Adding Oliver was probably a network decision because the ratings had declined and some of the kids had gotten older. But then the network decided to pull the plug anyway.
Cousin Oliver Syndrome
Back in the 1970s, The Brady Bunch was just a regular show. Then, during the 1980s and 1990s, it became a thing that was on the air three times a day. So a couple of generations of kids grew up watching this thing before school, after school and after dinner. The Brady Bunch was huge again — there were fanzines, and obviously, the movies, too. Through that lens, The Brady Bunch became this kitschy thing from the 1970s.
That’s when I started to notice the “Cousin Oliver killed the show” thing. People would come up to me and say, “You’re the guy who killed The Brady Bunch.” It cemented itself in the early days of the internet. On jumptheshark.com, there was a page called “New Kid in Town,” and my picture was at the top the entire time it was up.
There was another website called whowouldyoukill.com, and Cousin Oliver had more posts on there than anyone else. It was things like, “I’d throw Oliver into a volcano,” and “I’d drag him around my block with his neck tied to the back of my pickup truck.” There was so much that a friend of mine made me a little booklet of them.
The Oliver Preservation Association
The popularity of The Brady Bunch crested a while ago, but I’ll admit that there was a time where I had concerns that the one thing I’d be known for was for what I used to call this “silly little television show.”