The Teeter-Totter Caper | The Brady Bunch
For today’s blog post, I am going to dissect an episode of The Brady Bunch. Yep. This is what it has come to.
The Teeter-Totter Caper was the 14th episode of the third season, and it aired on December 31, 1971. There was no DVR back then, so that means that a lot of people spent the last day of 1971 watching Bobby and Cindy Brady try to set a record for longest time teeter-tottering.
They didn’t just decide to do this out of the blue, though. No, they had a motive. A woman (who was still unmarried at 25 – quite the old maid according to Mr. and Mrs. Brady) sent out wedding invitations and had the gall to invite some of the Brady children, but not all of them.
First of all, the Brady children are all pretty close in age, right? Probably like two years apart each? (Hold up, I just remembered I don’t live in the 70s and do have Internet. Googled it. They’re each three years apart.) So this means that Cindy was about 9, and Bobby was about 10. This is young to invite to a wedding, but are we insinuating that Jan and Peter weren’t? They were only 12 and 13, respectively. Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have wanted any of them at my wedding, but this crazy old maid decided that 9 and 10 ain’t cool, but 12 and 13 know how to party, so that’s how it all went down.
Bobby and Cindy were pissed. They were all, “Just because we’re young doesn’t mean we can’t do something important!” So then they did something super unimportant and began trying to set a teeter-totter record.
Alice hand delivers meals to the two youngest Bradys throughout the day (wearing her uniform, of course, because she’s not a part of the family) and sits in while one runs to the restroom (I’m sorry, but that should be illegal. If you’re allowed to take bathroom breaks, it isn’t a record.) Mr. and Mrs. Brady (They’re married, and they don’t even call each other by their first names, so there’s no way in hell I’m gonna do it.) stay up late watching the two while shaking their heads and making exaggerated facial expressions to properly portray their feelings as the kids start to fall asleep on the teeter-totter.
OH! But I’m forgetting the (second) best part – the press shows up. I’m not joking. Someone at the newspaper catches wind and comes storming onto the Bradys’ turf yard demanding an interview with the rockstar children. (I really wish this was the type of stuff we were reading about in the news now, but I guess we still get trivial stuff sometimes like, “POTUS blocked Chrissy Teigen and several other celebrities on Twitter.”)
This leads to my FAVORITE part of the episode. The bride’s wedding week swiftly approaches. The bride sees the famous young Bradys in the paper and – the week of her wedding – calls up Mrs. Brady to ask if Cindy and Bobby are available to make a “celebrity appearance” at her ceremony.
Now, this is the 70s, so I’m assuming this chick wasn’t cool enough to – oh, I don’t know – have a really neat gourmet pizza truck at her wedding. She was probably paying by the head, and it was probably not cheap. (Side note: Greg got a job in another episode I watched recently, and he was getting paid a whole buck-fifty an hour.) So this chick was so impressed by their teeter-tottering escapades that she was willing to pay a shit pile of extra money to have some dumb kids at her wedding. No wonder she was just getting married at age 25. (I can see Mrs. Brady throwing her mullet back in laughter.)
Anyway, Cindy and Bobby turn the poor old hag down because they want to try to set some more world records instead of going to a “stupid wedding.” Mr. and Mrs. Brady guffaw, and the credits roll.
By the way, they didn’t even set a world record. They failed, but you know what Trump says – the corrupt, failing media conveniently leaves that out of their story.
God, I miss Obama. I had to watch a lot less Brady Bunch when Obama was in office. No need to escape when you’re living the damn dream.
Anyway, sorry about this blog post. You can blame Dish for getting MeTV. If it’s any consolation, it started as an, “I learned something new this week. If you leave eggs out in the sun for too long, they’ll explode!” post, so you’re welcome that didn’t happen.