As I continue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Brady Bunch, I have been revisiting the episodes. Thankfully they are available on Hulu. Well, most of them anyway. Why not all of them Hulu? Anyway, as I watched I went back to a “worst Brady episode” list I did awhile back. And realized it wasn’t great. For one thing, it was limited to six. Even worst, “Eenie, Meenie, Mommy, Daddy” was number 2. This is the episode where Cindy has to choose who to invite to her play, her mommy or daddy. While I think the premise is out there, and the solution preposterous, is it really a “bad” episode? No, not really. At the very least, there are much worst! So I went thru the episodes and revised the list.
Here is my revised Worst Episodes of “The Brady Bunch”. Of course, in
my opinion as always. These are in broadcast order, and I decided to
leave off “Kelly’s Kids” since that was a backdoor pilot and it’s just
not fair to include it here.
12.”Mike’s Horror-Scope” (Season 1)
The episode is an example of two huge problems. One is the dreck of season one. I don’t know what it was with the over somber tone of those early shows. Glad they lightened up a bit. The other problem is that this is the one time Mike gets the focus. This doesn’t work because this show is done from the child’s point of view. It’s why the stories are so light. So to have this episode where Mike meets a new client who monopolizes his time just feels out of place. The ending is kind of funny, but the kids are barely in it and the episode is a bore. Also while it’s never said flat out the insinuation that Carol is worried that another woman would cause Mike to cheat on her just feels out of place. I realize that they were still newlyweds at this time, but still.
11.”Every Boy Does It Once” (Season 1)
I had something else here, but changed my mind. I’ve talked about how boring Season 1 was and this is a perfect example of why. They tried to keep hitting the fact the family was a split family hard in every episode. Eventually, they abandoned that and decided to just have it be a family, period. But before that we got an episode like this where Bobby is convinced his new mother doesn’t love him and plans to run away. Boring.
10.”The Dummer Boy” (Season 2)
Bobby and Cindy give two of THE most forgettable episodes of the series. Bobby is the Drummer Boy and spends the episode banging on the drums. And that’s about it. The subplot has Peter being called a sissy because he sings and plays football. Actually they use the word “canary”, I guess that was as PC as you could get back then. It’s Deacon Jones who solves the problem, not the parents!
9.”Lights Out” (Season 2)
Cindy is scared to death by a magician (which makes no sense) and suddenly can’t sleep in the dark. Meanwhile, Peter enters a talent competition as a magician. The episode is just boring with two scenes of Peter doing his magic in front of the family. Not only do they have Bobby do a stupid and thoughtless prank to keep the drama going, but the show cares so little for its own premise. It ends with Cindy overcoming her fear, and we never even discover if Peter got in to the talent show or anything. Funny how these two boring episodes involved the same three characters.
8.”Tell it Like it is” (Season 2)
On my original list this was #1, and while this revised list is in broadcast order it’s only to fair to mention that I still think this may be the worst episode. Here is the original recap:
Remember what I said before, that making a Mike episode was a mistake because the series is supposed to be focused on the kids. Well this episode takes it a step further, and it’s worst! Carol is writing an article for a magazine on a typical family. Her first story is rejected for being unrealistic (sure). The second time she tries by sugarcoating everything and it’s a hit and she’s published. Carol feels out of character this whole show, suddenly showing this ambition. Now here is where it gets really dumb. The magazine is sending people to meet her family. Carol for no reason mistakes the time they are arriving (ok there is a reason but why no one confirmed the time is beyond me). When the magazine people get there she is not dressed, and then the kids walk in fighting with each other. The girls are fighting, Cindy has the hiccups, Bobby has wrecked his clothes, Pete has a black eye and Greg has poison oak. What?? Then Mike enters through the backdoor and crashes into Alice who had the snacks for the guests. The whole thing doesn’t even feel like an episode of the Brady Bunch and that ending isn’t funny, it’s slapstick which is wrong on this show (I wonder how Robert Reed felt about it). Yes the characters weren’t always perfect and happy on this show, but this seemed really forced,as if they were determined to prove that the family is not perfect no matter how contrived it is. If you have to take the characters out of character to make the scene work…you did something wrong. Oh and then the idiot magazine editor decides to go with the first article he originally rejected. Good thing Carol’s a good sport. This was the final episode of season 2, and it kinda feels like it.
7.And Now a Word from our Sponsor (Season 3)
Ok so far the criteria for “bad” has been “boring”. Now it’s time to dial it up a notch. It seems like every time a show does an episode where the characters appear on TV the characters have to turn into idiots. So, The Brady’s are selected for a commercial and long story short, they learn from a horrible actress to overact and ruin the commercial. This was so stupid Robert Reed wrote a four page letter about it. Why is it stupid? Because the director does not rehearse with the family at all, and rather than just telling them to start again he loses his temper and fires them. Just dumb. To be fair the first half isn’t all bad, as they test the detergent they will be selling. But when The Brady’s take lessons from the actress it’s all downhill. Even as amateurs they should know better. Even for a Brady episode it’s just to silly. Maybe if they learned what “Motivating” meant.
6.”Dough Re Mi” (Season 3)
Yeah I know, what??? Yeah I’ve made it no secret that the music episodes didn’t do much for me. Not because of the music, I like the songs. It’s just that the is not The Partridge Family! This is easily the most forced, with Greg just coming up with an idea to sell a record (At least the other music episodes had a plot which kinda made sense). And then Peter’s voice cracks in time to ruin the recording. Until Greg comes up with a better idea! I always find it amusing that Robert Reed appears in one scene and is not present at the end when the kids do the recording. Instead it’s Carol and Alice beaming with pride.
5.”Cyrano de Brady” (Season 4)
I know some people may like this one because of the brother stuff between Greg and Peter, but the episode gets silly and just keeps going. It’s one of the first episodes where the parents are just kind of present, and don’t really get involved with the plot. After Greg’s attempts to hep Peter get the attention of a girl (a la Cyrano) and fails, the two concoct a plan with Marcia to make the girl stop liking Greg and pay attention to Peter. Yeah, it’s as stupid as it sounds.
4.”You’re Never Too Old” (Season 4)
The reason this ended up being 12 rather than 10 is because I noticed I had at least two episodes per season, except this one. So I decided it was only fair to expand the list. This is the episode where Florence Henderson and Robert Reed play the kids great-great grandparents. While it’s cool to see these two actors playing under all that make-up, the episode itself is a bore.
By the way I almost had “Greg Gets Grounded” on here. I hate frogs and if you know that episode, you’d get why that one is not a favorite.
3.”Snow White and the Seven Bradys” (Season 5)
Ah, season five. When the ideas just kind of, went away. The Brady’s agree to put on a show because Cindy’s favorite teacher is retirig. Which show? Well you probably guessed. It’s just lame and stupid, even for The Brady Bunch.
2.”The Snooperstar” (Season 5)
Still can’t believe I forgot this episode. At this point Cindy we around 10 or so, making the plot about as cringe worthy as it comes. Susan Olsen has said this episode traumatizes her. To keep Cindy from reading her diary, wich we already did in Season 1 but I digress, Marcia puts a lie in it about a talent scout coming to see because she is going to be the new Shirley Temple. Well, it just goes from silly to just plain awkward.
1.The Hair-Brained Scheme (Season 5)
Yeah, kinda hard to leave this off. This was the final episode and so dumb Robert Reed was so angry about it he ended up being written out of it! But to be fair, if you accept the ludicrous plot the episode isn’t the absolute worst. In fact the worst thing is that Robert Reed is not in it, which makes no sense since the story is Greg’s graduation and Mike would never miss that! In fact the episode right before it about Bobby thinking Sam was a spy was much more stupid. Don’t get me wrong I get what happened and even respect Robert Reed for how he handled it, but his absence is what really hurts this episode. So yeah while it is bad, I can’t say it’s the worst ever. I wonder if Reed would have played the episode had he know this would have been the end. It’s to bad such a good show had to go out in such a bad way.
And believe me, only three for season five is pretty good! Well so there are my least favorite episodes. And 12 episodes out of 177 isn’t so bad. That means there are over 100 that are at least decent. So did I miss one yoi think should be on here? Comment and let me know.
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