- On the April 22 episode of The Real Brady Bros podcast, hosts Christopher Knight and Barry Williams were joined by Susan Olsen and Mike Lookinland to discuss the very first episode of The Brady Bunch
- The onscreen siblings spoke about how viewers never learned what happened to Carol Brady’s husband despite knowing Mike Brady’s wife, the mom of the three boys, died
- The actors explained that it all came down to a fight between the show’s creator and the network
Here’s a story of a lovely lady … but did you ever wonder what happened to her first husband?
On the April 22 episode of The Real Brady Bros podcast, hosts Christopher Knight, who played middle son Peter Brady, and Barry Williams, who played oldest son Greg Brady, talked about the very first episode of The Brady Bunch. They were joined by their onscreen siblings Susan Olsen, who played youngest daughter Cindy Brady, and Mike Lookinland, who played the youngest son Bobby Brady.
The first episode of the show, titled “The Honeymoon,” shows Florence Henderson’s Carol marrying Robert Reed’s Mike Brady. Each has three children of around the same ages, and the episode deals with some of the hijinks and missteps that come with blending the families. In the episode, viewers learn that Mike’s wife, and the boys’ mother, has died. But Carol’s situation is kept a lot more vague.
“There was a whole discrepancy in the basis of the show,” Williams, 70, said, “in the concept of the show that the network fought Victoria Edel Sherwood Schwartz on, and that is the premise was a widower with three sons and a divorcee with three daughters. And the network felt that a divorcee created too many problems for the series.”
Those “problems” included what Carol and her ex-husband’s custody arrangement would be, and explaining why they got divorced. “We’re playing to a very conservative country,” he noted. “So they wanted Carol to be a widow.”
But Carol isn’t a widow. “Sherwood never changed it, but they agreed to disagree, and it was left unhandled, which is why you never see in our pilot episode Carol’s ex-husband.” Knight, 67, noted he wasn’t even “referenced.”
Williams said in the episode that this ambiguity creates some confusion, because Carol’s parents are the Tylers, but her name before she marries Mike is Martin. After the marriage, Carol and all three girls, who also go by Martin, change their names to Brady (though the podcast hosts noted that there is no adoption episode of the show).
“What was interesting is, you mentioned, that they leave it,” Knight said. “They don’t deal with Mr. Martin by reference even.”
There is also s “really touching scene” in the pilot where the boys talk about their mom, but then they never mention her again in the entire series.
“I think that’s kind of sad,” Olsen, 63, said. But she noted that in this episode, Carol says, “Three years ago, I thought it was the end of the world and now it’s just the beginning,” a line kept intentionally vague so that viewers could decide if Mr. Martin died or the couple split up.
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This lack of explanation about the fate of Carol’s first husband actually led to the plot of 1996’s A Very Brady Sequel, the follow-up to 1995’s The Brady Bunch Movie, a post-modern parody of the original show, which aired from 1969 to 1974.
In the sequel, Carol’s husband “Roy Martin” (Tim Matheson) finds the family and says he suffered from amnesia and had plastic surgery. Cindy (Olivia Hack) and Bobby (Jesse Lee) eventually realize he’s a con man. The movies also featured Shelley Long as Carol Brady, Gary Cole as Mike Brady and Christine Taylor as Marcia Brady.
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