The weirdest thing about the last-ever episode of The Brady Bunch isn’t that Bobby got a side hustle selling Nice and Neat Hair Tonic. (Seriously, what 10-year-old sells hair tonic?) Nor is it that Greg’s hair turns Carrot Top orange when he tries some of the stuff.
Nope, the strangest part is that Greg is getting ready to graduate from high school with honors, and for the first time in the entire series, his dad, Mike Brady, is nowhere to be found. “Too bad your father was out of town and had to miss it,” says Carol Brady in an offhand remark, casually explaining why the show’s lead is AWOL.
Blame actor Robert Reed, who spent most of his Brady Bunch tenure complaining about the show’s unrealistic scripts. “The Hairbrained Scheme” episode was no exception — you can almost hear Reed whining, “Seriously, what 10-year-old sells hair tonic?”
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Reed believed The Brady Bunch was beneath him from the start. A graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Reed was a classically trained actor who found the sitcom’s scripts idiotic. “Every television actor says the same thing when you ask him why he’s doing theater: to work up the juices,” he once explained. “But the basic reason is the script. In television, the scripts aren’t very good.”
Once Reed, who was contractually obligated to do work for Paramount, took on the part of Mike Brady, “we fought over the scripts. Always over the scripts,” he said. “The producer, Sherwood Schwartz, had done Gilligan’s Island. Just gag lines. That was what The Brady Bunch would have been if I hadn’t protested.”
It’s unclear how Reed’s regular protests affected the show’s sitcom-ready storylines, which never stood the test of realism. And his complaints did nothing to change the script of The Brady Bunch’s final episode. When producers wouldn’t rewrite the plot, Reed put his foot down. “I won’t do it,” he told Schwartz, according to Remind Magazine.
Specifically, according to Lloyd Schwartz’s book, Brady, Brady, Brady: The Complete Story of the Brady Bunch, Reed stood his ground because of his conviction that “hair tonic can’t do that to hair.” That’s likely true, but was this plot any more insane than a Hawaiian tiki idol that brings bad luck, or when Davy Jones showed up at the local high school prom?
Though Reed refused to take part in the episode, he came in to work anyway, stalking the set and grumbling about how dumb the plot line was. The truth was, neither Reed nor the rest of the bunch knew that “The Hair-Brained Scheme” would be the show’s final episode — Brady Bunch wasn’t cancelled until production had wrapped after the show’s fifth season.
Would Reed have shown up for Greg’s graduation had he known? Probably, considering he did return for the dumbest plot twist of all — his family getting their own song-and-dance show in The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.
Even Jan knew that was a bad idea.
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