This house isn't iconic.

The pilot episode starts with an establishing shot of a house that is not the Brady house - except that it is. There are fans that say the Bradys and Alice moved into the house they lived in from the second episode on, but this is really just a sitcom remodel. A lot of sets from the pilot don’t make it to subsequent episodes. A particularly egregious example I can think of is in the 90s sitcom Hanging with Mr. Cooper, which uses the Seaver house from Growing Pains in the first episode and goes as far as to have Alan Thicke on the show to address it, just to use a completely different house for the entire rest of the series. There’s also evidence in this episode that all we’re seeing is a sitcom remodel.

Mike is projecting on his children like a 60s dad should.

A 1960s sitcom dad having a nervous breakdown.

Mike enters the kitchen and decides to project his insecurities and nervousness onto his children, because that’s healthy. He goes on a rant where he tells his boys to eat a good breakfast twice, practically in the same breath. The boys are almost done with breakfast, however, and point out that Mike hasn’t even started. Alice tells Mr. Brady that it’s ok to be nervous, but he goes on to have the closest thing a 1960s sitcom dad will ever have to a breakdown - he over-sugars his coffee. His boys agree it’s ok to be nervous, though, before everyone starts talking about how great Mrs. Martin is. Mike agrees with the sentiments and is confident his bride to be is calm, cool, and collected.

Women freak out over looks, I guess.

It is a good thing, however, that he did not put money on that. Carol is having her own freakout about everyone’s hair and how she looks because it is 1969 and nobody in the room is known to have a Y-chromosome. Carol asks the girls if they like Mike and this is a weird fucking time to have this conversation. What if they had said no? Luckily, they do like Mike and Carol says that she’s going to be happy, Mike’s going to be happy, and the kids are going to be happy. Cindy asks Carol why her eyes look like she’s going to cry if she’s happy and Carol says it’s because “grown-ups are silly” and sometimes people cry when they’re happy.

Talking each other through the nervousness.

The phone rings and Jan predicts that it’s Mike because “it’s always Mike.” Mike is checking in on Carol. Carol tells the girls to go get ready. Jan protests because she wants to stay but Marcia urges her sisters to give Carol and Mike their privacy as she ushers them out of the room. With the girls gone, Carol and Mike talk about their shared nervousness. After Mike shares how extreme his nervousness is, Carol suggests he take a tranquilizer. When he says he has and Carol says he should take another, Mike makes a joke about the honeymoon. I don’t know why I thought family sitcoms waited until the 80s to be horny because The Brady Bunch was horny. In response to Mike’s joke, Carol makes a joke about Mike being an architect and you know, it’s ok to not cram all the information into the pilot. You can leave some stuff for later episodes.

Mike and Bobby having a heart to heart.

At the Brady house, after the call Mike goes to check and see how getting ready is going for Bobby and ends up helping his youngest re-button his jacket. Mike starts to walk Bobby out of the room but notices the picture of the boys’ mother is missing. Bobby says he put it in the drawer and Mike asks if this is because of Karen. Karen. Mike doesn’t even know his bride’s name on their wedding day. Bobby expresses concern that Carol might not like it when she moves in, but Mike assures him that neither he nor Carol want Bobby to forget his mother. Bobby takes the picture out of the drawer, but after this episode we never see it again. It’s likely just a casualty of the sitcom remodel.

Mike Brady has lost all control of his life.

Wedding preparations.

Meanwhile, Carol’s parents are setting up the backyard for the wedding. Carol and Cindy join them and Carol expresses her gratitude for the wedding and everything they’ve done for the past few years. Cindy pipes up to share in the gratitude giving. Carol’s father tells Cindy he’ll miss her and Cindy asks if he will visit. Carol decides to lie to her child and says that they will because Mike only lives 20 minutes away. Granted, I don’t know how LA traffic was in 1969 and I know how it is in 2021 and someone can live 20 minutes away in theory and it still take 2 hours to get there, so I do not blame the grandparents for never visiting. They’ve got like retirement to enjoy or something.

Cindy would apparently trade her new family for a telegram.

The doorbell rings and Carol’s mom thinks it might be a telegram. Cindy excitedly rushes off to open a door for a stranger and I know child safety didn’t exist until the 90s but Cindy was 6. What else is she allowed to do, play with matches? Luckily, it isn’t a stranger at the door. It’s Mike, the boys, and Tiger. Mike tells Cindy she looks pretty, but she’s just so heartbroken her soon-to-be new family members aren’t a telegram. Carol joins Cindy and cheerfully greets Mike, the boys, and Tiger before realizing Tiger will scare Fluffy. Mike tells the boys to lock Tiger in the car, which is a really mean thing to do. It’s LA and except for the suit jackets I have not seen a single person in long sleeves. Tiger could die, and Mike is just cool with that I guess. Carol isn’t, because she insists that the girls can just put Fluffy in their room, but Mike will not have them do that and would rather just let the dog overheat and let the boys learn a very dark lesson in the process. He does eventually remind them to crack the window but that was not an initial clarification. Even then - don’t leave dogs in cars. Greg and Peter take Tiger to the car.

Mike, Bobby, Carol, and Cindy go into the backyard where Carol’s parents still are. Carol tells Cindy to take Bobby upstairs and tell her sisters that their new brothers are there. Cindy is excited to show Bobby her new dollhouse, but Bobby balks at this idea. Mike says that it sounds fun, but Bobby disagrees. He still goes inside with Cindy.

They're so in love they can't wait another half hour.

Carol shows Mike how the yard is set up for the wedding, and Mike says everything looks beautiful. At this statement, Carol goes compliment fishing. Mike lays it on really thick and the two share a pre-marital kiss. I can just imagine in 1969 that there were some squares out there that were like, “oh my gosh they couldn’t even wait for their wedding that was about to happen,” but you know, love is love. Embrace that shit. Carol says she thought her life was ending a few years ago, and Mike says it was just a new beginning for the both of them. Carol corrects him by saying it was a new beginning for all of them, and Mike is the first one to call the family the Brady bunch. My eyes rolled so far into the back of my head at this title drop - what would have happened if the title had stayed Yours and Mine?

If only Mike hit the gym more often.

The actual wedding happens and everything goes off without a hitch. The actor playing the reverend that marries Mike and Carol is Dabbs Greer, who among other roles, returns in the second episode of spin-off series The Bradys to perform another Brady wedding. Anyway, Michael Paul and Carol Ann get married, Fluffy meows in acceptance, and Carol laughs. They’re like five seconds away from the reception. However, dogs don’t have sweat glands and this is LA, so Tiger decides he’s done being in the car. He rolls down the window and jumps out. I’m not going to give the entire play by play of Tiger chasing Fluffy around the yard, but Mike does yell at the boys and Carol tells the girl they’re ruining the wedding, which is so dramatic. They’re already married at this point. Near the end of the chaos, the legs on the table holding the cake give out, but Mike manages to save the cake. However, he can’t hold the squat and takes an entire wedding cake to the face. Carol laughs, Mike laughs, and everyone at the wedding laughs. What nobody does is apologize to the kids for overreacting because it’s 1969 and who gives a fuck about how kids feel?

Some people just don't understand love.

After the wedding, Mike and Carol go on their honeymoon. They arrive to the hotel and check in, and the concierge Mr. Pringle puts on a seduction voice when he realizes they’re the couple in the honeymoon suite. Mike signs the registration “Mr. and Mrs. Brady and family,” and when Mr. Pringle points this out, Mike says it’s a force of habit. How? You’ve been married for all of a couple of hours. Before this point, you were the Bradys and the Martins. Mr. Pringle isn’t all seduction voice anymore, however, and is quite put off by the fact the Bradys have kids. Carol starts to explain, but Mike doesn’t think they owe anyone an explanation and just says that Mr. Pringle isn’t “hip to the new generation.” Mike and Carol are were literally born in the 1930s, what new generation did they think they were. The oldest Baby Boomers were in their 20s at this point. Anyway, it’s still good on Mike that he didn’t think Mr. Pringle needed to know their business just because they were in the honeymoon suite.

Champagne makes Mr. Brady forget this is a family sitcom.

Once they are in the honeymoon suite, Carol and Mike enjoy some champagne the hotel has sent up. Carol says it makes her dizzy, and Mike implies what champagne does to him. He implies it makes him horny. This is a very horny show. In modern television, this is probably where the episode would end, but luckily for us, run time in the 1960s was much longer. Mr. and Mrs. Brady still have to earn their happy ending.

Literally no one bothered to apologize to the kids. Rude.

Kids are humans with feelings, too.

At the Tyler residence, the girls are upset because Carol yelled at them, but not at the boys when it was their dog that made all the chaos. Cindy is afraid that Carol likes the boys more than the girls. Carol seems to sense her daughters’ distress because she tells Mike she feels funny about them. Mike confesses he also shouldn’t have yelled at the boys, but the kids are all probably fine now. At the Brady residence, the boys are all upset because Mike yelled at them and didn’t yell at the girls at all. Alice tries to talk to them, but the boys are sure that they’ll always be in trouble while the girls get away with it from now on.

Eating guilty feelings.

Over dinner, Mike and Carol can’t shake the guilty feeling they have and decide there’s only one solution. They leave in their pajamas to go pick up all of their kids. The eight Bradys all return to the hotel, which Mr. Pringle was not at all prepared for. Jan reveals she has smuggled in Fluffy, then Alice shows up with Tiger because the dog wouldn’t sleep without the family. Chaos soon ensues, and Mr. Pringle is so very clearly over this entire family. However, Mike channels his sitcom dad powers and gets everyone in order and marches them up to the room in just a few seconds. And that’s how they became The Brady Bunch.

This is how Mike Brady got sitcom dad powers.

If Mike and Carol had just apologized to their kids for over-reacting, they could have had their honeymoon to themselves guilt free. That’s why you treat your kids like the humans they actually are, you know? But I do like that Mike didn’t feel a need to explain his life to Mr. Pringle just because the concierge was being so judgey. I do wonder, though, why Mike couldn’t have used his dad superpowers to save the wedding? There’s a lot of conveniences here.

There’s a few more bonus facts about this episode. So, even though it’s never said explicitly, it’s pretty clear that Mike is a widower based on the conversation he had with Bobby in the episode. However, while it’s never stated what happened to Mr. Martin, the idea was that Carol was supposed to be a divorcee. In 1969, this wasn’t exactly an accepted norm, however, so it makes sense that the show would skirt around this fact. Throughout the episode, we learn the full names of Mike and Carol, and dang does Carol have a lot of names. Mike’s is, of course, Michael Paul Brady. In the beginning of the episode, Carol is referred to as Mrs. Martin, her married name from her first marriage. Mike refers to Carol’s parents as Mr. and Mrs. Tyler, and at the wedding she’s called Carol Ann, so Carol Ann Tyler Martin Brady. It is also implied in the episode that when the girls moved into the Brady home, Greg gave up his room. Oldest kids make all the sacrifices.

Season 1 theme song sung by The Peppermint Trolley Company.

Also, the theme song for the first season, as everyone knows, is not sung by The Brady Kids, as it would be for seasons 2-5. It was sung by The Peppermint Trolley Company - except not really. The Peppermint Trolley Company did record the song, but the band left their recording label Acta in 1969. When this happened, the song was re-recorded by studio singers Paul Parish, John Beland, and Lois Fletcher.

What did you think of this episode? What moments stood out to you? Did you learn anything new, and was it that Mike straight up called Carol “Karen” at one point? Please let me know in the comments! I would love to hear from you. I’ll be back next week to discuss the second episode, “Dear Libby”.

"[...]we're Bradys, and our family is our home." - Mike Brady, 1995