Robert Reed, who played Mike “Dad” Brady on The Brady Bunch was a frustrated, classically trained Shakespearean actor who sent stroppy memos the show’s writers explaining How Drama Works to them in minute, enraged detail. They are a treasure. Here is one of them:
Once again, we are infused with the slapstick. The oldest boy’s hair turns bright orange in a twinkling of the writer’s eye, having been doused with a non-FDA-approved hair tonic. (Why any boy of Bobby’s age, or any age, would be investing in something as outmoded and unidentifiable as “hair tonic” remains to be explained. As any kid on the show could tell the writer, the old hair-tonic routine is right out of “Our Gang.” Let’s face it, we’re long since past the “little dab’ll do ya” era.)
Without belaboring the inequities of the script, which are varied and numerous, the major point to all this is: Once an actor has geared himself to play a given style with its prescribed level of belief, he cannot react to or accept within the same confines of the piece, a different style.
When the kid’s hair turns red, it is Batman in the operating room.
I can’t play it.