The Brady Bunch Variety Hour

It's a really tough call--is THIS the absolute worst TV show ever created or was another Sid and Marty Kroft show, PINK LADY AND JEFF? It's really hard to tell--they are BOTH that bad! And, they actually share some things in common other than the same producers. Both are variety shows that feature people acting way outside their ranges! While Florence Henderson could sing, the rest of the cast couldn't and there was a strong effort to peddle the Brady kids as a pop group (you've got to hear their albums--they are unintentionally hilarious). So what you have, apart from Ms. Henderson, are some well-meaning but not very talented kids (and this is not just my opinion, but that of the cast when they were interviewed years later) and Robert Reed who just seems totally lost.

Okay, so the songs are a problem (sort of like WWII was a "bit of a tiff")--and that's bad because about half the show is singing and bizarrely choreographed dancing in lots of orange, pink and purple sequined jumpsuits. The rest of the show is "comedy"--something that the Brady family was really not known for--yes, they did a bland little family show, but this was far from the demands they placed on them in The Brady Bunch Hour. Here they were expected to be true comedians at times and do skits that invariably bombed.

And, if all this isn't bad enough, Eve Plumb ("Jan") refused to do the show, so they just picked another person who only had a vague resemblance to her and did it anyways! Despite the fact that almost everyone was totally outside of their element and the show featured a "faux Jan", it only got worse. The Krofts, while described by some as "geniuses", simply couldn't cut it and the show was pure 70s tackiness. It was so loud, so "in your face" and so gaudy, the show literally attacked instead of entertained. It actually reminded me of a high school talent show combined with a Vegas review! Now, you might just assume that I don't want you to ever see this show. Not exactly,...I say see it and see how unintentionally funny and awful it was. I guess I can't blame the cast, as I am sure they got very well paid and they didn't have a lot of other options for acting.

UPDATE--Well, perhaps I spoke too soon. Tonight I saw something from TV from the same time period that was worse, though it was a TV special. The "STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL" is amazingly bad--so bad that it's a train-wreck bad.

I'd agree it's the worst along with nearly all the critic's posts on this thread but I'd be forgetting about "The Sunny Comedy Revue" by comparison.

How in the world did producers think people were going to like this? Was it only because the original television series was a great success? What they hell where the creators sniffing when they decided to release this? I want what they were sniffing for sure. Sure, and the Brady Bunch series was a phenomenal success and I loved it. Furthermore, the critics that had first hand review of this garbage before its release should have recommended not air it, or did they? And why? Oh my God! At any rate, when I watch the first 3-4 minutes of the opening of this disaster when it was first released, I couldn't bear to watch anymore of it. Enough said. Lol.

The Brady family that appears in this mangled mess of a variety series is not real. I think that is the creepiest part about it. They are, of course, the actors who appeared on the infamous comedy series "The Brady Bunch", which played from the late 1960's through the early 1970's. Well, it was the late 1970's when this one occurred and I guess "we" are supposed to believe that they are still related and have...gotten famous since then. For here they all are:Mike, Greg, Jan and everybody...referring to each other as "Mike" and "Greg" and "Jan", as opposed to their real names and having occasional cheap looking scenarios(such as Greg wanting to move out)mixed with their singing, dancing and "teasing" one another. Let's just say if the Brady's WERE real, they would make me nauseous, for who wants to watch some family's variety hour, but that fact that they are not is plain bizarre! Why they didn't just appear as themselves and mention their memories of the Brady Bunch is beyond me. Why ever did this last only a year?

E!(Entertainment Television) had the balls to show just one episode of this series and to me enough was enough! The TV family that won't go away starred in three sitcoms,a quasi-stomach turning drama,a cartoon, a TV-movie and spawn two feature length films based on this series(which starred Shelley Long and Gary Cole),and just when you thought it was all they wrote,they come with at the time one of the most stupidical dumbfounded variety series to ever grace TV during the late 70's(second banana to ONLY Donny and Marie's variety show of the late 70's as well as the Brady's counterparts The Partridge's which had a even bigger sinker of a variety show themselves---all within the last decade of the 1970's).

This was the most dumbfounding of them all:a hour long variety show featuring the original cast(with the exception of Eve Plumb-always the smart one and the ONLY Brady with brains not to do this--was replaced by newcomer Geri Reischi)in character---courtesy of executive producer Sherwood Schwartz who was the creator of the original show as well as this variety series along with other producers Sid and Marty Krofft.

It seems the kids would go into some routine dance numbers and from there it was a laugh riot since NONE of them had any musical talent(with the exception of actress Florence Henderson of course who was a Broadway star),but it seems that architect dad Mike had reluctantly given up blueprints to join his family in a musical endeavor-which explained actor Robert Reed's profound lack of song and dance talent. So what was the kids' excuse? Who knows. Nobody was buying it since America had enough of the clan and it was off the air that same year. Good writtens.

I caught The Brady Bunch Hour on YouTube and, oh man, they can't sing, they can't dance and those gaudy 1970s fashions just glitter at you like flashes from a nuclear explosion. The bubble gum music just adds to the laughs. I wonder if any of them are embarrassed about it now? I sure would be - especially during the highly glossy number of "Baby Face". Eve Plumb (Jan) was extremely wise in backing out of this one.

I don't mean to bash the wholesome goodness of the Bradys (I loved the Brady Bunch as a kid), but the fallout after wards when the show got canceled in '74 has been pretty funny. Like The Bradys (1990) where Marcia suffers from alcoholism (gasp!), gets treatment for it at the nearest rehab center and then becomes a strong supporter of fighting addiction - all in one episode! Oh yeah, and then there's another scene from The Bradys about Bobby's paralyzed state after getting into a race car crash, but in a climactic finale in one episode, he rises from his wheelchair and walks up the stage where his dad is giving some kind of public presentation and everyone cheers in ecstatic awe! It's like The Partridge Family meets The Young & The Restless!!! Oh man, I love the Bradys - before and after wards! They sure have big egos considering The Brady Girls Get Married (1981) was the only post-Brady Bunch reunion they've all appeared together in (someone always backed out and was replaced by a replica star from then on in). After the humiliating polyester/ bell bottomed glow of the Brady Bunch Hour, I would've thought the egotism would've been humbled by now.

So hilarious were those production numbers I'm dying to think of what Simon Cowell would've thought had they performed on American Idol or Britain's Got Talent - 3 strikes without a doubt!