Hour came about in late 1976, we saw the matured Brady kids, but we too had matured and that format just didn't quite do it for us. The house was not the same, and Mike Brady even had the audacity to say that he had quit his job as an architect, they had sold their house and moved to Southern California. Wait a minute! They were in California all along so we thought. The whole thing just didn't make sense. The variety show left a bad taste in our mouths. Then comes 1981 and the Brady Girls Get Married. We couldn't wait to see what was going on. We were delighted to see that the Bradys were back in their old house, even though some of the furniture had changed, Mr. Brady had a mustache, Alice was married to Sam, kids had moved out, etc. We felt cheated out of those years, but again delighted that there was no mention of the variety show era, so we just pretended like it was all a bad dream.
ReplyDeleteThe Snow White episode was originally planned to be the kickoff episode of season 5, but there were issues with Disney over the use of the music etc. Once this was resolved, they were able to air it later than they originally planned. I think this is discussed in Lloyd Schwartz's book.
ReplyDeleteI just watched "The Brady Girls Get Married" on youtube a couple nights ago, I'm surprised how well it holds up--it was a great tv-movie. Too bad "The Brady Brides" series was such a turkey!
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