"Ooh, my nose!"

OK, here's another one of the great "Brady Bunch" episodes.

But, then again, aren't they all?

In the episode entitled, "The Subject Was Noses," Marcia (known to her sister Jan as Marcia, Marcia, Marcia) has a date with nice guy Charley, but she absentmindedly forgets about it when Doug Simpson, the “big man on campus” asks her out on a date.

So, to solve the dilemma, she turns to big step-brother Greg, who advises her to tell Charley “something suddenly came up.” Taking the advice, Marcia breaks her date with Charley.

But, as the saying goes, what goes around, comes around. And, unfortunately for Marcia, that something going around is a football. Peter and Bobby are playing football in the backyard, and when Marcia goes out to call them in for dinner, WHAMMO! She’s hit in the nose with the football, which swells up bigger than a balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (but she doesn’t break it!)

When Mr. Big Man on Campus sees what's befallen poor Marcia, he tells her “something suddenly came up” (where have we heard that before??) and breaks his date with Marcia. In the end, Marcia goes out with good-guy Charley, and they run into Doug Simpson. Doug makes fun of Marcia breaking the date, and Charley decks him, causing Doug’s nose to swell up, too. Who said chivalry was dead?

One of the things I remember vividly from this episode is Marcia reflecting on getting socked with the football repeated. “Ooh, my nose!...Ooh, my nose!...Ooh, my nose!”

As a side note, Nicholas Hammond, who played Doug Simpson, went on to star as “Spider-Man” in the television series “The Amazing Spider-Man.”