Okay, television fans, riddle yourselves this: if The Brady Bunch is about a couple getting married….a couple who had 3 children each, all of the same ages, but with counterparts of the opposite sex, a sure recipe for trouble if ever there was one, how and why did they get together in the first place? How did they meet, where did they meet, and what kinds of things made them free to marry when their youngest children were, well, that young? The timing alone makes the union highly suspect.
Well, actually, the only suspect thing here is, uh, well. Three people. Mike Brady, Carol Martin, and Mike’s housekeeper Alice.
You see, they killed each other’s spouses.
And of course, Alice. She sure knew her way around a knife and an oven. Right?
And that would be it, and that’s already too much. But it gets worse. Alice already knew Sam The Butcher, even if they weren’t dating yet. Nobody seems to have much information on him, but the would-be Bradys, they needed two bodies disposed of. And who better to get rid of them than a butcher. Sam bled the corpses, chopped them into pot roasts, steaks, chops and hamburgers, and he sold them. Whatever neighborhood they lived in, a lot of people were turned into cannibals whether they knew, or liked it, or not.
Meanwhile, the couple got married, and put on a hell of a display as America’s finest suburban parents, all while letting their children explore their sexuality across the hallway or in the toiletless bathroom, which of course had lots of extra room.
You get it so far? Because from here out, it gets messy.
You remember how Sam The Butcher was the dude who cut Mike’s first wife and Carol’s first husband into prime cuts?
He’d already been doing that for years. Sam wasn’t his name. During the Vietnam War, he was known by Sergeant Charles Hacker, a very apropos surname indeed. His constant pranks targeting Sergeant Vince Carter and Carter’s slow-witted Private Gomer Pyle are legendary because they all blew up in his face. Being a freshly returned war veteran, he naturally harbored internal rage. He served dead marines in the chow hall at Camp Pendleton. He stalked and killed Vietnamese refugees and made Asian dishes with them.
His warped mind was always feverish with plots and scenarios, but after a Dishonorable Discharge, he changed his name, used the money from his victims and bought a butcher shop. He bowled in a league. He appeared to be the quintessential neighbor and business man. But he had no way of reigning in his appetite for homicide.
Sam Franklin, a.k.a. Sam The Butcher, terrorized most of California and parts of Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico until, in 1978, he was caught, brought to trial for three murders, though the police in Las Vegas knew he was a serial killer, then was extradited to California, where he was convicted of nine homicides and malicious dismemberment, and executed in the electric chair while Charles Manson lived on.
But the damage was already done. Because of so many people eating human beings including brains passed off in natural casings as chitterlings and sausage, a deadly disease called the Wildfire Virus arose. This author will state nothing further on this ridiculous story.
As the years passed in the Brady home, normal sexual development took place. Hormones flew across and down the hall until, disastrously, Greg and Marcia were both allowed to share the same bedroom in the attic.
A former boyfriend of Carol’s showed up, claiming to be her husband so he could steal a priceless horse figure which unfortunately turned out to be a forgery. He kidnapped her, took her to Hawaii, and met the buyer/collector who wanted the horse.
Even sadder still, the collector, Robin Masters, who went by the name “Higgins” to cover his tracks in the criminal underworld of Hawaii, had found out by his private detective friend, Thomas Magnum, that the man was not only not Carol’s husband, he was also a drug runner who had sabotaged the S.S. Minnow and caused the disappearance of the collector’s son, Gilligan.
The Bradys were never caught for the disappearances of their former spouses, but rumor had it that guilt forced Mike to eventually leave Carol. The family held several reunions after leaving home and marrying people they didn’t really love.
Greg and Peter, who really loved Marcia and Jan, respectively, both died in a drug deal gone wrong in a Watts brothel. The very unhappy Carol turned to suicide but botched it and became a life coach, bilking rich californians out of far more money than the horse would have been worth if it hadn’t been a forgery.
Alice retired and was never heard from again. Gomer Pyle went on to become a deputy in Texas to a sheriff who was under pressure to shut down a famous brothel, Bobby insisted people call him “Robert” and worked up the corporate ladder to become the CEO of IBM, played video games and became fast friends with Donald Trump but distanced himself because he too had been with Stormy Daniels and was jealous. He switched parties to Democrat and campaigned for Hillary Clinton and funded other candidates who opposed the MAGA party.
Which leaves one nagging, unanswered question: why did some blonde show up at the renewal of Mike and Carol’s vows after the Hawaii trip?
Well…I can’t believe these theories, but…
Rumors had it that the woman was really a genie who was obsessed with him and who whisked him away to another country. And if you know anything about genies, you know it couldn’t have ended well. He didn’t leave Carol. He was taken.
Next up:
The Conspiracy theories continue
Memoirs of an American Asshole 