In the 1970's the success of The Donny And Marie Show and The Sonny And Cher Show led TV Producers to churn out tons of hour long variety shows. And they all sucked. Not most. They ALL sucked. Bad. And the prime example has to be The Brady Hour, a badly thought out revival of the classic family sitcom The Brady Bunch.

   Here's the idea: Mike Brady quits his job as an architect and the whole Brady family moves to a new beach house so that the family can star in its own TV variety show. What??? Lets take this a step at a time. Why would a successful architect give up his career to dress in tacky 70's spangly clothes and humiliate himself dancing with his kids on TV? More important, who would hire an architect and his family to host a variety show. Yeah, I see that happen every day. Just last week this automotive engineer and his family that live next door to me got picked totally at random to headline every week on Showtime At The Apollo.

   Also, why did they have to move? The Brady's already LIVED in Los Angeles for God's sake! The beach would only put them further from where the variety show must've been filmed.

   The other big thing on these variety shows was to have a recurring troupe of performers of some sort. Sonny And Cher had a group of singers and a group of dancers, Donny And Marie had Ice Skaters! And the Brady's? Why they had The Water Follies Swimmers! And me? I had a gun in my mouth, my finger twitching on that trigger. They actually even did a crossover appearance with Donny And Marie but, God help me, I can't bear to throw that in as some separate entry. The pain is bad enough already.

   As a side note, since the initial series the only full reunion of the full cast was for the TV movie The Brady Girls Get Married. In every other case at least one member of the original cast has balked at coming back. In this case Eve Plumb who played Jan would be the smart one to say no. Jan was instead played by actress Geri Reischl - Jan, Version 2.0. When Jan put that wig on in the original Brady Bunch she was trying to become the "new" Jan Brady. Apparently wigs weren't good enough - she morphed into an entirely new actress! No Jan! You're tampering with the laws of nature! What hath Jan wrought??? Okay, I'm a wee bit carried away.

   This is a painful series, a painful memory and a painful example of what the seventies looked like. Let us learn from history so that we are not doomed to repeat it my friends. If I have to live through The Friends Variety Funclub... well I won't live through it.

Other Brady Bunch Crossover Links
The Brady Bunch and The Brady Brides
The Brady Bunch and The Bradys
The Brady Bunch and The Love Boat

Click here to return to main Crossover List

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