It’s A Sunshine Day

Hey there, thank you so much for joining me today. If you've listened to this podcast before, it's probably no surprise to you that I watch a lot of TV. I've always have, even growing up, for me it’s so soothing and a big part of how I unwind. I think I've mentioned that being an interior designer can be stressful and I'm always looking for a good ways to relax and for me TV is a part of that. Now that being said, I've always enjoyed watching both current TV shows and older TV shows. When I was really young, I would watch old shows on Nick At Nite like Donna Reed, Dobby Gillis, and Mr. Ed. The interesting thing about watching older shows, a lot of things seem odd and out of place. But it can be hard to identify if that’s because it’s the magic of television or if it's a generational gap and I'm seeing some thing that seems out of place because it's a retired colloquialism or convention. This is certainly true for our designer from the screen today, iconic family man, widower, and architect Mike Brady from the 1970’s sitcom The Brady Bunch. There have been a lot of hot takes about how unrealistic the entire Brady world is, including Mike’s architect life, from the little we see of it.  This includes the 1995 parody movie of The Brady Bunch, which poked a lot of fun at Mike’s lack of design ability. In the movie, every design he came up with looked exactly like the Brady’s house regardless of the design brief. Today, I want to touch on the impact that Mike Brady has had on a generation of American’s and their connotation of what life as an architectural designer is actually like, because there really isn’t another modern fictional character more synonymous with being an architect than Mike. He’s basically the Frank Lloyd Wright of the fictional design world, not because of his prolificacy as a designer but because he’s top of mind when anyone is pressed to name an a fictional architect.

Let’s talk about the color of the week! Friday November 26th is Native American Heritage Day, and while this is traditionally a day of shopping and door busters for many Americans, it’s also an opportunity for we settlers to pay rent. There are so many great organizations that allow us to donate to Native causes, including the Native Wellness Institute, the Native America Rights Fund, and The Redhawk Native American Arts Council. All of which are linked in the show notes. That’s why our color of the week is Pantone 5625, the color of the United States Dollar. This soothing green is easy on the eyes, and packs a powerful punch. Consider how and where you distribute this color in your life this week. Spend yours wisely and with consideration.

So it’s pretty common knowledge that Mike designed the Brady home, in the fictional world of course. The real house was designed by an architect named Harry M. Londelius, and the Brady House seems to be Harry’s big claim to fame, I couldn’t find any of his other works, which I would love see, but nothing popped up in google. The criticism I’ve heard a lot for this house is that Mike knew he was creating a house for himself, his new wife, and six children, but on set we see the bunch all smushed into a three bedroom, two bathroom household, which doesn’t sound like the best of planning. Although honestly, I can see how this would happen. Bare with me for a second.

I was doing research, aside from just catching up the show, and there was one article (I’ll include a link to this in the show notes), where they analyzed how much Mike Brady’s salary would be today to afford his lifestyle on the show. Given that Mike was the sole provider for a family of eight, with a full-time housekeeper,  a dog,  and of course taking into consideration the economic climate of the United States in the 1970’s, plus the expensive of living in Los Angeles. The Brady’s never really discussed being too tight on finances, although I can’t say if that would have been a socially acceptable topic of conversation in 1972. The Brady’s were iconically, security middle class.  The American dream, second act. So this article said that Mike Brady would be making an annual salary of $225,000 to keep up with all of this, which sounds like a stretch. Would a staff designer actually be making multiple six figures in their late 30’s?  I could see that being a possibility if he were at the principle or partner level, but I still think that number is a little bit high. Even if Mike was at the principle level, he would be a young principle, he was 36 when the show started, and most principles at architecture firms are closer to age 60. So is this salary and lifestyle possible? Maybe, but it seems highly unlikely to me. I think one option is Mike could come from family money, his grand father was a judge. So there might be a little Brady trust fund that allows Mike to architect his days away without having to worry about nickels and dimes. 

All this to say, if Mike had the chance to build a brand new house for his brand new family, I actually think purse strings could have been a little tight, so creating a five bedroom, four bath may actually have been out of reach for our beloved bunch, and thus Mike went with the more standard three bedroom, two bath.

One of the reason’s I’m diving into this financial aspect of Mike Brady the architect, is because I really think America has a misunderstanding of the life of an architect, and money is part of it. Even when I began college for interior design, I mean I wasn’t there for the money necessarily, but I was a little surprised to hear that the design profession was not the most robust financial career I could have chosen. The director of my school made it very clear that designers get into this career because we love of the work, because we are called to it. If you want to be making gobs of money and retire early, design is not the path for you. A designer’s starting salary isn’t going be the same as a day trader or even a web designer’s; it is going be a little bit more reserved, generally speaking. And of course money is all subjective, and like I mentioned before, if a designer gets to the principle level in a successful firm, big dollar signs can roll their way. But it’s unlikely that the scenario would actually play out with Mike being a staff architect and supporting this giant family. Being an architect is often lumped together with other professional service providers like accountants, doctors, lawyers, engineers, therapists; but of those, designers and architects are the lowest earners. Despite this, there is an inherent cool factor about saying you’re an architect or designer, or at least this is depicted in different media references. For instance, on the TV show Seinfeld, habitually unemployed George would often lie to people and say he was an architect, just because he thought it sounded cool. Or in the movie There’s Something About Mary, the titular character describes her ideal guy as an architect. In reality, working as an architect can be not as glamorous or as cool as it’s made out to be. It can be very long hours and super stressful at times. As for our friend Mike Brady, the majority of what we see from him is the fantasy of being an architect. The precious drafting set in a leather case, the mighty home drafting board, the rolls of drawings in long yellow tubes, exciting travel opportunities, pats on the back from his boss. There is maybe one Brady episode that mention Mike’s struggle with work/life balance, but most of the time he is home for dinner.

So let’s take a closer look at a few specific moments in the show that really zoom in on Mike’s work life, and see how well the show does at making his occupation believable.

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Starting with Season One, Episode 16, titled Mike’s Horror-scope. Mike gets a new, fabulous, mysterious client named BeeBe Gallini. BeeBe wants Mike to design her new cosmetics factory. She barges into his office unannounced, dressed in pink head-to-toe, doesn’t allow Mike to shake hands with her lowly assistant, and tells Mike he’s very talented. She says he will have complete creative freedom over the creation of her factory, but she wants one thing for sure - it has to be her brand’s color of pink. 

Mike seems very unprepared to be speaking with a powerful woman who knows what she wants, and the episode implies that he’s slightly entranced by BeeBe, rousing some jealousy from his wife. He fumbles his words, he kisses her hand, and he’s shocked at the idea of a pink factory. This looks pretty unprofessional on Mike’s part. Designers get all kinds of people put in front of them, especially eccentric, demanding, wealthy potential clients. I can’t tell if Mike’s behavior towards her is a reflection of our society at that point in time, where men and women working together was still a new concept, or if Mike is just a mess. It’s hard to watch especially because Mike’s role as patriarch of the family often showcases him as cool, calm, collected, and full of wisdom. But around BeeBe he falls to pieces.

 A lot of the behavior we see from BeeBe is spot on with some of the typical traits of a design client. She wants Mike to meet on a Saturday, last minute, and the meeting takes all day. She says he has complete freedom to design whatever he wants, then takes over his office with material and color samples, and tells him what to design. She changes her mind endlessly. We do get a rare glimpse at Mike’s drawing capabilities, as he feverishly sketches out a powder puff inspired building with BeeBe looking over his should like an impatient child. But I have to say, his sketching style looks more like the work of an illustrator than something an architect would produce. It’s lacking a certain measured quality to it that architects are known for having.

Even though the show is presenting this behavior as erratic and extreme, none of this seems unusual to me. Mike reacts as though none of this is normal, and is getting strung along by BeeBe’s every whim, with zero ability to manage his own client. In reality, an architectural contract would specify the number of design meetings and design revisions, and if the client wants more than what’s in the contract, they are billed for it. At least ideally they are. What I don’t find normal is that opening bit where Bebe barges into Mike’s office unannounced. Mike works at a big corporate office that would have a receptionist, and a system for scheduling clients, specifically to not catch their staff off guard and unprepared. Mike also only meets with BeeBe and her assistant completely alone. We see this one-man-army later on in the series and I’ll dive into that more when we get there.

Ultimately, BeeBe does the old unannounced pop-over to the Brady residence, which honestly if a client had my home address, I would move. She gets completely bombarded by the Brady children, who ruin her hair and make up, so she fires Mike. His take on the situation ending is the best part of the whole episode. He says he doesn’t see it as loosing a client, and more as saving his whole company from a nervous break down. That is some zen level acceptance right there, bravo Mike.

This is one of my favorite episodes of the show, hands down. It does a good job of depicting the designer/client dynamic, but in an entertaining way. If you haven’t seen this one, I would recommend watching it.

Jumping to Season Two, Episode Six, titled “Call Me Irresponsible,” young Greg wants a car soon, so his dad, Mike Brady the architect, gets him a job at his architecture firm. This reveals Mike’s favorite architectural style as Modern Nepotism. We viewers are whisked off to Mike’s office, where we see Greg working effectively as a janitor until a drawing delivery is needed. This is the first time I really took a look around Mike’s office and compared it to his home den where he often works in the evenings. Mike has a drafting board in his den at home, but in his office he sits at a traditional desk with a typewriter, desk lamp, and some trophies on a bookcase. I guess those are”Best Architect” trophies. His office is freaking massive, a true executive, madmen size room with a private seating area and his name on the door. But remember, he’s only a staff architect, he’s not a principal. 

Now I didn’t work in an architecture office in the 1970’s because I wasn’t alive, but I’ve heard beloved mentors describe how much offices have changed over the years, but nothing made it sound like everyone got there own presidential suite. I’ve heard tales of big open rooms filled with drafting tables and 20-somethings chain smoking into the wee hours of the morning, drinking coffee and covering the sides of their hands in lead as they draw. It sounds like an absolute dream if you ask me. But here again, the Brady fantasy of how cool in must be to be an architect is taking the lead, showing us Mike as a big hot shot suit, rather than a heads-down drafting cog.

We see another potential project for Mike, mentioned by his boss Mr. Ed Phillips, who says Mike’s design for a low cost housing development was approved. This work flow continues to perplex me because Mike Brady, the one man show who deals with clients all by himself, has to be informed by his boss of how a client meeting went. Maybe he was busy with other projects. It’s a detail, but this kind of stuff drives me nuts.

Like any good family/friend employee, Greg is messing up left and right. He loses a set of drawings that are en route to the copiers not once, but twice. I did like this task for Greg though, realistically using a high school student to run errands is a fairly effective use of their time,  and going to the printers is a pretty legit architect’s errand. Like I said, I didn’t work in an architecture office in the 70’s, but printing in interior design and architecture can be a big undertaking. A lot of it is done in-house, directly in the office, but sometimes you get bigger jobs and send them out to a printing company. If it were a standard size 8 1/2 x 11 document, it would get copied in the copier down the hall, but because you’re talking about full size probably 36” x 48” sheets of drawings, they need to go to special large scale printers. 

And the fact that Greg lost these drawings because he wasn’t paying attention, oh my gosh, this makes me so mad. It’s like my worst nightmare. The second a designer hands something off to a delivery person, there’s a hope and a prayer that it makes it to its destination on time and in one piece. So many hours of blood, sweat, and tears now rests in the hands of a delivery person. And most delivery people are professionals, and not some dumb kid who’s only focused on saving up for his first car, but mistakes do happen. So, it’s always a little nerve-racking. Until you get confirmation that something has been received or delivered, anything could happen. A lot of times, I will send overnight giant boxes of material samples for presentations to clients in other cities. I can insure it, do everything right, and once in a while, something can still go wrong. It’s a super nerve-racking part of the job. Shout out to every mail room employee that ever worked at a firm with me, you guys make my life so much easier. So, anyways, I was surprised that Mike was so calm when Greg lost the drawings, and of course like a true architect he offers to work all night to redraw everything. That is a real part of the job even now with computers and back-up servers, somehow work will end up getting lost last minute and everybody stays up all night to get things finished.  Ugh, and then at the end of this episode, Carol and Alice are telling Mike to give his goof-up son another chance. Like no, this kid barely deserves the job as it is, he messed up because he didn’t take it seriously, and now everybody wants to give him a second chance.  You know, it’s hard to get a second chance when your dad doesn’t have a cushy executive office.

Okay so flash forward to Season Four, Episode Nine, titled “Career Fever” Mike gets the idea that Greg sincerely wants to be an architect but, he doesn’t. Mike gets him a job again, I guess the first job from season two was just a summer gig. So Mike gets his goof ball kid, whose got the attention span of a goldfish and the discipline of The Big Lebowski, another job because what the world needs is another white male architect handed an opportunity on a plate. And right away, Greg is supposed to be designing something. He doesn’t know what, but he gets to work nefariously, with the intent of making a design so horrible, his father will never consider him as an architect ever again. Because you know, why just tell your dad you don’t want to be an architect?  If everyone communicated in a healthy way, there’d be no sitcom. Mike gives Greg a darling little drafting kit in a leather case with a flocked interior, which is probably a collectors item now. Of course, he doesn’t explain how to use the tools inside - the compass with its extender, the lead holders, various types of lead and how to implement line weights. Greg can figure all that out on his own!

So Greg is designing things, intentionally making them look bad, as though he knows how to make architectural designs look good in the first place. There are two major issues with this. No make that three. A) everyone here is assuming a high school student hired at architecture firm will be doing design work. Seven years of schooling and an internship? Greg Brady doesn’t need that! B) there’s an expectation that Greg, who might be 17 maximum at this point, should be able to “come up with something” for a design. Ridiculous. And C) That Greg would need to “try” to make bad work at this point in his life. Most architecture students are putting out subpar work for years before they find their footing, that’s just the nature of the industry, it is complex work, it takes practice and hands on learning.

So now Mike and Carol are looking at Greg’s drawings are talking about how bad they are. Mike calls Greg Frank Llyod Wrong, which I HAVE to steal that line at some point in my life. Architecture puns make me SO happy. Carol says Greg’s drawings are the worst things she’s ever seen in her life. Maybe they should ask Bobby to have a stab at it next and they can really have a laugh. I mean what kind of bizarre world are we watching here? So eventually, Greg comes clean, and even though Mike has been encouraging Greg to his face and smack talking his ugly drawings behind his back, he’s relieved he can finally be honest and tell his son how talentless he is. Whew!

The final season of The Brady Bunch, Season Five, brought us the episode “The Cincinnati Kids,” and if you don’t know, I love Cincinnati, it’s one of the most magical places on earth, I’m very biased.  But we don’t see much of Cincinnati outside of King’s Island, which is THE Cincinnati amusement park. This episode aired in 1973 just a year after the park had originally opened. Our architect Mike is working on plans to expand the park, which sounds more like a job for an urban planner, but certainly an architect could do the planning. Mike has been invited to present his design in-person, and the whole family gets to come along. The episode serves as a long-form commercial for the park, Taft Broadcasting had ties both the park and Paramount Television, which produced the show. But there is a little bit of plot to the episode, even if it is recycled from Call Me Irresponsible. This time it’s Mike who loses the very drawings he was going to present to the executives of Kings Island for the expansion.  At this point, the Brady Bunch is making lost architectural drawings look like a norm, and let me assure you, it isn’t. 

It was hard enough to watch this the first time around when it was Greg causing the mess-up, but it’s even worse watching Mike this time. He doesn’t even open his tube of drawings until he’s in front of a room of executives, only to realize its been switched with Jan’s poster tube. I can tell you one thing, if you’ve travelled to present in person for a big project, a designer has neatly pinned up all the drawings beforehand, and is organized and ready to go. They’re not popping open a tube once everyone is seated and settled like it’s no big deal. His clients are leaving for the airport in 30 minutes, so Mike and the entire Brady crew proceed to search the entire park for the drawings, which they find just in time to give the seemingly completely unbothered group of execs, who then end up looking at the drawings on their plane ride to New York, meaning Mike never presented, and his whole reason for being in Cincinnati is a waste. But of course the drawings are approved and the whole family gets to stay a few more days to enjoy the park. 

So, the strangest thing about this episode, from a designers point of view, is that Mike is in this very important meeting, he gets up in front of six big decision makers, and he is by HIMSELF. I mentioned this in our episode about Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother. Architects rarely work alone, unless they own their own business, which Mike does not. They have teams that support them, and those teams are definitely present to help out for big presentations to important clients. Mike meets with BeeBe Gallini, with the Kings Island Board; both major clients with large jobs - completely alone. This goes back to the fantasy of an architect, that everyone is an army of one, dreaming up ideas for buildings and casually explaining them to clients. Architecture and interior design require a tremendous amount of coordination, teamwork, and cooperation to be successful, and this is something I haven’t seen much of in any portrayal of a designer thus far. It’s always the solo designer, tinkering away at their antique draft table. We don’t see the endless team meetings, calls, hours spent answering emails or phone calls; and these things are what takes up the majority of the job.

The Brady Bunch is ultimately a show about family, and for its time, it was breaking a lot of barriers in terms of showing a second marriage. But it’s tough for a show that is focused around homelife to accurately portray the life of an architect, whose life happens mostly at work. Mike Brady’s portrayal of an architect is a D Plot of the show at best, and it mostly relies on the dream of what being an architect must be like, rather than what being an architect is actually like. Whenever we have a character that is an architect or designer and the story is focused around their leisure moments rather than their work moments, it’s really tough to be accurate. But The Brady Bunch could have done additional homework to make Mike’s job have a little more depth to it, but then again maybe that level of accuracy wouldn’t have been in line with the show’s brand of quirky, harebrained humor. Are you a Brady Bunch fan? Come on over to the show’s Instagram at Softlandingpodcast and let me know your thoughts! Until next time, stay far out.