Introduced late into the life of The Brady Bunch on television, Cousin Oliver is a character who has taken a lot of flak from fans over the years. Played by former child star Robbie Rist, Oliver was brought into the fifth and final season of The Brady Bunch as an effort to boost declining ratings. The hope was that adding another young child to the mix would renew interest as the kids playing the Bradys had been getting older. The move didn't work, resulting in a series cancelation followed by the coining of the phrase "Cousin Oliver Syndrome," referring to TV shows suddenly adding new children to past-their-prime sitcoms.
Opening up about the Cousin Oliver experience (via Cracked), Rist remembers how, at the time, working on The Brady Bunch was nothing but positive. It was a gig that ultimately spanned six weeks, not very long at all in terms of show business, and when the series was canceled, Rist simply moved on to the next project. He'd go on to describe how it wasn't until many years later when he started to hear the criticism about Cousin Oliver, specifically that the eight-year-old character had effectively "killed" the hit sitcom.
"The experience was all very positive, though. I was nine, and I got to get out of school. All I had to do was stand on a piece of tape and make people laugh. What could be bad about that? I did it for six weeks. When the season ended, everyone was like, 'See you next year.' Sometime later, we were waiting around for the call to get started up again for the new season. My mom called my agent, and my agent said, 'I just got a call today. It was canceled.' That was it really — I just moved onto more jobs. 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."
Rist recalls how the rise of the internet decades later was really when the "Cousin Oliver Syndrome" trope took off, leading to increased criticism for the character's inclusion inThe Brady Bunch. It quickly got to the point where strangers would be telling Rist that he'd personally killed the series, and it was even worse what people would say when it came to the internet.
"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."
Robbie Rist Has Had Some Fun With the Cousin Oliver Criticism
Rist hasn't let the criticism affect him too much in the long run, as he's even had some fun with it himself. He refers to a parody commercial he did for MeTV where he appears to speak about the fictional Oliver Preservation Association. The actor says he was taught by his German parents early on how to handle criticism, and he knew from the start that it "comes with the territory." With that said, despite what people have said about the character, Rist still remains quite happy with the part he played in The Brady Bunch.
"As for the people who say I killed the show, well, Oliver killing The Brady Bunch is as ridiculous as Yoko killing the Beatles. But the truth of it doesn’t matter to some people — it’s 'print the legend.' If you really think that a nine-year-old child had the capability to bring down a popular American television show, then I say, 'Believe that and enjoy.' That’s why I’ve embraced a lot of this Oliver stuff, and even have had some fun with it. Like, for MeTV, I did this joke commercial for The Oliver Preservation Association, which was really funny... All in all, The Brady Bunch was a very positive experience for me. I mean, here we are 50 years later, still talking about it. That’s why, when someone says to me, 'You killed The Brady Bunch,' I say, 'Yeah, I did — I was a nine-year-old Bond villain, bring it.'”
The Brady Bunch is streaming for free on The Roku Channel and Pluto TV. It can also be found on Paramount+.