I just finished watching this episode from season 3, and thought about something...if they were supposed to have the staff members and their familys on the show; how come Buddys wife Pickles wasn't there? Also Mels wife?
Also were those kids that were with Alan, HIS kids?

Just thought of something...since it was an hour long variety show; and the episode was 26 minutes; Pickles and Mels wife probably WERE there but they never showed them.

...a Christmas-themed episode featuring the "stars" of the show (no "supporting players" or "recurring players" were featured- and that included the "Helpers" [Jerry Paris and Ann Morgan Guilbert] as well). Carl Reiner was dead set against doing one until someone pointed out it could be repeated endlessly every year...and he finally agreed to it. He used a framework of "Alan Brady" getting his staff (and their families) to entertain his audience for a Christmas-themed program, while he "sat on the sidelines" {Andy Williams and Perry Como did this on their actual variety shows of the period, as Rob correctly observed}. So we got musical performances by virtually the entire cast...

We can only imagine what the actual hour-long "ALAN BRADY SHOW" special might have been- including, perhaps, a sketch where Buddy and Sally are a typical couple rudely awakened on Christmas Eve by someone trying to slide down their chimney [Alan, still wearing his Santa suit], and they don't believe it is Santa Claus in their living room {"I tell you, I AM Santa!"/"If you are, how did you get down our chimney so fast? I was inside there last week, and I had trouble just wiggling my fingers!"/"I told you to go on a diet, but no, you won't listen to me..."/"Honey!"/"Well, if you must know the truth...and don't tell anyone I told you this....I'm on a Metrecal diet.."}. Or Mel and his wife performing a variation of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" (transplanted to modern-day New Rochelle), involving a "sensible" couple too busy to think about buying gifts for each other....


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