The Forgotten ‘90s Satire That Destroys the ‘Brady Bunch,’ ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ and ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ Canon
The fates of Carol and Mike Brady’s respective former spouses has always been a hotly debated mystery, mostly by those who haven’t seen A Very Brady Sequel. Since that includes almost everyone alive in 1996 and even fewer people alive now, let us recap the surprisingly complicated plot of the second installment of the satire series that pitted America’s grooviest family against the harsh realities of the ‘90s: A man arrives at the Brady household claiming to be the long-lost (and heavily cosmetically altered) husband of Carol Brady, who was previously thought to have died on an archeological expedition in Thailand. It turns out the man is her husband’s former assistant in search of a valuable artifact sent to Carol just before he sabotaged her husband’s return voyage. Subplots include a forbidden romance between Greg and Marcia, Jan’s further deteriorating mental health and hallucinogenic spaghetti.
None of that is a joke.
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It’s also not even the weirdest part. That slides in at the end, when the buyer lined up by this imposter refuses to pay after discovering the sabotage, as it was the same boat that employed his son. “Thanks to you, I’ll never see my boy, Gilligan, again,” he says, while Carol adds, “And I’ll never see my husband… the professor!”
The implication, of course, is that the character of The Professor on Gilligan’s Island is Carol’s missing husband, not dead at all but languishing on a deserted island, which raises several alarming questions. Let’s ignore the fact that The Professor’s stated name is Roy Hinkey and A Very Brady Sequel identifies him as Roy Martin. Why was a high school science teacher on a prestigious archeological dig? And why, upon completion of that dig, did he and his assistant decide to go on a side quest to Hawaii and take a three-hour tour? Why didn’t he ever mention his lovely lady and three very lovely girls?
Okay, it’s really only one question: What?
It gets weirder: In the movie-ending punchline, the title sorceress of I Dream of Jeannie appears in the Brady’s driveway, claiming to be Mike Brady’s former wife. The Professor was at least a human man with a vaguely science-y background; in the first episode of I Dream of Jeannie, she claims to have been trapped in her bottle for the previous 2,000 years. She doesn’t even speak English. How did she manage to marry and give birth to three boys of her own? Why didn’t she have any memory of them, and how did she regain it? How did she get trapped in that bottle, and why did she believe she’d been there for plural millennia?
Whatever the case, it doesn’t seem insignificant that Captain Tony Nelsen found Jeannie’s bottle on a remote island in the South Pacific, just like the one where The Professor ended up. There was definitely sabotage afoot, and not just by his assistant. Perhaps the theory that Mike and Carol got rid of their respective spouses, possibly via sorcery of their own, isn’t so farfetched. But really, it’s just a hunch.
