last night, laura and i watched the brady bunch variety hour. astonishingly bad. among other things, fake jan seemed to be obsessed with her own death (sounds better than it is), and it featured an extended, slapstick-y water ballet number that involved many underwater shots of people in clown makeup. greg gave the phone number to his new apartment: 321-1321. no 555, so be sure to call that number and ask for greg. supposedly, tvland cut that sketch when they aired the bbvh. also, there was a segment where tony randall read an edith sitwell poem while people in bear suits capered around behind him. it didn't sit well. another episode, for reasons unbeknownst to me left off the dvd, featured the ohio players and redd foxx.

The premise of "The Brady Bunch Hour" is hard to understand. The Brady
family was chosen to star in a variety show on ABC. They left their
familiar two story home somewhere in southern California for a place on
the beach. (The first installment had a completely different set from
both the rest of the installments and the original series.) The series
includes not only "the variety show on ABC," but also the
behind-the-scenes doings of the Bradys as they go about making their
variety series. There were also some sketches, described below, which
were more or less a continuation of the original "Brady Bunch" episodes
and which had nothing to do with the "ABC variety series." Unfortunately,
the seams between the two modes are not clear, and this results in
continuity errors such as Rip Taylor playing a character named Jack
Merrill on the variety show, but the Bradys also know him as Mr. Merrill
when they're not on TV, and the Bradys announce him as "our own Rip
Taylor" in the opening and closing. It is not always clear what the
Bradys are doing or what audience they are playing to.--from a faq