Career Suicide (part III)

Now the camera spies two suicide notes, placed side by side on the damp bathroom counter.
 Marcia’s note is pink and Greg’s is blue. They are labeled in large, block lettering:

Notice of Suicide.

Like eviction notices. 



The aspirin and vermouth are meant to serve as a sort of aperitif.
The camera finds the main course, as Mrs. Brady begins to speak.

Overly large and shiny razor blades, filched, no doubt, from Mr. Brady, are stacked and waiting, neatly glimmering with promise on the side of the tub.

“My! You two are making a mess!”

The camera gets close on the razor blades.

Marcia and Greg are unresponsive.



Mrs. Brady leaves huffily.

"Gosh!"

The camera holds on the side of the bathtub. The audience sees the water spilled with each pass of the pills and the bottle. Outside, Mrs. Brady is whining to Mr. Brady about the children’s discourteousness.

He enters and immediately peels the suicide notes from the countertop. Mr. Brady then realizes he has just seen Marcia nude, and excuses himself abruptly. He closes the door behind him.

“Honey,” he says,

“Are those kids trying to make a suicide?”

He holds the notes out in front of him.

“Oh God! And they shouldn’t be in the bathtub together!”

“Alice! Get my glasses. Honey have you seen my glasses? Alice!”

“They’re right here.”

“Do you mind cleaning them!”

“Where is that maid!”

On cue, the maid waddles by.
She carries a Mary Poppins-style carpetbag and a rusted set of second-hand set of golf clubs.

"I quit!"

No response.

Your notes for this section suggested canned laughter as the maid makes a prolonged exit.



The two parents spend an overlong time reading and rereading the notes.
Mr. Brady has the boy note, and Mrs. Brady has the girl note. They trade notes.



In writing this, you decided that Greg and Marcia’s primary grievance is with their respective parents’ recent matrimony.

They maintain that since the inception of this alleged, “Brady Bunch,”
to which they now find themselves involuntarily attached, they have suffered emotionally, due, in no small part, to the scarcity of, “love/nurturing/ attention, i.e. parenting.

The result, then, is that they, as the eldest children, feel an obligation to make sure their younger siblings do not suffer the way they have, and so therefore the suicide. They support this point, claiming that since they had no say in living, they should at least have a say in dying.



Marcia asks (obviously, her questions are intended to be rhetorical),

“Where did my real daddy go?

Why won‘t you let us see him?

If he died and you didn‘t tell us, mom,

that‘s real fucked up!”

Greg raises concerns about his father’s ability to make good on the promise of paying for college. He follows this up with mock horror at his father’s personal financial prudence,

“How do you expect to retire now?”

Greg and Marcia have apparently colluded to ensure that their notes are both on-message. The results are, at times, almost legal-quality final statements.



The audience never gets to see the contents of these letters, as it would be needlessly expository and dull to watch. And really, no actor is gonna stand there and read some suicide note on network television. You simply instructed the actors to, simply display horrified looks as they read and react to what their children have written.



For fun though, you actually wrote out, on pink and blue paper, respectively, the suicide notes. Your agent, (your then new agent) passed these around at his annual May Day party.



Hilariously, the children’s coherent and logical arguments serve as perfect counterpoint to their parents irrationality, obliviousness, and trivialization.


Now Mr. and Mrs. Brady stand in the bathroom glaring down at their children.
Marcia and Greg have gotten out of the tub, and are perched on the edge in towels.

Mrs. Brady is in her orange towel, still hoping to attend to her blocked pores. Mr. Brady is in his work attire. His jacket is off, and he is rolling up his sleeves, upset about his razors:

“The steam dulls the blades, God damn it! You're wasting my razors!”

He thrusts his hips forward slightly, for emphasis. The image is stark and robotic.

For maximum satiric effect, the parents are mostly upset at the pilfered razors, aspirin and vermouth:

“Always ask before taking things!”

Mrs. Brady makes her point by angrily shaking the vermouth close to Marcia’s face. Marcia stares at her toes, painted artery-blood-red for the occasion.

The sexual and semi-incestuous undertones of this co-ed, nude-bath, suicide-attempt are avoided in such an obtuse manner so as to reiterate the absurdity of situation.



You wrote this in as an optional scene:

_______________

There are threats of spankings. Mr. Brady begins swilling from some dusty, label-less bottle, withdrawn from below the kitchen sink. He lapses into a sort of grizzled-Appalachian, slurred-twang rant.

“Y’aint tew old te spank yeh know!”

He hurls the bottle into the fireplace and falls backwards, passing out on the family couch.

_______________



Eventually, we see the parents at the close of the episode,
sighing in a show of over-dramatic relief. They nudge each other, and laugh,

“Well, at least we didn’t have to have a sex talk!”

They are in their bedroom, sleeping shirts buttoned up to their necks. They are tucked in to just below their shoulders with a safe distance between them. The television is on, and the subplot with the maid has just played out, so that the episode ends on a lighter note. The maid made good on her threat to join the LPGA.

“Quick, call the kids!”

Mrs. Brady runs from the room to gather the children. Soon the family is assembled on and around the parental bed. Greg and Marcia sit sullenly on opposite sides of the room. Maybe Greg doesn't watch, and instead rubs longingly at his wrists.

“By gosh!”

The maid (Alice?) has just won a golf tournament (you wrote (Alice?) just like that, in your spec, to reiterate your brazen lack of research for the thing, despite having referred to her already as Alice. It was a Balkan literary technique referred to as, ‘do jaja.’ You first encountered this term ensconced in the footnotes of a scholarly essay on Pula free-range chickens.).



She lifts the winner’s trophy with exaggerated effort, using both hands. She wraps an arm around it, and feigns wilting under the weight of the thing. She has won the much coveted Rolex oyster trophy.

It is a barnacle-encrusted and sun-bleached half-shell, lined with peach-colored felt, set atop a rough-hewn, cedar pedestal. A Rolex timepiece is curled on the felt within the shell.

A microphone is thrust in her face. She bats it away, ’aw shucks-jovial,’ style, before consenting to an interview.

“Well,”

she concludes,

“This has been great ’n all, but I really should get back to my family. The best bunch a’ folks I know. The Brady Bunch!”

“Oh, our lovely maid(Alice?)!”

The family collectively embraces.



Ah, but that’s how you ended the thing. You almost forgot, there is a startling revelation in the episode. It is not fully dealt with, but in the manner of sitcoms, it holds the possibility of a nice set-up for an issue to be resolved in future episodes.



(more on the way- about to learn something dramatic...)