A little bold to say they were a hit but I'll allow it.

I recently discovered that back during The Brady Bunch’s original TV run, there were a few tie-in novels released. I asked people if I should try to acquire them and read them, but I waited for no one’s response before I had ordered the first one, simply named The Brady Bunch. When I saw reviews for the book, I read that it was deeply terrible and I was so ready to tear into it.

It’s bad, but I’ve read worse. I’m genuinely disappointed.

Let me start with what the book is about and go from there.

Carol’s friend Maggie had tickets to the quiz show Stunts and Stumpers, but Maggie’s husband had a last minute business trip to Chicago and couldn’t go. Maggie, who was a big fan of the program, couldn’t let the tickets go to waste and gave them to Carol and Mike. Mike didn’t want to go, but Carol basically made him. When they get to the studio, the show’s host Jackie Jackson handpicks Mike and Carol to be the third couple on the show. The idea is they might not even get on the show, but both of the other couples bomb out fast. Carol gets her question correct but the show ends before Mike, who had been suffering from stage fright, can get his question wrong, which gives them a week to study. And they win. And win. And win. The audience loves them, the network loves them - but the kids and Alice are very unhappy and willing to do anything just to get their parents (or employers, in Alice’s case) back. Everything comes to a head when Mike and Carol get their own morning show, leading them to see just how wrong everything has become and leading them to walk away from their stardom.

This book came out after the pilot and there were clearly no other reference episodes, so a lot of mistakes in the book were simply because of the changes made between the first two episodes. For example, it is stated that the Bradys live in a ranch house, when they live in a two story house - but the house used in the pilot was a ranch house. The girls call Mike by his first name and the boys call Carol by her first name - but again, they did that in the pilot, too. Tiger and Fluffy both live with the Bradys when we know Fluffy was never seen again after the honeymoon.

That said, some things about the book were just wrong. For example, Alice calling Mr. and Mrs. Brady by their first names - she would never and she did never. Even in the pilot she called Carol “Mrs. Martin.” The book made me look up the word “prosaically” three sentences in - ironically, it means to state something without flowery language. It said the age range for the kids was 13-5, but Cindy was 6. It said Mike was approaching middle age at 38, and I’m 38 so that’s clearly incorrect. The book made me look up the word “contretemps,” which means a dispute or disagreement. I teach ELA, no book should make me feel this dumb, especially when it’s dumb. Mike and Carol’s morning show was in black and white even though it was 1969 and the only networks still in black and white were PBS predecessor NET and UHF channels.

There’s so many things to nitpick in this book that I’m now going to break it up into categories: mischaracterizations, shit that was just dumb, and what I actually didn’t hate. I’m going to start with the shit that’s dumb, because I need to.

The writer was clearly just lazy, and that’s evident in the names of all the Hollywood people in the book. There’s Stunts and Stumpers host Jackie Jackson, manager of personalities Solomon I. Solaman, advertiser Walter W. Walter, and the director of The Mike and Carol Show, Danny Daniel. Also, you can’t convince me Jackie Jackson isn’t just The Joker. His audience signs say “applause” and “shut up,” and a running gag in the book is old ladies in the audience laughing so hard they have to be carried off on stretchers. Jackie Jackson also has the biggest problems - a bit of real life history, quiz shows used to be rigged and that’s why they fell from grace. In universe, Jackie Jackson hosted a quiz show in this era and he himself fell from grace because it was rigged. Stunts and Stumpers was his return, and he wanted quiz shows to make such a comeback he actually kind of predicted Who Wants to be a Millionaire? However, the one thing he’s insistent on is not rigging the show so nobody can say it’s rigged and ruin him again. So he rigs the show - and then like forgets that he did. At one point, Carol and Mike say they have more accurate information than the show likely does, and he changes the answers on the cards he has. On TV. And everyone was just supposed to forget that happened because at the end it comes back that they suspect the show was rigged because Maggie got the tickets from her cousin who works at the show. It’s just so dumb.

Let’s get into some mischaracterizations. I’m going to start with Alice, because I’ve already mentioned how she would never call Mr. and Mrs. Brady by their first names, then sprinkle in some Marcia, Bobby, Cindy, Mike, and Carol in that order.

I took this picture to show just how old the book was, but noticed you can see one of the worst mischaracterizations.

Alice is funny, no one can deny that. But she’s witty. In the book, though, Alice is pretty dumb. When Mike has stage fright on the show, Alice yells advice at the TV. That’s fine. We’ve all been there. But then when she’s told that Mike can’t hear her because he’s at the studio, she opens a window and starts yelling out of it. She would never. Alice is not that dumb.

Marcia is Lolita now, I guess. Her crush on her dentist in series was one thing. She misread some signals and it was all pretty innocent. In this book, however, Marcia lures a teacher she has a crush on to her house under false pretenses to try to spend some time alone with him. What in the ever loving fuck? Luckily for all of us, Marcia’s teacher is obsessed with trivia and enjoys exchanging facts with Carol.

They basically made Bobby the Cindy of this book. Like, he’s not as dim as Cindy is on the show, even though they did imply he believes in Superman at the age of 8, but he has the reputation of being a tattletale in the book. Where did they even get that from?

They did Cindy so fucking dirty.

Cindy is less dim in the book and yet they somehow still did her dirty. Cindy has one of my favorite moments in the book, which I’m going to save for the part I like section of this review. She also suggests arson to solve a problem at one point, which made me smile. But her description was that she looked like she was going to lisp. How does one look like that? Also, all of her lines are written with the lisp spelled out. It’s annoying as fuck to read, also it doesn’t work for “ears.” You know what “ears” is with the lisp spelled out is? Earth. Earth. That’s already another word with a different pronunciation than was intended.

Mike is kind of just a jerk in this book and part of the beginning of the end for the Brady parents’ fame is him and Carol considering tax fraud on live TV. He would never. Also, he eats a tuna and watermelon preserve sandwich at one point, and that’s just a life error. I’m a worse person for having read that.

Carol got done the dirtiest of all. They turned her into a ditz! She has an evening key and a daytime key and justifies it by asking Mike if he’d wear the same shoes in the evening as he did in the daytime. That’s literally not even close to being the same thing. She gets verbal diarrhea every time she’s on camera, which I could have forgiven, except in one of these word vomit moments she tells everyone she has a strange mind. What’s a strange mind? She forgets to turn off the iron but can remember useless trivia. I have ADHD and that sounds like ADHD, but they wouldn’t have known that in 1969. The actual intention was for Carol to be dumb. Because she was blonde, perhaps? I don’t know. I’m not William Johnston, and he died in 2010 and can’t answer for these crimes. 

Before moving on to what I like, there are some characterization notes that I don’t know where to put them, so I’ll just put them here. Carol and Mike, despite being on the same team on the quiz show, constantly argued about whose category was better and who was going to get more points. I wrote the note “pretty ambitious for a Brady Bunch novel to be pushing the Bradys toward divorce,” and that is pretty ambitious for having been written between the first and the second episode. Also, at another point in the book, Bobby says point blank that he wants to divorce his dad and… that’s even more ambitious. They went well past silly misadventure in this novel.

Okay. What I liked. Actually, there’s only one thing I liked. It made me laugh. When Mike and Carol are on the quiz show, before the kids are sick of it, they make a rule that the kids have to clap and cheer just as much for their biological parent as their non-biological parent. At one point, Greg believes Cindy clapped more for Carol than Mike and Cindy responds, “I was younger then and had more childish enthusiasm.” I mean, the lisps were spelled out in the book, so I wrote it better, but it still made me laugh. That’s especially a clever line for Cindy. I do actually also enjoy thinking that Jackie Jackson is The Joker. I have a doctorate in Harley Quinn history, so I know a lot about The Joker because of my studies, and from his inhuman smile to his frantic behavior, it’s The Joker. Also, the book was a pretty fast read. I knocked it out a lot faster than it takes me to even watch an episode of The Brady Bunch these days. Even if it made me look up words nobody ever uses, I appreciate something that doesn’t waste my time.

I can’t recommend this book in good faith. It’s not even bad enough to be really fun. It’s just subpar, which is worse. I mean, I’m still going to try to acquire the other tie-in novels to review them because I’m an idiot. But smart people will avoid this book once they have been warned.

Are you a smart person who has read this book before you understood what it was? Are you an idiot who went out of their way to read this book? What did you think of it? I look forward to hearing your thoughts!