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As you are fully aware, this blog is going to review every episode and movie included on The Brady-est Brady Bunch TV & Movie Collection. But then I thought, what about reviewing the DVD set itself? I don’t even have to wait until I finish watching everything to do that. So let me get right into it.

I actually pre-ordered this set on May 8, 2019 so that I could have it day of release June 4, 2019, but I’ve never actually set down to watch it before this blog. The Brady Bunch is a great casual watch and it comes on TV. I own digital copies of The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel, so I can just watch it in an app on my smart TV without juggling discs. A Very Brady Christmas was on Hulu. And I never at any point in the last two and a half years had a very strong urge to watch The Brady Kids, The Brady Brides, The Brady Bunch in the White House, or Growing Up Brady. I’ve already seen them, and while I’ve debated here and there watching Growing Up Brady because that’s at least an interesting biographical movie, the other series and movies aren’t as fun as the original series or the theatrical movies. So, Brady fan as I am, I had it in my collection but only recently started using it.

A good representation of previously released Brady media.

So right away, let me tell you that this cover makes some weird choices. Pictured on the cover are Mike and Carol from the original The Brady Bunch, Carol from The Brady Bunch Movie, Mike from The Brady Bunch Movie, Marcia from The Brady Bunch Movie, Bobby from The Brady Kids, Marcia from The Brady Bunch, Greg from The Brady Bunch Movie, Jan from The Brady Bunch Movie, Greg as Johnny Bravo from The Brady Bunch, Greg from The Brady Bunch, Jan from The Brady Kids, Peter from The Brady Bunch Movie, Cindy from The Brady Bunch, Bobby from The Brady Bunch Movie, Peter from The Brady Bunch, and Alice from The Brady Bunch. Did we really need three Gregs and no Eve Plumb or Mike Lookinland? And given that there is no fake Bobby Brady in any series, I’m especially not here for the Mike Lookinland overlook.

Not going to lie, 31 discs is a lot.

The back of the box is pretty basic. It boasts 31 discs, the ratings for the movies and all the series, and the run times of each one of them.

What have I gotten myself into?

By the way, I added up all of these run times. 73 hours and 57 minutes. That’s more than 3 days straight. Also, it’s going to take me longer because it takes me an hour and a half to get through one episode of The Brady Bunch, making sure I haven’t missed anything. I assume all the half hour series will be the same, but then The Bradys and the movies will take even longer. I may actually never see my family again.

Who signed off on this packaging?

The packaging for the DVDs sucks. I have other complete series, and they put each season in its own case inside a bigger box. I get that’s a lot of plastic, but also there are 31 discs. Do you want to know the hoops I have to jump through to get to A Very Brady Christmas? Or The Brady Kids Disc One? I’m just juggling DVDs all day long when it wouldn’t be quite as extreme if each season and series had its own case. You could even put The Brady Brides, A Very Brady Christmas, and The Bradys in the same case and all 4 of the other movies in the same case because that would still max out at 4 discs each. Eight individual cases is very doable; Full House does it just fine.

This at least makes it easy to find the disc you're looking for.

One cool but inconsistent feature is having episode titles on discs. They do this for all 20 The Brady Bunch discs and all 3 of The Brady Kids discs. However, they don’t do this for The Brady Brides or The Bradys. The Brady Brides is only one disc, so that’s forgivable, but The Bradys is two discs. Also, just having the episode titles for the sake of consistency would be awesome. To be fair, all the episode titles and the disc they can be found on are on the insert behind the DVDs. However, that's inconvenient because either I would have to remove the insert from the case and risk damaging it, or I'd have to remove a good portion of the 31 DVDs to read it through the plastic.

There are some very clear differences happening here.

A Very Brady Christmas chills underneath The Brady Brides in the DVD set, and even though it is touted as one of the 5 Brady Bunch movies on the box, it’s just as grey as the other Brady show discs. It’s a little sad considering how colorful all of the other movie DVDs are. A Very Brady Christmas doesn’t deserve to look less appealing than The Brady Bunch in the White House. That’s just rude and disrespectful. Mike Brady did not get trapped on Christmas just for this sin to occur.

Also, to clarify for some people who grew up watching The Brady Girls Get Married and The Brady 500 on cable and are thinking, “are those movies just missing?” No. The Brady Girls Get Married is the first three episodes of The Brady Brides and The Brady 500 is the first two episodes of The Bradys. They’re here. They’re just not movies. Will I review them for movies? Maybe for The Brady Girls Get Married but not for The Brady 500 - there’s only 6 episodes of The Bradys.

I noticed three of the season one DVDs said “special feature” on them, but the special feature is just episode commentaries as far as I can tell. I personally love DVD commentaries but it’s not really fair to call them a special feature. Just call them commentaries. They’re also only on selected episodes. None of the other DVDs say they have special features, so I don’t know if that means there isn’t any commentaries or not. I didn’t really feel like investigating 31 DVDs to figure it out. A real special feature would be deleted or alternate scenes - I know those exist for The Brady Bunch Movie because NBC showed a different cut of the movie than is on video, but this is a pipe dream of mine that will likely never be realized.

Also, this set does not have The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, which is really sad. I mean, I get it - it’s the one Brady project that asked for forgiveness instead of getting Paramount and Sherwood Schwartz’s approval from the beginning, but it’s its own legend. It should be here.

Overall, if you’re a big fan of The Brady Bunch, you should own this set. It truly is The Brady-est Brady Bunch TV & Movie Collection. However, for a future release, it should package the discs better so you’re not juggling just because you want to watch the Hawaii episodes of The Brady Bunch, it should include The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, and it should have more special features. It should also represent the Bradys more evenly - we don’t need three Gregs and only one Cindy and one Alice. I rate this set 3.5 out of 5 stars - it does what it sets out to do, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but still lots of room for improvement.