What Happened To You, Mike? Cold Start

As kids, we all found people on the small screen that were our heroes. James Garner in his sportscoat casually doing J-turns in a Firebird Esprit was certainly one of them for me, though living in a trailer in Malibu with one’s dad never struck me as that great of an idea.

As an elementary schooler drawing cars and houses, I couldn’t find a better role model than Mike Brady, father of the brood of six kids in that endlessly syndicated sitcom The Brady Bunch, a show that dominated our black and white Zenith every afternoon at around four o’clock.

Played by the late Robert Reed, Mike Brady’s character was an architect by profession in mid-century LA. Just look at this guy. He made a kid like me think that you could get a job actually drawing pictures, making enough money to pay for your “den,” six kids, a doting spouse, and a live-in maid.

This man named Brady living with three boys of his own did, however, disappoint most of us soon-to-be Autopians. He seemed to be a died-in-the-wool Mopar guy, starting with his cool Polara convertible at the beginning of the series:

Once married to Carol – a lovely lady bringing up three very lovely girls – a seemingly endless series of Honey Bronze or Spanish Gold Plymouth Satellite wagons followed. First there was a boxy 1969 model, and later the more fuselage-shaped 1971-on version which was driven to the Grand Canyon and later stolen by some prospector dude.

The ultimate Chrysler product featured on the show was Mike’s cool 1971 Barracuda convertible. Sure, it wasn’t a performance-oriented ‘Cuda with a hemi, and it had those sort of dopey wheel covers with the “ventilation holes” like on the Valiant from Duel, but one would assume it at least had a 318 (thankfully only 132 Barracuda convertibles left the factory with a Leaning Tower Of Power Slant 6 under the hood). Here, I thought, was true justification for getting into the field of design.

What

Mopar superfans will note something strange in the image below: there’s a 1972 rear clip on that convertible, even though there were no Barracuda convertibles made after 1971. The reason? Just for the show itself, a 1972 rear clip was added to the earlier season’s car to get the updated look. As for the damage on the Satellite: it was due to a parking lot incident wherein some dick was trying to extort money from the Bradys, but Mike had a trick up his sleeve and shut him down. [Ed Note: I don’t recall the episode, but I hope the trick up Mike’s sleeve was nunchucks – Pete]

What happened next was as unforgivable as it was inexplicable. Mr. Brady traded the Barracuda for a series of aircraft carrier-like Chevy Caprice convertibles. I mean, today such giant B-body drop tops are pretty cool even in the rare cases when they’re stock and not loaded up with hydraulics to allow them to jump the height of a basketball hoop, but still. Even then you knew that the Barracuda was just so much cooler and it made Mike look about ten years younger.

Why the change, Mike? Did someone at the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer piss you off or make a pass at Carol?

People talk endlessly about storylines in television shows that don’t add up. How did such-and-such a character disappear? Why does nothing that happened in season one seem to be remembered in season two? But no one ever talks about the unexplained loss of Mike Brady’s Mopar soul, much less mourn it. It’s truly a sad event that no young Autopian should have been forced to watch.