I know it's a TV show. But there have been a few episodes where Jack, Janet, and Chrissy have questioned if what Roper does is legal. I know it was the 70s, and it is California, but they wouldn't have put the question in the script if there wasn't some basis in reality. Remember that 70s TV always had reality-based elements in the scripts and props.
If you read further, you'll see when I was already called on it, and I corrected it. I am fully aware of where both places are, as I have been to Santa Monica, and the pier several times. I just typed the wrong city in. That's all. Too many Santas and no gicts!
Well, things had improved greatly since the 50's, when New York landlords routinely walked in and out of tenants' apartments and helped themselves to food, beverages, tools, BABIES...but this is going by TV sitcom rules. In reality, in America in 1977-1984, resident landlords could and did refuse applicants, and evict tenants, based solely on their personal disdain for them. The 1968 Fair Housing Act eliminated discrimination based on race, religion, ancestry and gender, but the Ropers were within their legal rights to refuse Jack the right to live with a woman to whom he was not married (let alone TWO). They could also have flat-out refused Jack when he told them he was gay...at least until 1982, when L.A. County enacted housing protections for LGBTQ persons. But that doesn't make for very fun jigglefest TV now, does it?
I’ve defended Suzanne Somers in the past in terms of her asking for a piece of the back-end (which I think Ritter and Dewitt deserved, too). But she continues to promote a very slanted view of what happened. She wasn’t fired for asking for a raise; she was fired for disrupting production during her negotiations. If it was just about a gender issue, then why did the entire cast and crew turn against her and never speak to her again? Wouldn’t at least the women have been on her side?
Considering I wrote an unsold pilot that was meant to be a sort of Three’s Com-any knock off, Imhave to,give the series credit-it was pretty hard to write something like that. It’s more difficult than you think and much more difficult to pull off.
Well, the sexual aspect of the show is nothing compared to the more graphic sexual content you get on TV now. Only now you'll get a male or female protagonist who already has it made, where all they have to do is pick and choose a worthy mate. There's no chase to the game, as shown on Three's Company, which more resembles real life for both sexes, no matter one's sexual proclivity. As for sexual inclination, I don't know why, but as a kid I intuitively knew that the "gay jokes" were intended to call out bigotry against homosexuals, just as The Jeffersons did their bit and All in the Family did theirs. I mean, I was pretty young while watching these shows, as they helped teach me life-lessons about respect for your fellow human. Therefore, "inappropriate," yeah, maybe, but only in the sense that nobody wants to address these issues today, except on premium channels. Perhaps it's more inappropriate to be afraid to laugh. If one doesn't intuitively know that these shows were anti-bigotry, then that's the fault of the person, not the show. You create art and it's always up to interpretation. These days the characters are so faultless that there's little to interpret, as the showrunners make their characters wear their unbridled sex appeal on their sleeves. That's no fun. It's not even funny.
Heh! Some of the people who protest the sexual and gay innuendo and jokes in "Three's Company" should never, ever watch "Family Guy"! The reason the sex situations worked in "Three's Company" is because no one ever got any sex. That's one little detail that the detractors never seem to grasp. No matter what the plot, everyone walks away frustrated with no action. Not even Janet and Chrissy get any. Larry and Jack may talk about getting some, but is it true, or just male fronting? They spent almost a whole season of Lana trying to get into Jacks pants and she never did. People act like there was non-stop sex on the show when the big joke was that there wasn't any. I think the Ropers got more than anyone else did! Yeah, there was braless jiggling and bending over in tight jeans, but you could see that in high school, well, at least you could in the 70s where that kind of thing was tolerated.
Man, excellent post! The show depicted life moving into the '80, where the hippy dream was over, and everybody became sexually frustrated. So, we took it out on the Russians. And anyone in our homeland who isn't "normal."
The show started back in 1976 or so, right in the midst of the disco phase. There were still a lot of hippies around, gays were opening the closet door, women were exerting their sexual freedom, drugs were the rage, and lord knows there was a lot of free sex! I should know. I was in high school and I wasn't getting any. Nobody was talking about Russians until a certain former actor came on the scene in 1980. Cheech & Chong were the only ones talking about people sneaking in, and the Vietnamese refugees were already here.
Thats why I wrote "moving into," as in not quite the '80s, but heading in that direction. Oh, and check this, in S02Ep1, the Ropers get it on. I'm going through all of seasons again and will count how many times someone bangs a gong.
Great post. Like you, when watching this as a kid, when I was still somewhat clueless and wet behind the ears (lol), I knew that the show wasn't making fun of gay people; it was showing how out-of-touch and close-minded (to put it nicely) Mr. Roper was.
A bad modern show is still bad. Three's Company isn't bad because it's from the 1970s -- it's bad because it's badly written. You can't overcome conceptual problems, no matter how great the casting or execution. There are a thousand similar 1970s shows that are nearly unwatchable today, and I worked on a few of them. I defy you to watch B.J. & The Bear, Sheriff Lobo, or Buck Rogers, all of which I worked on around 1979-1981. Haaaaarible shows. As time goes on, I like to believe the memory recedes and they become more forgotten, but the PTSD nightmares continue.
The theme song to “Sheriff Lobo” is an all-time classic “A man of dreams who guards our things/as if they were his own”. One of my favorite things to you-tube view. But I’m sure if I were to see an episode today, it would be even worse than it was 40 years ago. And “Buck Rogers” did have Erin Gray in spandex.
Three’s Company - like many mid-level sitcoms - varies in quality from episode to episode. It’s not a Cheers or a Mary Tyler Moore Show. But it doesn’t belong in the same category as genuinely bad shows like BJ or Lobo or even Too Close for Comfort (from the same production company). There are episodes like “The Older Woman,” which are classic examples of farce and are well done. Nothing wrong with the concept, either.
