Mistakes

[Smartboy]

A while back there were a bunch of different posts and responses regarding various mistakes in the book by Barry Williams. I have read this book from cover to cover and I will have to agree that it was "full" of inaccurate facts regarding the episodes! As far as the history of the show and the factual counts of the lives of the actors, actresses and other staff, I do not know if there were any mistakes. This is because I do not have much to compare the book to. However, I have seen "every" episodes in its entirety and I know by heart what went on in each episode and what the moral of that episodes was. In Barry's book, he gave a brief synopsis of each episode of the whole series. "This" is where the mistakes were! There were some cases in which he simply left out some of the events in the episode. There were others in which he got some data mildly wrong, but it was inconciquential to the theme of the episode. Finely, there were some cases, in which he got the plot of the episode "completely" screwed up! One thing that I think would be fun would be if each person who read this book was to offer one example of a case where Barry made a mistake that did "not" have significant effects on the episode as a whole and one in which he made a mistake that "did". I will start by offering one expample of each to show the other fan exactly what I mean:

In the second season, there was an episode in which Mr. Brady gave Greg a job in his office. He was assigned to do various tasks including taking sketches to the printer. On his first day, he was given a cylender with the designs for a low-cost housing complex. These sketches fell out of his cylender while he stopped to buy a car magazine. Mr. Brady's boss felt that he had no choise but to fire Greg. After staying up all night to re-do his designs, Mr. Brady bellyached about Greg deserving a second chance. The boss reluctantly let Greg take the second set to the printers. While Greg was riding to the printers, the chain on his bike came undone. Luckily, Greg ran into his girlfriend's father who had a station wagon. He let Greg put his bike in the back of his car while he drives him to the print shop. To make a long story short, Greg makes it to the print shop with his designs "right" before the store closes and makes it home "just" before supper! This being the case, Greg's job is slavaged. In Barry's book, he says that he gets hired, looses the sketches and gets fired. He gets rehired, looses the seond set of designs and gets fired again. He wants to show the grownups around him that he is a responsible person so he finds the sketches and takes them to the printer. He is still fired. I would consider this a "very" significant mistake!

During the fifth and final season, there was an episode called "The Snooperstar". In this episode, Cindy had a habit of prying into other people's business. She was very curious about whether people were talking or writing about her. One way that she attempted to pry was by reading Marcia's diary. Marcia and Jan cooked up a plan on how to teach Cindy a lesson for snooping. They hoodwink Cindy into thinking that she is being considered for a part in a movie as the new Shirley Temple! Cindy is as high as a kite and Marcia and Jan are tickled pink about the thought of seeing her bubble burst! Simultainiously with all of this, Mrs. Brady is dealing with a very annoying female client was wants a clutural center build in her honor. When this lady comes over to see Mr. Brady, Cindy is convinced that "she" is the talent agent there to observe her! She, in a rediculous outfit and hair do goes into her rendition of "Good Ship Lollypop." This client happens to be from the generation in which Shirley Temple was very popular and she is amazed by Cindy's performance! She then takes the designs from Mr. Brady with the attitude that they should be fine however they are. In Barry's book he says that Pennelopy goes off into the night singing "Animal Crackers in my Soup." The truth is that she does a repraise of "Good Ship Lollypop". However, the point of the episode is Cindy's bubble being bursted and her learning a valuable lesson about what happens when you are a bussybody. In this case, I would say that Barry's mistake was "very" minor!