“If Silence is Golden, This Must Be Worth a Fortune.”
I am now half way through the story, or at least the original story, of The Brady Bunch. I guess technically, I crossed the half way point in season three. If you’ve been enjoying the show so far, I’ve got great news – this season is more of the same. Of course, if you don’t enjoy the show, that’s bad news for you.
The setup remains the same. When Mike (Robert Reed) and Carol (Florence Henderson) get married, they each bring three kids to their second marriages. This means that Mike’s three boys, Greg, Peter, and Bobby (Barry Williams, Christopher Knight, and Mike Lookinland) and Carol’s three girls, Marcia, Jan, and Cindy (Maureen McCormick, Eve Plumb, and Susan Olsen) suddenly have twice as many siblings. Rounding out the cast (because we need one more character), we have Ann B. Davis as Alice, their live in house keeper.
Season three kicks off with an iconic road trip as the nine characters head off in a rented tent trailer to the Grand Canyon. This three-part episode finds the Bradys trapped in a ghost town (by Jim Backus of Gilligan’s Island fame) and Bobby and Cindy lost at the bottom of the canyon. While I know these episodes are well loved, I’m not the biggest fan of them. They were more travel log than actual story, or at least they felt that way to me as I watched them again. It also makes me wonder who I will feel when they go to Hawaii to start next season.
The good news is, the remaining 20 episodes this season were more like typical episodes of the show. Among the most famous episodes from the season, Peter tries to develop a personality (leading him to mutter “Pork chops and applesauce”). Jan, tired of being in the shadow of “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” tries out for the pom-pom squad. Marcia promises to get Davy Jones to play for the school dance. Cindy and Bobby set out to break the teeter totter record. When Alice goes on vacation, her identical cousin Emma shows up with her drill sergeant ways. And all the kids set out to record a song that Greg has written, only to learn that it might be “Time to Change” the song.
In earlier seasons, I’ve commented on the fact that each episode only has one storyline, with everyone getting involved in some way with whatever the story of the week is. For the first time, we have a few sub-plots. Most noticeably, the family is building a dunk tank in an early episode. Of course, there are times that the two storylines merge, like when Greg gets a delivery job just as Bobby is upset about being small. Only a hand full of episodes contain a subplot, but I thought it was interesting to note.
There’s nothing here that will change anyone’s mind about the show. It’s still light entertainment. And that includes the jokes, which aren’t as sharp as you’d prefer for a sitcom. The conflicts are usually low stakes with a focus on the kids learning something at the end of the episode. And yes, everyone is mostly well behaved and the situations is resolved happily at the end of the episode.
But it works. There’s a reason this show is still in pop culture almost 60 years later. It’s comforting to imagine a world where everything works out each week. The characters are good role models or, if misbehaving, learn something to improve their character.
And we are in peak 70’s here. The use of slang is laughable at times, even for a show set back then. Carol gets her iconic flip. And the clothing styles are groovy. It certainly was a memorable decade that way.
As I implied earlier, there are 23 episodes this season, down from the 24 we got in each of the first two seasons. The DVD set I have preserves the episodes in their original full frame and mono sound. The picture is a bit fuzzier than I remember them being in the first two seasons, but they are still watchable.
As I was watching, I discovered that music rights keep a few of the episodes from the season from being available for streaming. I don’t remember seeing that with previous seasons, so I found this an interesting bit of trivia. All the episodes are available on DVD, fortunately.
Season 3 of The Brady Bunch continues to charm and entertain. The show isn’t for everyone, but if you find yourself craving comfort watching, you’ll enjoy it.
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