The Brady Bunch

The Brady Bunch (1969)

3 plot holes in season 4 - chronological order

★★★★☆

(17 votes)

Fright Night - S4-E6

Plot hole: After the girls get their revenge on the boys in the attic, they explain the mysterious "I must have air" voice from the trunk as it's revealed to be from a tape recorder. Marcia mentions a set up the girls had where they played the tape recording (from their bedroom) when they were ready. This is impossible as the recorder was in the attic trunk and the play button would have had to be manually pushed down by an actual person to activate.

Career Fever - S4-E9

Plot hole: Peter thinks he has a fatal disease. The parents realise two pages stuck together and he went from page 95 to 98 mistakenly. However, Mike first read about the actual fatal disease info on page 97, and then Carol read about what Peter actually had on page 96 (poison ivy). If Peter read only 95 and 98, there would be no way of Peter to know his disease was fatal since that was printed on page 97.

How to Succeed in Business? - S4-E19

Plot hole: At one point Peter admits to Greg he was fired. In a later scene, Peter tries to talk the parents out of going to the bike shop (where they think Peter still works), and soon after the parents ride new bikes and see Peter in the park and admit to him that his boss told them what happened. Carol said that Greg filled them in as well. This is incorrect because before leaving the house, they didn't know of the firing, and went straight from the bike shop to the park. Greg never told them.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Just because we didn't see it on camera doesn't mean it didn't happen, it's known as "implied action."

That's not really the case here... the sequence of events explain it all. It went from going to the bike shop to find out what happened to the park. Even if they went home in-between, there would still not be a reason to have to question Greg, since they know what has happened at this point.

To build on the implied action point that the user stated, we do not know what happened off-screen so it's not impossible to believe that Mike and Carol went home after learning about what happened from the boss to talk to Peter and then have Greg explain where he may be and why. Peter did tell Greg about feeding the pigeons in the park so it tracks.

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Mistakes

The Winner - S2-E21

Continuity mistake: When Mike and Carroll drive Bobby to the TV show for the ice cream eating contest they leave in the blue convertible. They return home in the brown station wagon.

glanzone

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Vote for Brady - S1-E11

Question: There's a scene in this episode I haven't seen in over 30 years (edited out in more recent years) where the 4 kids upstairs are arguing (boys vs girls) and the kids continuously stamp their feet on the floor and then Alice is shown downstairs watching her cake in the oven. Periodically with all the stomping from upstairs, the cake gets flatter until very flat the end of the scene. Question is does anyone remember this scene and why does the cake in the oven get flatter every time a kid stomps from upstairs?

Answer: I think I remember that episode - but, more importantly, my mother always told me (and my siblings) to stop jumping/ stomping, running in the kitchen, and opening the oven door when a cake was baking... because these could make the cake fall. I believed my mother... and I, as a child, also caused a few "fallen cakes" because I didn't quite always listen (right away, anyway). I'm sure Alice's fallen cake episode was exaggerated, but cakes really CAN fall from stomps and opening the oven door too soon. Usually, it has something to do with the baking powder and how the air bubbles change during the baking process. Doing something that might cause the oven and cake inside to move/shake can suddenly change the air bubbles inside the cake and cause a collapse. I don't know all factors that have to occur for a cake to fall (collapse in the middle), but I've seen fallen cakes during my adulthood and... well... caused at least a few myself. Regarding Alice's cake falling each time one of the Brady kids stomped upstairs, I'm not sure if a series of falls could occur. IF it is possible, I think there would have to be way too much baking powder in the batter or some other inaccurate combination of ingredients that alter the chemical process during baking.

KeyZOid

Answer: Realistically, a cake would not deflate in that way. There are some desserts, like delicate, airy souffles, that can deflate during and after baking, and that must be served almost immediately from the oven. The scene, broadly played for humor, is merely meant to show the argument's growing intensity gauged against the rate of the deflating cake.

raywest ★

Answer: I haven't come across a scene like that, but maybe over time what you remember got mixed up with episodes of other shows, so this is just a suggested episode. "Try, Try Again." In the episode, Mike is preparing a gourmet meal for Saturday. Jan is practicing tap dancing in the kitchen and his soufflé that he had spent 3 days preparing is knocked to the floor. While it is true soufflés can "fall" (meaning deflate), it's because the cooking time was wrong (or opening the oven door too soon) or the structure of the egg whites is too weak. Noises don't make them collapse.

Bishop73

This was not from "Try, Try Again" (though I do remember that scene too). That was in a later season when the kids were older. The one I was talking about was during the first season when all the kids were young. I know the scene in question were the 4 youngest kids and the scene started by each the boys and girls arguing that Greg/Marcia (running for student body president) doesn't stand a chance against him/her to win (boys for Greg, girls for Marcia).

That's "Vote for Brady", s01e11. I watched it and for some reason Carol tells Mike to be careful, after he makes too much noise, indicating noise will ruin the cake. Alice does keep checking on the cake with the oven light every time the kids make too much noise. However, the cake is always fine, and in fact getting bigger. Then, realizing the cake is fine, Alice is relieved and leans against the counter, knocking over the cutting board. The cutting board crashes to the ground, which this time does cause the cake to flatten. It seems like an exaggerated prop, I've never see a cake rise like that, it looks like how a muffin might rise. Then it's somehow deflated, as if it was hollow, like a puffed pastry, or too raw. If it was too raw, it shouldn't flatten in the oven. But the look of the cake doesn't remind me of any puffed pasty, which is made from a dough, not a batter and the cake looks like a batter cake to me. So, it just deflates for irony or comedy of error reasons.

Bishop73

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