Acting tropes associated with this episode (all in-universe):
Write Who You Know: How Skip Farnum envisioned the Bradys when he hired them, expecting natural performances.
Method Acting: To the extreme (in-universe), particularly by Mike and Carol after they take lessons from acting coach Myrna Carter, who is a bad, bad actress and couldn't teach a pencil how to draw.
Bad "Bad Acting" and Lost in Character: How the Bradys perform on the day of shooting, disgusting Farnum and leading him to fire them.
Brand X: The really generic (and then some) names of the laundry detergents the Bradys have used over the years, most notably Best (the incumbent detergent going into this episode) and Safe (the one the family is cast to do the commercial for).
Commercial Types: Skip wanted a basic commercial, but instead got:
Take Our Word for It: While Mike and Carol recite the lines as intended - that Safe is a powerful detergent that is the best at cleaning a family's laundry - their acting leaves much to be desired, ruining the take. Later, the kids enter the kitchen, wearing horrendously dirty, stained, paint-splattered clothing, hoping to convey to the audience that Safe will get their clothes clean as new.
Appeal to Flattery and Perfume Commercial: Alice, wearing a fancy dress and her hair permed, clasping a (wet) mop to her breast and celebrating. Skip stops the filming, with Alice telling him that Safe could get the laundry done so fast and so well she had time to appeal to her vanity, not seeing that what she is doing has little to do with pitching the product.
Establishing Shot: Lloyd Schwartz, in his autobiography on the series "Brady, Brady, Brady" recalled how difficult it was to film a simple establishing shot for this episode. One August day in 1971, the Schwartzes wanted to film general scenes of the supermarket parking lot, where the first scene – Skip Farnum scouting the supermarket to find a family to hire for his latest project, a laundry soap commercial, and eventually meeting the Bradys – is to take place. In addition to the Freeze-Frame Bonus situation described below, the the filming crew arrived at the supermarket the day of the shooting ... only to see an ambulance and a man, who had died of a heart attack while at the supermarket, lying beneath a blanket, putting a stop to shooting for the day.
Freeze-Frame Bonus: An unintended example, but fans who play their DVDs in slow motion during the opening scene in the supermarket parking lot will notice what appears to be a man and a woman talking and exchanging money. In his autobiography and retrospective of the series, Lloyd Schwartz says this was very likely a prostitute making a deal with a client. This was not noticed until after the show aired.
Get Out!: After he fires them, Skip tells the Bradys to "get out of my house!" Mike reminds him that this is his house ... and Skip grumbles sheepishly as he barks at the crew to pack up.
