Totally Random Video: “A Very Brady Episode” of the NBC sitcom “Day by Day” from 1989!

I’m under the weather with a cough, congestion and stuff so was YouTube surfing and came across THIS. What a little gem that I had never seen before. It’s an episode of the series Day by Day which ran less than two seasons in the late 1980s and was filled with established stars and future stars: Douglas Sheehan (Knot’s Landing, General Hospital, Clueless), Linda Kelsey (Lou Grant), Christopher Daniel Barnes (A Very Brady Movie), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld, Veep, New Adventures of Old Christine), Courtney Thorne-Smith (Melrose Place, Ally McBeal, World According to Jim), and Thora Birch (American Beauty, Ghost World).

This episode has Barnes, who would later play Greg Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel, dreaming he was part of the Brady family and making it all the more real are guest appearances by Florence Henderson, Robert Reed, Ann B. Davis, Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight and Mike Lookinland. I’m not sure if the three absent Brady kids were not interested or not asked but it;’s interesting that all of their images are used in an opening sequence except for the performer who had portrayed Cindy. A generic little girl in braids was used and it doesn’t seem to make one bit of difference.

My favorite little details is the breathless cheerleading routine which, as eagle-eyed fans know, is an accurate recreation of the routine from the cheerleading competition Greg judged back in the day.

The previous year, the Brady cast had reunited (with a replacement Cindy) for the highly-rated TV movie A Very Brady Christmas. Then in 1990, the CBS drama The Bradys premiered with McCormick declining to do the show after having just given birth to her daughter. The show, a drama, lasted six episodes. You can do a Bradys reunion with a fake Jan and a replacement Cindy but you really do need the real Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!