The Brady Bunch Variety Hour

I'll watch just about anything that Robert Reed appears in. I've always heard that he loathed the Mike Brady role and tried to balance that dreck with meatier roles like his supporting role in MANNIX and a tasting sinister turn as a hit man in HARRY O.

Something must've distracted him along the way because he signed on to this mess, the Brady mob singing and dancing and pretending to be entertainers of some sort. It's just painful. Badly written and endlessly strained, it lasted nine episodes before being put to sleep forever.

Please spare yourself of this mess. Guest stars like Vincent Price (???) in torturous sitcom skits t(avoiding the use of well-known Brady sets) didn't help, nor did the contrived musical numbers. And what's with the canned laughter and extended applause?

Seventies TV was rarely 'great' and there has to be a bottom rung somewhere. Trust me... this is it.

This has to have been the worst television series ever (at least until "The Brady's" came along). When this show was announced, I thought it was just going to be a simple reunion show with the actors playing themselves then going into various sketches involving their characters. Instead they stay in character throughout the show. Rip Taylor was about the only funny thing on the show. Also, the other thing that was strange about this show was the fact that Eve Plumb (Jan) was the only one that didn't reprise her role (she was off doing more serious roles including starring in the acclaimed Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway). Instead, it was poor Geri Reischl to play the role of television's most famous middle daughter. It looks as if Plumb made the right choice and Reischl is nowhere to be found.

The Bradys (for some reason) get a TV variety show to do. The episodes consist of them and guest stars "singing" and "dancing" and doing "comedy". Also every single fashion mistake of the 1970s (and there were LOTS of them) are worn at one time or another in this show. I'm not proud to admit that I saw every single episode of this when it aired but, even at the age of 15, I realized it was terrible but I couldn't stop watching. It was just SO wretched with abysmal comedy (even worse than the original "Brady Bunch" show) and variety acts that had my jaw dropping! Eve Plumb (Jan) had the brains NOT to do this show but the rest of the original cast was there. There were a few (very few) good moments here and there. They could all (more or less) sing and Barry Williams and Florence Henderson were very good on their own but this show was just a train wreck from beginning to end. It boggles the mind to think that ANYONE thought this could work. Even Williams in his book "Growing Up Brady" said it was the worst TV show ever. Well he's wrong. "The Brady Brides" was even WORSE! A 1 all the way.

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.

One of the worst TV shows ever.

Funny thing though, Robert Reed, who hated the Brady Bunch show, agreed to do this show.

The Brady Bunch was my favorite show while I was growing up. I looked forward to it every Friday night.

Personally I never cared for any of the reunion shows, though the theater movies without the original cast were pretty funny.

It would have been better if they had just left the Brady Bunch in 1974 the way I remember it.

Some things are better left the way they are.