Jan Brady (Eve Plumb) refused to participate in The Brady Variety Hour. Not Marcia!

Who remembers that bizarre Jetsons hybrid, The Partridge Family 2200 A.D.? Or the cartoon Osmonds? There's The Bugaloos, the Banana Splits (with a craaaazy musical number), H.R. Pufnstuf, and a weird, druggy installment of Multiplication Rock with a very Tom Petty-ish character. I had forgotten that the Hudson Brothers show had such a funky, rockin' theme song! Much more excruciating, though, are the clips from the Donny and Marie variety hour, with the crapulently clean-cut Mormon siblings doing some " I'm a little bit country -- I'm a little bit rock & roll" duets, complete with chorus girls going through the paces of a third-rate Busby Berkeley routine. Guess it's what you'd call an LSD flashback. Oh, and Peter Frampton does "Show Me the Way" live, with Elton John doing "The Bitch Is Back" (both of them object lessons in why punk rock was inevitable).

But the answer to the question, "How bad could TV really get back then?" has to lie in the mercifully short-lived Brady Variety Hour. This has to be one of the most vomit-inducing displays of wretchedness ever committed to videotape. The whole miserable clan (replete with faux Eve Plumb, after the genuine article said "No, thank you" to this little venture) stands on risers and halfheartedly mouths the words to a disco medley, with Florence Henderson in a glittery pink gown with pink boa, Robert Reed in a pumpkin-colored satin tux, and the rest of the brats in similarly eye-wrenching polyester. Chorus girls swim, lights flash, synthesizers warble, mirrored disco balls spin, and the Bradys cut up with each other in a most appalling fashion among the five-dollar Vegas glitz. Yeesh.