The Brady Bunch Episode #3

Eenie, Meenie, Mommy, Buhhoe. Hello, and thanks for joining me for the third installment of my Brady Bunch review! I’ve previously written a blog on the first two episodes which I hope you enjoyed. This episode features adorable little Susan Olsen as Cindy. I love The Brady Bunch and plan to give you my opinion on all 117 episodes. When I’m done with that, I may move on to their movies and other spin offs. Yeah, I have no life.

This third episode is called Eenie, Meenie, Mommy, Daddy and originally aired on October 10, 1969. The show opens with Carol fake watering the plants. Stupid Cindy runs in pigeon toed spouting a bunch of goobly gock that no one can understand. I think it went something like “I got it. I got it. Mary Dittmyer thought she would but she didn’t. I got it!” It turns out Cindy won The Fairy Princess role in the school play. If you’re speaking the language of dumb Cindy, it’s pronounced Faywee Printheth.

Cindy takes the school play very seriously and works extremely hard on her new role. She’s devastated when she finds out that she can only invite one person to the play. She doesn’t know if she should invite her mommy or her new daddy. This episode was apparently inspired by a true story of the daughter of Brady Bunch creator, Sherwood Schwartz.

Cindy works very hard on her lines. Her brothers and sisters are very supportive. (Of course they’re supportive. They’re the Brady Bunch!) Cindy’s school, which is shown in a shot as Dixie Canyon School, is in a pickle. They have 60 band kids giving a concert followed by The Fairy Princess with 26 speaking parts. They don’t know how they’ll ever fit all of the audience members into the auditorium. Hello? Why not give multiple performances or have the band concert on a separate night? Duh. So stupid. Who’s running this school? They should be fired.

Cindy doesn’t know how to decide who to bring to her big show. She is really heartbroken. She plays pin the tail on the parent and ends up pinning Brazil. She also goes into the fake backyard and pulls petals off the fake daisies. “Eenie, Meenie, Mommy, Daddy.” Hence, the title of this episode. She brilliantly decides to feign illness to get out of the play. Cindy shows up at play rehearsal with the absolute worst limp ever. Did nobody show Susan Olsen how to limp? She looks like a weeble wobble about to fall over. (Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.) The problem is solved when the students decide to give a special performance for the Brady family. How sweet.

Miss Marlow (Tracy Reed): “I’m so glad Cindy’s father explained her very special problem.”
Mrs. Engstrom (Marjorie Stapp): “So am I. I guess children don’t understand sometimes it’s possible to bend the rules a bit. It was very nice for the children to give this special performance.”

It would have been nicer if they just added a second show so that other families could come as well. Stupid.

Random Thoughts

• Something cute and not so dumb from Cindy: “Please, daddy. Don’t interrupt my ‘hearsal.”
• The second scene ends with Mike acting like a frog and chasing Carol around the room. Kinky. I’m sure Robert Reed was mortified that he had to act like a frog.
• The boys use their belts to hook Cindy up to the clothes line so that she can practice her flying for her Fairy Princess role. I wonder how the show would have progressed if she would have been left there. Hey, Tiger never came back either.
• Why are Marcia’s pants up past her ankles? Did kids really wear them that short back then?
• Greg: “Have you ever seen a fairy?” ????
• Carol is drinking coffee AGAIN while at the kitchen table preparing Cindy’s costume. Mike and Carol always drank coffee.
• I know I give Cindy a bad time (mainly because it’s fun and the character is so stupid), but I was pretty impressed with Susan Olsen. She had a ton of lines in this episode and did a wonderful job. She was also just so darned cute.
• FYI, I had a huge crush on Mike Brady (Robert Reed). I thought he was just gorgeous. I still love looking at him in these old episodes.
• In one of his first acting gigs ever, Brian Forster (aka Chris Partridge #2) shows up playing the elf in The Fairy Princess. He plays dumb very well.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this review of the third Brady episode. I hope you’ll check back often as I continue to review all 117 episodes!