Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed since the world first heard the story of a lovely lady and a man named Brady–unless you think of just how much Brady Bunch content there is out there and yeah, 50 years seems about right. Over the decades, the Bradys have proven to be the most enduring sitcom family in TV history. The franchise includes 5 TV series, 3 feature films, and 1 behind-the-scenes biopic–almost all of which are now collected in a groovy DVD box set celebrating 50 years of Brady hijinks and hugs. Included are The Brady Bunch, The Brady Kids, The Brady Brides, A Very Brady Christmas, The Bradys, The Brady Bunch Movie, A Very Brady Sequel, The Brady Bunch in the White House, and Growing Up Brady. The very short-lived 1976 variety series The Brady Bunch Hour is the only thing that’s M.I.A., and y’know, maybe that’s for the best?
With so much Brady content out there on DVD and on streaming (Y’all know Hulu and CBS All Access have a large Brady selection, right?), you probably need a guide before jumping back into this fun and funky franchise. What better guide could there be than an actual Brady? Decider spoke with Christopher Knight, who played Peter Brady in every single TV series as well as the 1988 Christmas film, and got to hear all about his favorite episodes. But just to be clear, a Brady’s favorite episode isn’t necessarily going to be a Brady aficionado’s favorite, and that’s because Knight is one of a very select group of people that have a very different take on the Brady experience. That’s because he was in the show!
“We have a uniquely different view on it than everybody else,” Knight told Decider. “We are very much in the minority. As strong as our opinions are, ours are of the experience of doing the show. Those experiences are harder to overcome by watching an episode. The only recollection and memories that fans have of the show is only provided by the watching of the show. Those memories for me of watching the show are diminished in comparison to actually doing the show. So a lot of the stuff that made shows fun was behind the scenes, never recorded. Just housed in my head, sort of like Christmases of your past. So my collection is probably different than the viewers for that reason.”
Intrigued and ready to get back in the business of bingeing Brady? Read ahead, and let Peter Brady be your guide!
'A Fistful of Reasons' (2x8) / 'The Liberation of Marcia Brady' (2x19) / 'How to Succeed in Business' (4x19)
“My character’s thing was being too…well, he’s the only Brady to ever get fired from a job [‘How to Succeed in Business’]. One episode I’m talking to pigeons, in another I’m saving my little sister and throwing a punch [‘A Fistful of Reasons’]. I’m the only Brady to get punched out and doesn’t care. Did I already say I got fired twice? I’m a little crossdresser too, little Sunflower. Sunny Brady. I loved that moment [‘The Liberation of Marcia Brady’]. That moment tickled me so much, I thought it was so funny.”
Stream "A Fistful of Reasons" on Hulu
'Confessions, Confessions' (2x12)
“It seems like nearly everyone [on the show] had a catch phrase. I always took it that, “Don’t play ball in the house” was my catch phrase but in reality it was Bobby’s. It was a co-inspired moment, because it was my dream, saying ‘Don’t play ball in the house’ and me repeating it in my head.
“Of course the ‘Marcia Marcia Marcia.’ There were many more [catchphrases]… One of the things that the Peter character got into doing–I guess because in one script there was a ‘wow’ and the direction for it was elongated as long as possible. Well, that really worked well so it became a repeat. There’s “wows” that Peter does, but frankly that’s not something anyone ever talks about. It escapes people. The repetitive nature of this very long–I mean we’re talking about a four second ‘wow.’ Or maybe three. The production staff bought into it hard because they kept writing it in, but it’s interesting no matter how much that one is repeated, it’s not really picked up by the audience enough to say ‘wow.'”
'Grand Canyon or Bust' (3x2) / 'The Cincinnati Kids' (5x11)
“We’d gotten a taste of getting out of the set and working outside when we went to the Grand Canyon the year before [we went to Hawaii], and if going to Hawaii never would’ve come up, I probably would’ve said the Grand Canyon [was my favorite episode]. Of course we also went to Cincinnati, but it was only a single episode. But as well, it was fun for the same reason. We got to go out. As a consequence of that, when you’re working on a set you’re completely divided from your fans. You’re not working in front of an audience. But when you’re going on location, it’s not set up to be working in front of an audience. You’re in public spaces, roped off and somewhat separated, but not completely. Also you have fans that are there. It’s kind of an immediate recognition of your popularity, when all of a sudden you’re outside working and people are there. Probably the same reason that actors love to do stage. It’s immediate, you have an audience right there in front of you. There’s an energy that comes from it, and that’s not normally a feeling we would have on a work day working on the set. It was unique, and it was fun.”
'The Personality Kid' (3x6)
“[The line I’m most remembered for] is pork chops and applesauce. I have to say that a couple times a week. It was a great [episode] in retrospect. At the time I loved it, but I didn’t know who Humphrey Bogart was. I hadn’t watched Humphrey Bogart. It turned out that there was a Humphrey Bogart movie on at 11:30. It might’ve been The African Queen, I don’t remember. But the idea was, obviously we’re getting up early, I was gonna try to watch a little Humphrey Bogart. This predates video recording, it wasn’t like I could record it and watch it. This was probably 1970.
“So when an episode starred one of us, in order to be in front–we had a tight schedule that was a three day schedule–there was this desire to make sure that we knew our lines and we were well-oiled before the show began. We’d get a running start on it. And Lloyd Schwartz, Sherwood’s son, was our dialect coach in the early years before he became an associate producer. He would come to our homes, in this case it was my home because it was gonna be the Humphrey Bogart episode starring me, or with me on more of the pages than any of the other kids, so I got the attention. And we’d go over the lines and the scenes and all and it was at that time that I didn’t know who Humphrey Bogart was. And so Lloyd showed me what Humphrey Bogart sounded like and how his lip was, which looked kind of odd. So I’m not really doing Humphrey Bogart, I’m doing Lloyd doing Humphrey Bogart, which worked out brilliantly, because for some reason, ‘pork chops and applesauce’ I carry with me as a legacy.”
'Hawaii Bound'/'Pass the Tabu'/'The Tiki Caves' (4x1-4x3)
“Hawaii comes out as number one because of the experience of going to Hawaii. I’m not sure when it would’ve been as an adult I finally would’ve made it to Hawaii. They picked us up and took us to Hawaii! For the guys it was all work, the girls had the days off. We weren’t there for a terribly long period of time. In that year, that was our fourth season. We were in a four-day clip per episode. Mostly three days, but I think in the fifth year it was four days per episode. We had three episodes [to shoot], so about a twelve day shoot schedule. But a lot of it was done back here on set, all the interiors. The outdoor stuff was all done in Hawaii, so about five days of work in Hawaii. So it wasn’t terribly long. It might’ve been four days of work and a couple days of travel. It was mostly work, but Hawaii’s a good place, certainly a fantasy place for anybody.”
'Today I Am a Freshman' (4x4) / 'The Subject Was Noses' (4x18)
“I could always recruit others to help out in these practical jokes that were at Maureen [McCormick]’s expense. I’m the one throwing the football that crushes Marcia’s nose [‘The Subject Was Noses’]. I’m also the one lighting the volcano to get Marcia dirty [‘Today I Am a Freshman]. That pleased me to no end because that was me. The reality is, the writers were taking what they were seeing and running with it. It wasn’t as though there was a Bible for the show and this Peter character was gonna be Huck Finn. If there’s a troublemaker in the Bradys or a jokester or the one that has to learn the lesson the hardest, the one most apt to try to do it a different way or make a shortcut out of it would be Peter.
“I was a little irrepressible and they picked up on it. The more they wrote it for me, the more I reacted positively to it. I positively ate it up and I guess they saw that and wrote more of it. The Jan character had the middle child syndrome that maybe–I’m a middle child, and I don’t think the middle child has a syndrome. There’s just an oldest child and youngest child syndrome. That’s probably cause I’m a middle child. I certainly didn’t have what [Jan] had.”
'Greg Gets Grounded' (4x15)
“Any [episode] that presented an opportunity–an animal, a frog say–to find an opportunity to play a joke on Maureen, and the frogs were one. Because she was squeal-ish. So that meant, ‘Oh, she doesn’t like the frogs? Let’s get her a frog!’ Because that was my personality. I needed to be reeled in to some degree.”
Purchase "Greg Gets Grounded" as part of The Brady Bunch: 50th Anniversary TV & Movie Collection
'A Very Brady Christmas'
“If you look at that movie and deconstruct it, it really takes you from Christmas to Easter because there’s a resurrection at the end [when Mike Brady escapes a cave-in]. Life is resurrected. It probably should be an Easter special too.
“That one [is special] because now we’re doing the show when I’m more of an adult and bring to it from an adult perspective and chops, and then even more so when we do The Bradys. It works very well [as a Christmas movie] because The Brady Bunch is my view on a simpler time. Now, depending on what’s going on in the world, there’s an appetite for simplicity, comfort. And right now we’re probably peaking on the disruptive nature or discord that then reflects in everyone’s wanting to pull up a comfy blanket and watch The Brady Bunch and bathe in simpler moments. There’s a period every year that we all agree we should make things simpler again. It’s around Christmas.
“The Brady Bunch is a lot like all the Christmas specials that were written that were kind of simplistic, whether it be Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty. There’s a simplicity to them, but no matter how many times we’ve seen them we always enjoy watching because we’re all in that same mindset, which is a similar mindset to The Bradys all year long. It’s a warm, simple, childlike environment. We all agree that that’s fine around Christmas. It just seems a little bit harder to come by January through November. But The Bradys is that January through November, and more so like that all year round. That simplicity is designed for children and can be, when an adult is open to it, enjoyed by an adult. They have to be steered to it for reasons that are presented to them by the world around them or just because they have an emotional issue and they want something simple, and this is like a comfy blanket.”
'The Bradys'
“The Bradys was an interesting experiment. It was supposed to be, if I’m not mistaken, two movies of the week. They then broke it into six different hour episodes. There weren’t really structured for the hour. They put a little drama into it, because life isn’t as simple as adults as it is for children. The simplicity is carved out of the world of children to keep them insulated from the world around them. But as adults, you’re just not looking at life with any realism if you’re carving out that kind of simplicity for yourself. So yeah there was–and maybe a little too far with the paralysis for Bobby and so forth.
“It was fun to work with the group as actors, because at this point this was acting. I decided I wanted to be an actor and study and now I got an opportunity to work a bit with it, with this old character that now I’m trying to make an adult. And getting back with this cast has always been… they’re family. I mean 50 years. I’ve known Barry [Williams] for 50 years. Well 51 actually. I’ve known my own family, my brother and sister, for 61, but nobody else that long. So these people are lifelong dear friends of mine. The work with them has always been fun.”
Purchase The Bradys as part of The Brady Bunch: 50th Anniversary TV & Movie Collection
'The Brady Bunch Movie'
“My cameo is only in the first of the two Brady movies. It was as a coach. I worked my one day. Those cameos are that short. And I only worked with Paul Sutera [the new Peter Brady]. It was more nerve-wracking for him. It wasn’t as though I was presented the entire script, so I didn’t really know what the movie’s essence was; it wasn’t necessary for my scene. My stuff was rather perfunctory and it was an excuse just to have me there, in the same way that you use Stan Lee in all of the Marvel movies. Sometimes it’s a funny bit, but other times it’s just to get him in. So I didn’t really have any experience with any of the other actors. Paul was very very complimentary and nervous that he had to perform me in front of me. To me it was time for somebody else to play this role. I’m too old to be Peter anymore in that way.”
