Episode 16: Out Of This World

Hello again readers, family, friends and perhaps those from another planet.  I’m so glad you could join me today to review “Out Of This World”.  This episode is a good one up until the final couple of minutes when it goes off the track.  It gives us a few guest stars with interesting resumes.  I remember enjoying this one very much as a kid, but as an adult not so much.  Please share your own thoughts on this episode and extra terrestrial life in the comments section!

The episode opens like no other Brady Bunch episode before it.  It would seem a talk show was airing, not a family sitcom.  The guest on the talk show is former astronaut James McDivitt.  The host, Mario Machado, welcomes his guest and then asks him about the unidentified flying object (UFO) he observed on a mission to space.  I did not realize until writing this blog that James McDivitt was not just an actor playing an astronaut and that he did claim to see a UFO while on the Gemini 4 Mission.  However, by the time Mario Machado got around to interviewing James McDivitt, over eight years had passed since the highly questionable object was seen.  According to Wikipedia, McDivitt visited space again in 1969 and later became Manager of Lunar Landing Operations that same year.  He also led a team that planned the lunar exploration program and redesigned the spacecraft to accomplish this task. In August 1969, he became Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program and was the program manager for Apollo missions 12-16.  So, after all of these wonderful accomplishments, he is invited on a talk show to talk about a suspect UFO seen almost a decade before.

 

 

James McDivitt

Mario Machado

After McDivitt left NASA, he worked in the business world until the mid-90s and is still with us.  Mario Machado was an actual newscaster from the Los Angeles area who also acted in a number of TV shows and movies.  He typically played news anchors or announcers.  He would win eight Emmy awards during his career.  Mario Machado died in 2013.

After the show, some fans gather around the astronaut for autographs.  Bobby and Peter both have their autographs made out to state they are “good friends” to James McDivitt.  Are autographs really sought out anymore?  There was a time people kept a book just for famous people to sign.  Other than autographed items on Pawn Stars, I’ve not heard much about people seeking them in recent years.

 

 

The next scene makes clear why viewers were treated to a news talk show opening the episode instead of a down and out or super excited Brady kid arriving home from school.  The clock on the wall gives the time as 11:45 and Peter and Bobby are fast asleep.  A whirring whistling sound awakens Peter who in turn wakes up Bobby.  They look out  the window to see a UFO hovering in the sky!  They are understandably excited at seeing the craft.  The next morning at the breakfast table, the UFO is discussed and nobody believes Peter and Bobby.  It is suggested it was a helicopter or a blimp.  Greg comes downstairs and shares he cut himself shaving.  Greg must use a greasy handled straight razor to give himself a gash like that!  Actually, it is some well known Brady Trivia that Barry Williams was in a car accident that resulted in his lip being split open.  However, the show must go on and the injury was written into the script as a shaving mishap.

The b-plot commences with Carol having Alice help her arrange fruit for a photograph.  Alice seems a tad irritated at the task.  Alice does have much better things to do during the day than set up a fruit arrangement!  Carol has taken up photography and will be entering a contest.  Much to her ire, those passing through the family room help themselves to some of the fruit on display.

Peter and Bobby arrive home from school dejected as none of their classmates believed they saw a UFO.  In a funny line, they suggest that their classmates took this load of nonsense much less seriously than the typical lies and extensions of truth shared at school.  A plan is put into place to camp in the backyard that night and photograph the UFO.  As the boys set up the night watch, Jan and Cindy come outside to give them a hard time about it.  While this does seem like a crappy thing to do, such goings on are the nature of teenagers when some other kid is on a fool’s errand.  Some heckling can be expected.  Well, in today’s more socially sensitive times, this may no longer hold true, but I sure remember giving and receiving such treatment.

 

 

It is not long before the UFO returns.  With the camera at the ready, the boys spring into action.  However, the origin of the flying craft is confirmed not be extra terrestrial, but coming from the Brady home.  From his attic digs, Greg has orchestrated the UFO prank.  Holding a flashlight and blowing a whistle, Greg has created a UFO plausible enough to fool his brothers.  Upon being caught in the act by Marcia, he explains why and how he did it.  After his brother’s told on him for getting home late, he built the UFO pranking contraption using a whistle, a clear plastic curtain, some fishing line and some pulleys nailed to the window frame.  Wow, that is a pretty elaborate setup just to get back at his brothers.  Marcia is 100% on board as the boys squealed on her too.  That must be some whistle.  It looks to be nothing but some thin plastic, but it sure gives off some interesting and very loud sounds.  That must be one powerful flashlight as well!  This was in the days before LED flashlights.  The more I think about the setup, the more I realize how easily the younger brothers should have seen right through this.  A light reflected off  a plastic curtain in a tree and a whistle being blown nearby does not a convincing UFO make.

After the boys snap their photos, they rush the film upstairs for Carol to develop.  They are understandably anxious to have photographic evidence of the UFO, but are told they must wait until morning.

 

 

Anxiously awaiting the development of his photos, Bobby dreams that night of visitors from another planet.  Why was it always Bobby whose dreams viewers saw?  We’ve seen him win trophies, watch his family die and now visit with aliens.  It was not until the most recent viewing that I realized how one dimensional the UFO visiting Bobby is.  Maybe today’s improved visuals via DVD allowed for this.  The UFO looks to have been borrowed from some amusement park ride it served as the back drop for.  The aliens existing the craft are a cute couple from the planet Kaplutis.  They are very big for their own planet and are surprised that Bobby is very small for his.  As Peter awakens Bobby from his dream, Bobby shares he was about to be a Kaplutian basketball star.  The entire scene is fun and well done.

Fans of the show like to note how the actor and actress playing the Kaplutians, who were married in real life, were stand-ins for the Brady kids.  While this is true, I was surprised to read both were actors in their own right and appeared on other programs.  Frank Delfino appeared on other hit shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza and Lost In Space.  He was a regular on The Feather and Fang Gang.  He last acted in 1988 and died in 1997.  Sadie Delfino appeared elsewhere too.  She was in the feature film “White House Madness” and appeared on an episode of Rhoda.  She last acted in 1975 and died in 1991.

The next morning, Carol works at developing the boys’ photos.  In a funny line, both cast doubt on Carol’s ability to develop the pictures and question if they should have taken them to a professional instead.

 

Down at the breakfast table, the other kids discuss the UFO.  Jan mentions the boys said it was shaped like a cigar.  Uh, why would they do that?  That red thing floating in the sky looks nothing like a cigar.  Maybe the original script called for such a shape to be added in post production.  This may have been a homage to a well known rash of UFO sightings that occurred in the late 19th century where the mysterious craft were identified as being cigar shaped.  You can read about it here after you finish reading this blog.

As a kid, I loved reading tales of UFOs and even scanned the sky a few times myself hoping to see one.  One summer night, I thought my wish had come true.  While sitting on a dock at a local lake, the strangest sparkling light came from over a ridge.  It was a bright beaming ball of light with almost straight lines of light protruding from it.  As it grew closer, the protruding lines of light shrunk and gave way to a small airplane.  I don’t know what environmental factors led to the original appearance of the plane that night, but for a few brief seconds I thought something other worldly was in the sky!

 

 

The boys rush downstairs with the photographic “proof”.  The black and white photos with a blob of white light have the family convinced some visitors from another planet hovered above the Brady’s town the night before.  It is not clear if these photos accompanied the boys to school.  However, if they did, I doubt many classmates would have been convinced.  Carol herself is suspicious and says the boys must wait until Mike sees them before calling the newspaper.

Blobs of light against a black background are enough to convince Mike to call the Air Force.  What?  This is where the episode derails for me.  Before alerting the United States Military, it seems Mike would do a bit more of his own research.  A sensible man might spend some time in the backyard himself or have a more knowledgeable local resource look the photos over before calling Carter Air Force Base (which doesn’t really exist by the way).

Instead of some official from the Federal government gracing the Brady’s door, a local policeman arrives.  He has little interest in investigating the claim of a flying saucer, but is just two years away from his pension and duty calls.  He is dismissive of the photographic evidence.  He claims he has investigated hundreds of UFO sightings and they are all bunk.  Wow.  There have been hundreds of calls to the police department about UFOs?

The disbelieving police captain was played by James Flavin.  He had a long career in Hollywood that spanned over 40 years.  He was a regular on the series The Roaring 20s and Man With a Camera.  Per IMDB he was usually cast as “the heavy” in his onscreen roles.  His final acting roles were in some TV movies in 1976.  He died the same year.

 

 

Greg comes downstairs and realizes his prank has gone too far when he sees the local police involved.  He takes Mike upstairs to demonstrate his high tech UFO setup.  He does this while the police captain is still there.  Why the guy was even still around is not made clear.  He had all ready called nonsense on the photos.  Also, why Greg had to demonstrate it right away doesn’t make much sense.  Mike should have said, “Look, the police have all ready said there will be no investigation.  Let’s keep this quiet.”  Instead, he allows Greg to demonstrate the setup and amp up the hysteria.  So convincing is a flashlight beamed against clear plastic that even the police captain thinks the UFO is for real.  I will admit to finding it funny that the captain wanted his photo taken reporting the UFO.  Greg’s setup is then shown to the captain who is humiliated at believing for a second UFOs are real.  He and Greg agree to keep the incident quiet and all will be forgotten.

All is not forgotten at the Brady house.  Greg is punished for pulling the UFO prank.  The epilogue shows him being grounded from use of the family car that weekend.  He laments the loss of his fishing trip and asks how he will be able to go to the lake.  Carol jokes he could catch a ride on a UFO.  Man, if we needed 100% proof positive this episode had crumbled to nonsense, Carol’s joke here in the epilogue provides it.

Thank you for reviewing “Out Of This World” with me!  With a different conclusion, this might have been one of the series’ best.  Maybe Peter and Bobby could have gotten wise to Greg’s prank and retaliated with an alien visit, a phony Air Force investigation or something similar.  All the boys could have then learned a lesson about fooling others.  Instead, we got what we did.  Your thoughts on the episode are most welcome!  Next week we review “Welcome Aboard”.  I have not watched the Cousin Oliver episodes in a long time, so it should be interesting.  See you next week!