List of The Brady Bunch characters
The following is a list and description of the primary characters from the classic American television series The Brady Bunch, that was broadcast from September 1969 to March 1974.
The character's parents were sometimes mentioned but never seen (unless depicted without identification at the wedding in the pilot), but his paternal grandfather, Judge Hank Brady (Robert Reed in a dual role), appears in one episode.
[1] As Gary Cole's hair was not as naturally curly (as seen in his other roles such as Bill Lumbergh in Office Space), he wore a wig when portraying Mike.
Mike had a firm personal integrity (for example, he refuses to participate in a commercial if it means saying that an inferior product is the best) coupled with a strong sense of ethics.
For instance, in A Very Brady Christmas, contractor Ted Roberts (who is looking to save money on his building project) fires Mike when he refuses to cut corners and take out important safety provisions.
Carol enjoys singing in the church choir, and with her daughter Marcia in the high school Family Frolic Talent Show.
Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Tyler (J. Pat O'Malley and Joan Tompkins), are depicted only in the pilot "The Honeymoon", and her maternal grandmother, Connie Hutchins (Florence Henderson), appears in "You're Never Too Old".
Creator and executive producer Sherwood Schwartz had originally intended for Carol to be a divorcee, but ABC refused to allow the fate of her first marriage to be revealed on the show.
He also frequently shows an ample sense of fair play, as when he refused to go along with a classmate's plan to spread a false rumor about Marcia at school.
However, he has been known to cross the lines when he believes the situation warrants it (specifically, when he created a phony playbook to thwart a cheating quarterback from a rival high school).
Marcia is portrayed as a beautiful, mature, and popular girl at Westdale High School and acts as Greg's second-in-command for the other children.
Her popularity is an ongoing source of contempt for her younger sister Jan. She is a great fan of TV-star idols Desi Arnaz Jr. and Davy Jones (both actors, portraying themselves, appeared in their own episode).
However, by the time A Very Brady Christmas aired, she was a stay-at-home mother (raising two children, daughter Jessica and son Michael "Mickey").
By the end of the series, Marcia and her husband, Wally (a toy salesman who was frequently out of work, due to either layoffs or getting fired), join their sisters-in-law (Nora and Tracy) to open a catering business.
He has a non-related lookalike named Arthur Owens (also played by Christopher Knight), who is shown in the episode "Two Petes in a Pod".
In later sequels, he is an administrative assistant (at one point, working under his fiancée, Valerie Thomas; they later end their engagement), and still later, a business partner with Bobby.
[6][7] A typical plot line surrounding Jan would feature her attempting to carve out her niche in the family, or make a name for herself at school.
Jan is also occasionally absent-minded, once losing the tube containing her father's architectural plans while visiting Kings Island amusement park.
In her later high school years, Jan found she had a talent for painting (as does Eve Plumb), which likely led to her career choice as an architect, following in her adopted father's footsteps (as shown in later reunion films).
[8] Cox said in a 2015 interview that one of the reasons she auditioned for The Brady Bunch Movie was that she was a fan of the original series,[9] and that she used method acting during the film.
The clever and often overlooked youngest boy, Bobby was often portrayed as a whimsical dreamer, fantasizing about having various adventurous lifestyles, such as being a race car driver, a cowboy, and an astronaut.
She was portrayed as a naive, but occasionally precocious little girl, who was most often seen wearing her hair in corkscrew curls or braids and had a pronounced lisp.
At the radio station, she becomes romantically involved with her boss, Gary Greenberg (Ken Michelman), a Jewish widower who is more than 15 years her senior and has two children.
Alice had an identical cousin, Emma (also played by Davis), who was a retired master sergeant in the Women's Army Corps.
Her replacement Kay (Mary Treen), who did her work faithfully, but never tried to become close with the Bradys, told the kids where to find her ("The Golden Spoon at Fourth and Oak"), and they begged Alice to come back.
The character is mentioned by the Beastie Boys in the lyrics to their 1989 song "Shake Your Rump" ("Like Sam the butcher bringing Alice the meat").
As explained in the episode "Welcome Aboard" from season five, Carol's brother Jack Tyler and his wife Pauline are traveling to an archaeological dig in South America, and because their son Oliver is unable to accompany them, he is sent to live with the Bradys.
Cousin Oliver was eight years old (Rist was actually nine) and very young in contrast to the other kids, all of whom were twelve or older—an apparent attempt to restore some of the appeal the series had enjoyed when the other children were younger.
[13] The addition of younger children to sitcoms that seem to have run their course, in an attempt to improve declining ratings, became a television trend popularly known as the "Cousin Oliver syndrome".
This paralleled the Bradys' Friday night companion show, The Partridge Family, whose dog Simone also disappeared that year without an explanation.
