So I bought the second season of "The Brady Bunch" on DVD, and was horribly disappointed to find out it had absolutely no extras. The first season had creator Sherwood Schwartz commenting on the pilot (he was dull, but he's Sherwood), and cast members Barry Williams (Greg), Christopher Knight (Peter) and Susan Olsen (Cindy) doing a merry, fun commentary on two episodes (the family goes camping, and Peter saves a little girl in a toy store).
So when I found out there was nothing at all extra on season two, I put the set aside and didn't watch it for a while, but then I popped it in as kind of background music. And I discovered something: The episodes we've been seeing for years have been cut for syndication, but the DVDs have them restored. There are entire scenes in these oh-so-familiar shows that I haven't seen in many moons.
Remember Marcia's slumber party ("Mrs. Denton or a hippopotamus?" her dumb friend writes on Marcia's admittedly lame sketch of George Washington.) Anyway, at the party, before the girls find the itching powder in their sleeping bags (and you're either nodding along with me here or I've totally lost you by the side of the road), they play a slumber party game that I remember being in all the "what to do at a party" books of that era. It's called Ha, and it's where all the girls lie down with their heads in each other's laps. The first girl says "Ha!", the second one "Ha ha!", and so on, until the fake "Has" are completely drowned out by real laughter.
It's so funny, I knew exactly what game they were playing, but in the scene it just kind of happens organically, no one explains the object or rules of the game. And it felt like a weird little "Brady" treat, getting an extra scene that was really there all along.
In two weeks, the third season will also be out, and there will even be a DVD three-pack available for purchase. Groovy, man.
2 comments:
I definitely was surprised by the "extra footage" as well. The one I particularly remember is from the "Will the real Jan Brady please stand up?" fright wig episode. There is an extra scene of Jan wearing the wig in the bedroom talking to Marcia and Cindy and I also don't remember seeing Alice in the wig on the back bumper segment. I remember the "HA" game for some reason. I knew it had been cut. Myself and some of my friends for years have been saying, at a lame party, "Hey guys, let's play HA." Yeah, stupid inside joke, but when the Bradys are ingrained into your being, what are you going to do...
I remember the slumber party episode well. Was it just me, or were you annoyed when Marcia was explaining that it was Paula who wrote the remark, "only she didn't mean any harm" like that made it all better. Um, like they thought Marcia MEANT HARM? I was always baffled by that one.
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