Was Jan Brady Really a Mental Case?

I doubt Eve Plumb is a psycho but she does look like a bitch sometimes.

Eve’s parents invested her BB money wisely, in real estate, and so she never has had to embarrass herself like Chris, Barry, Maureen, and most notably, Susan.

It all comes down to Pamelyn Ferdin laughing at her. It scarred Jan. It could have very easily turned into a Carrie incident.

[quote]It all comes down to Pamelyn Ferdin laughing at her. It scarred Jan. It could have very easily turned into a Carrie incident.

Oh so was there precious Menstrual Blood?

If only we could've gotten our hands on Jan at Michfest - the Womyn of Michfest could've changed all of this!

[quote]so she never has had to embarrass herself like Chris, Barry, Maureen, and most notably, Susan.

Susan looked and sounded like a drunk on the HGTV show - I think she's going to be embarrassing herself regardless of whether or not there are cameras around.

I just watched that episode, too. Eve’s character doesn’t punch Blair; Jo does. Eve looked the best I’ve ever seen her look in that episode.

Is this considered EST?

She seemed fine to me.

Eve is always such a humorless stick in the mud in interviews. Can't lighten up for even a moment about anything Brady related.

Eve Plumb did an interview on a TV show called Good Morning Connecticut or something recently for a Ru Paul drag production of an old Brady Bunch TV script. I found it on youtube. She was understated and just let the circumstances speak for themselves. I was very amused at how she presented herself. She was absolutely not competing for attention.

I wonder if her years on the street as a teenage runaway make it hard for her trust and open up in interviews?

I'm Jan.

I grew up in a house without a toilet.

[quote]She seemed fine to me. George Glass

George, you seem fascinating. Tell us more about you.

OP, you're confusing Eve Plumb with the character she played on "The Brady Bunch."

Eve and Maureen "Marcia" McCormack didn't have problems in real life until they got much older. They were pretty good friends on the set of "The Brady Bunch."

And as far as I remember, the characters of Marcia and Jan only have serious problems getting along in two episodes: (1) "Her Sister's Shadow, which is the "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" episode--but Jan resolves her envy problem by the end of the episode, when she is praised publicly for insisting Nora Coombs wins the prize mistakenly given to her), and (2) the episode "Marcia Gets Creamed" (what an unfortunate title!),where Marcia is fired from the job at the ice cream shop and Jan is promoted. But again, they resolve their problems at the end of that episode too.

For most of the show's multiple seasons, Marcia and Jan are portrayed as close friends who actually get along very well.

R15 I appreciate the time and consideration you've given in writing your reply to the OP's obvious shit post.

[quote] Eve and Maureen "Marcia" McCormack didn't have problems in real life until they got much older.

This is true by all accounts. Apparently, the problems started when Mo implied she and Eve had some lesbian encounters on TBB. Eve didn’t appreciate that.

Eve has really mellowed with regard to The Brady Bunch in recent years if you’ve seen her participation on Andy Cohen’s show or A Very Brady Renovation. People need to be nicer towards her.

There’s too many options here. My brain hurts.

[quote]While rehearsing a scene in which their characters got into a physical fight, Plumb accidentally punched Whelchel in the face.

No accident about it. Bitch tried to tell me about Jesus and pray the gay away.

Peter at R3 was so fucking cute.

8 year old me had a HUGE crush on him.

Eve isn't the problem, Susan is the real cunt.

Yeah, Jan/Eve seems kind of subdued and goofy.

Cindy/Susan has become the crazy alcoholic lady from the trailer park who screams about Trump.

I'm sure that cunt Lisa Welchel deserved a good punching!

Girls! Girls!

Eve's digs...

Blind as a bat

It's funny how the 90s films portrayed Jan as being this borderline crazy bitch obsessed with Marcia and Marcia was a stuck-up bitch who belittled Jan. It's the image that is in people's head now that lives on. Granted those 90s parody films were works of art and funnier than the actual show. But in the actual TV show, Jan was just an average albeit frumpy girl who had typical insecurity because she paled in comparison to the pretty and confident Marcia. Marcia was never mean to her and they got along fine. In the last season, Jan became pretty, won a popularity contest and even kept a job that Marcia got fired from.

Jan was the one who was the most like Crazy Aunt Jenny

Also, Marcia had her own constant problems that had nothing to do with Jan: letting the role of Juliet go to her head, trying to join the Boosters, wanting to become head of the cheerleader squad, wanting to go to the big dance with BMOC Doug Simpson...

But Marcia got some prime Dick!

It was all Rita, Rita, Rita, r30!

R3, it actually DID turn into a Carrie situation! And they ALL DIED!

I just want to slap that smug, self-satisfied grin off Rita's cunty face!

[quote]the episode "Marcia Gets Creamed" (what an unfortunate title!)

Not as bad as "Bobby Gets Double-Teamed" when he joins 2 Little League teams, and gets away with it until the teams play against each other.

Hi everybody!

Yeah, it's me...whatchall lookin' at?

I can attest, she's a psycho cunt.

R33 Thank you. That was a gem!

R28 Those movies were great except the third one. The less that can be said about that one the better.

[quote]I can attest, she's a psycho cunt. George Glass

Such interesting opinions from you, George.

Please tell us more.

OMG, r33, did I tell you or what? This can all be traced back to Marcia Marcia Marcia Wallace!

When the off-Broadway scene was alive and well!

The Real Live Brady Bunch with Jane Lynch as Carol.

Lisa Whelchel is a BITCH .Cannot blame Jan/Eve From wanting to slap the 💩 out of her. After All she's only human .

R43 I agree.

Olsen showed up drunk on a local morning radio show in the early 2000s. If memory serves she was subbing for a DJ. She lasted about 20 minutes before they pulled the plug.

Susan looks like what my mom looked like when she didnt have her dentures in.

A lifetime of smoking and poor dental hygiene.

Susan has kept the long, straight hairstyle for forever. It’s no longer flattering her appearance.

She turns 60 August 14. All of the “kids” will be 60+ by then.

Oh, and Jan? Come back when you're pregnant.

Show some respect. Her husband just died last month.

Wow - Eve bought a tiny beach house in Malibu in 1969 when she was 11 for $55,000. She just sold it a few years ago for $3.9 million. That's just one of her properties.

Also - fun fact - Eve Plumb was in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka. Top that Maureen!

Eve doesn't have to sell herself for every little project that comes up like Barry and Maureen does.

R29 Aunt Jenny was more kooky than crazy and Jan winced when she saw Aunt Jenny for the first time in person. She did NOT want to look like Jenny when she grew up. Kind of a cunt about it.

R51, well shit, how would you feel if you knew you were going to grow up to look like Imogene Coca?

Imogene came across as drunk but not actually drunk. Eccentric oddball. Jan should be so lucky. Real life Jan would have gone on to graduate from State U with a degree in journalism that she'd only use for a couple of years before quitting to have kids with a guy named Bill.

I remember Eve on the Weakest Link show many years back. She didn’t know one of the answers & just threw out “smegma” as the response. Like, wtf?

[quote] Eve doesn't have to sell herself for every little project that comes up like Barry and Maureen does.

“…like Barry and Maureen DO,” dear.

Eve Plumb was the best actress, and that is why the writers gave her the best scripts. She is the only character who really had any major character development in the show.

[quote]She is the only character who really had any major character development in the show.

It’s a tv sitcom, dear, not Hamlet.

The question on Weakest Link that Eve couldn't answer was, "In what movie did Brad Pitt play Death?" and she said "smegma."

Sorry, I would have laughed at that.

R57 So? Sitcoms can have character development. It isn’t some high literary concept. Not all shows do this: Cindy was still pretty much the cute baby. Alice was the wise cracking nurse. Compared to other characters, Jan did.

[quote]Alice was the wise cracking nurse.

Alice was the wise cracking lesbian maid.

[quote]The question on Weakest Link that Eve couldn't answer was, "In what movie did Brad Pitt play Death?" and she said "smegma."

Question - does Jan have Tourettes, in addition to her other disorders?

[quote] Eve Plumb was the best actress, and that is why the writers gave her the best scripts. She is the only character who really had any major character development in the show.

Jan and Peter were the only kids from that show I remember who actually seemed somewhat relatable. Jan was insecure, awkward and in the shadow of her big sister and she was a realistic moody teen. Peter was more in touch with his emotions and was clumsy and socially awkward. Marcia and Greg were just the typical confident, pretty and popular older kids with typical high school problems. Cindy and Bobby were just there to be cute and it was weird how the writers had them act way younger than their ages, they were in their early teens by the final season.

[quote]Jan and Peter were the only kids from that show I remember who actually seemed somewhat relatable.

Peter was the only kid on the show who seemed remotely fuckable.

The step-incestuous pass-around abuse with Greg and Peter, and the way Alice "punished" her when she found the evidence left Jan a shuddering, stammering mess. Mike just kept feeding her his lithium and Librium until her eyes stopped spinning, but drugs could only do so much.

Carol just thought she was a little cunt, or so I heard someone say.

[quote] Peter was the only kid on the show who seemed remotely fuckable.

Greg was totally fuckable in the Hawaii season opener.

Christopher Knight was good-looking. He became hot and beefy. I think he was only the Brady boy with naturally curly hair and they made him hot-comb it straight.

I actually think The Brady Bunch Movie is one of the reasons why Eve sometimes comes across as so cold towards the show. I don't believe her when she says she didn't see the movie (as she claims), and if she truly didn't, she must have heard about how Jan was portrayed in the film. In the movie, they really play up the Jan character as the "ugly duckling" and the "black sheep" of the family. Yes, it was a parody and all the characters were exaggerated, but it probably upset Eve that her character was turned into a punch line. Even though the movie did turn Jan into a character you root for, she was still heavily derided throughout and the portrayal was not flattering. Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of The Brady Bunch, was one of the producers of that film, so he obviously approved the way the characters were. I think Eve took it personal.

Robert Reed was a major DILF with a sexy voice. I don't blame him for hating the show for the shitty writing but he also should have been in on the joke and took that easy money and ran. I wonder if the writers actually would have killed off Mike Brady if the show did get renewed for more seasons. Would they let Carol be a single mom, would they let Cindy actually grow up, would they add minorities as supporting characters with speaking roles and would they marry Alice to that butcher guy and have TV's first lavender marriage? I can't imagine they could keep the show so squeaky clean with stuff like All in The Family, Sanford & Son and Good Times on the air. So many questions.

[quote]Olsen showed up drunk on a local morning radio show in the early 2000s. If memory serves she was subbing for a DJ. She lasted about 20 minutes before they pulled the plug.

I remember that interview. They had to pull the plug because she was going to puke. She was practically dry heaving on the microphone.

R68 Reed DID take the money and run. He participated in every Brady reunion, including the most cringey program ever produced for TV, the BB variety hour. The ratings for the BB were pretty dismal, enough to keep it barely on the air for 5 years. If it would’ve gone one more season, I’m convinced they would’ve recast. But ABC had enough with the Schwartz Reed bs and the mediocre ratings so they pulled the plug. Greg was graduating HS, so it was the right time to end it.

What'th the matter, Thindy? Gonna toth your cookieth?

I wonder if Eve was hoping for a Susan Dey type career resurgence in the late 1980's. Eve did have the best post Brady acting career out of all the kids. And this was during a time where Donny Osmond also had a career bump with a couple of hit singles. Maybe she was hoping some of that would rub off on the Brady's.

The FOL appearance isn't bad. She appeared in a One Day at a Time around this time playing Howard Hesseman's date and it was a thankless role. She had about two lines and a minute of screen time. She didn't even get a special credit at the end.

If they stayed another season, Mike Brady was to have been played by John McMartin, fresh from Follies.

If the show would’ve done badly in syndication, the kids might’ve had better slightly better careers. The fact that the show was on constantly year after year really sealed their fates. I think Eve was the one who really wanted to break free from the show in the mid 70s the most, but it was a lost cause. She turned down the BB variety hour (best decision in her life), but has said they came up with some money for the short lived Brady Girls get married series. After that, she just fell in line and did all future reunions.

None of them were really that talented. Maureen was lucky that she was very pretty in an "all-American" way and as a result got to be in a lot of stuff. I don't see where Eve and Susan could have been successful maybe just kept doing TV shows or movies. I think Chris Knight said he never wanted to be an actor anyway and that his stage parents who forced that job onto him.

Yes - in some ways the show became much bigger after it was cancelled and it ran endlessly in syndication. I am a little too young to remember it when it was in its first run, but it was on constantly while I was growing up. The movie was so geared toward my generation who saw each episode 100 times that we laughed really hard in the theater. There were some kids younger than us who you could tell did not catch a lot of the jokes, since by the time they were growing up they were probably watching more MTV. The movie really does do a good job of poking fun at the show while treating it with respect. I think the other movie that did a good job with that was Galaxy Quest and the trekkies. It made fun of them a bit but never really crossed the line and was a legitimately funny movie (esp. if you had a little Star Trek knowledge).

Neurotic Jan really took off a couple of years before the movie on SNL. One of the SNL actresses portrayed her that way while giving commentary on the news (I am guessing the movie might have stolen a bit from these bits). Although the one I remember is when Susan Dey was the host and they were doing a Partridge Family sketch and ended up doing a battle of the bands in their garage with the Bradys. Jan was shocked to find out they were lip syncing and proudly proclaimed "we have choreography".

R76: I absolutely LOVE that sketch! That was Melanie Hutsell who had portrayed Jan in a 1990 stage show called "The Real Live Brady Bunch". That show was really the origin of neurotic Jan, and the lampooning of the Brady Bunch, I think. Nice interview with her at link. Talks about Jan, meeting Eve, SNL, the Battle of the Bands, etc.

In the Real Live Brady Bunch clip with Jane Lynch, the audience starts howling when Hutsell just appears. She was amazing in the show.

Melanie as Paula Deen.

Bad link, R77.

Why was Jan made out to be psycho? I feel like she was the most normal one in the Brady family, considering how insufferable they all were.

Eve Plumb once did a good guest spot on MadTV as a former client of Marvin Tikvah's. She was simple and dry, and let the humor land on its own.

Eve Plumb is pretty attractive, all things considered. She has a warm face. Even now she looks like a nice ex-hippy lady.

[quote]R12 I wonder if her years on the street as a teenage runaway make it hard for her trust and open up in interviews?

She is NOT bitter!

She was in this very funny independent movie from 1993 "The Making of....And God Spoke"...It was a mockumentary chronicling the disastrous production of a bible movie. In it, she sort of plays herself playing the mother of a bible, and she gets very frustrated because everybody on the set keeps calling her "Jan". And I think at one point she screams at someone, (paraphrasing), "I'm not Jan. My name is Eve!"

There are clips of the movie on youtube but a quick search didn't bring up the clip I was looking for.