It didn’t. And it never had a prayer. Three’s a Crowd could have worked with better casting and characters. Instead, the whole thing rested on John Ritter’s shoulders. The girlfriend was bland and boring; she should have been sexier and bantered with Jack and played by an actress with some comic ability. Robert Mandan was good but his character was overbearing and needed to be toned down by 50%. We should have had more of Jessica Walter as the mother/ex-wife. And the surfer dude cook character was awful - they should have added some other staff at the restaurant as supporting characters. It was silly that this restaurant had a staff of two.
I don't disagree with your negative assessment of the thin and dull Three's A Crowd, but GOOD GOD MAN, MARY CADORETTE WAS A HOTTIE!!! I say this because I watched the show when I was 8 and 9 only because I was in pre-pubescent lust with her. I certainly didn't watch it for the crappy scripts or annoying father in law. I think John Ritter personally selected her to be cast, after an audition.
Well, it was based on the sequel to Man About the House, Robin's Nest, which was based on a restaurant with I think just the two staff (it is a long time since I've seen the show). TBH, none of these British shows are what I would call classic comedy, although all three are in the top 100 list of the UK's favourite sitcoms (we may be scrapping the barrel as the list includes "classics" such as My Family and Fresh Fields).
Here fellow cast members (DeWitt and Ritter) were not too fond of her either (to say the least), and they wouldn't speak to her for decades.
Came across this 1999 "Inside Edition" report that did new interviews with the three principal cast members. The "bad blood" between Joyce and Suzanne is on full display here in their interviews, if anyone ever doubted it was true. Ritter says here that he and Suzanne had just recently "buried the hatchet." That confuses the story a bit from what Somers has said, which is that she made up with John shortly before his death when he asked her to cameo on "8 Simple Rules," which would've been in 2003. Suzanne did have some regret after getting booted from the show. In this interview, she said she thought to herself, "'Why, why did I do this, why?' I had the greatest gig in television, this character that people loved," before making peace with the outcome.
lol I always thought the smiling mr Roper kind of had the same dopey looking smile as Dan Quayle (remember him?)
My vote for the funniest sitcom ever, especially the landlord characters. I think both the Ropers and Mr Furley were hilarious, and Ritter was a great physical comedian Funniest episode is the one where they have a welcoming party for Mr Furley - the Turkey going out the window, "To Romania!", just a great sequence of events that happen at the climax Best line on the show is when Jack thinks someone is out to kill him and then they find out otherwise at the end Would-be killer, "I think I will just go home and feed my bird... To my cat!"
I love Mr. Roper's smile. I was a teenager watching it on syndication in the early nineties, that and Jack's heavy breathing thing he'd do always cracked me up.
It's the first one with Don Knotts, to me one of the funniest and craziest episodes in the series. They have to convince Furley to let Jack stay in the apt so they throw a party for him, and chaos ensues
I remember cracking up laughing at the one where Mr. Furley and Larry sit around the kitchen table and get drunk.
The one I remember most vividly is where Jack and Furley get stuck in the meat locker. I think I saw the "Terri" years most heavily, but a lot of older episodes too. I was in 2nd grade around that time, and the show was extremely popular with all the kids in class. Basically the favorite sitcom of most kids. The episodes would be discussed and references would be made. I remember a kid being made fun of for dressing like Mr. Furley one day. Most of this was driven by the syndication reruns, which were easy to watch every day in the early evening after school. I'm not quite sure how much of the show I watched in the network airings, but I definitely remember watching the finale and the start of Three's a Crowd. I kind of liked Three's a Crowd too, except for the annoying surfer dude character. I see that they handled that spin-off in a really unique way, in that they waited until September to show the finale of Three's Company, and Three's a Crowd debuted a week later. When I watch the shows now, I still think they're often incredibly well-written. It really gets a bad rap for being a "dumb" show. I don't think it is. There's a ton of thought put into the situations in the show. I'd almost argue it was the Seinfeld of its era, with the same kind of intricate plotting to support the silly situations that Seinfeld did, especially in Seinfeld's later years when it wasn't as much of a show about "nothing" as it was in the beginning. And both shows were trying to be all-out comedies, with no warm fuzzy feelings or important moral lessons being taught.
I don't remember that but I remember a similar plot line in Dukes of Hazzard, except there two of the characters who didn't like each other were locked in a bank vault.
Dukes one aired January 1, 1982. In that one, they apparently only have an hour of air in the bank vault and the "boys" need to find someone with the combination. The Three's episode aired January 17, 1984. I think they just had to wait for the female roommates to find out where they were and rescue them in that one. The 1988 movie Short Circuit 2 similarly had the two male leads get locked into a freezer by the bad guys. They need to hack the phone lines to get the female lead to let them out.
All in the Family also did an episode, late in the series, where Archie and Meathead are accidentally locked in a room together. It was one of the heavier episodes, where Archie lets down his guard and Mike gets some insight as to why Archie has some of his prejudices.
Ironically, the episode was called "Two's a Crowd!" It aired February 12, 1978. The Three's Company episode also used the situation for Jack and Mr. Furley to have a heart-to-heart, in which Jack confesses to Furley that he's not actually gay. There was also a Family Ties episode where Mallory and Skippy get locked in the basement. Surprise, surprise, it brings them closer together. Air date March 7, 1985.
Just saw the alert of her passing come up on my phone. A very sad day. She had one of the most unusual career paths I ever heard of. This is going by memory. She came from obscurity to get a bit, but key part in American Graffiti. George Lucas liked her photo, which helped her get to the front of the line for an audition, after which he immediately cast her. Later she was spotted by Johnny Carson randomly in the NBC building one day, which gave him the idea to bring her on as a guest to reveal who the mystery blonde in the movie was. I think she read poems on his show, which got him to keep bringing her back. But, as we know, he definitely had a thing for blondes anyway. Then her appearances on Carson got the producers of Three's Company to cast her in the show, after the actress in the pilot didn't work out. Then, she fell victim to the same mistake Farrah Fawcett did, asking for more money, being rejected and then fired from the show. She had to build her way up from the bottom after that, doing Vegas appearances, TV specials and eventually a new, if short-lived syndicated sitcom. Then came the Thighmaster commercials, which not only reportedly made her a fortune, but put her sex appeal front and center on national TV once again. She parlayed this into a new, very successful network sitcom (Step by Step, which ran for nearly as many episodes as Three's Company), and has been using her name to sell various products ever since. I was scrolling through her Facebook a month ago and saw that she had last posted a video a few months ago. It looked like she had posted regularly before that, fairly long videos where she talked about the products she was selling as well as other topics. I watched it and she seemed quite frail and weak in it. Not long after the date of that video, they announced her cancer had returned. And since then, her Facebook has only had younger family members of hers posting to advertise her products.
Here is a timeline of her cancer experiences. She said she even was treated for cancer while starring on Three's Company! I specifically remember her saying this in the 2000s, and that sparking controversy: "she planned to forgo chemotherapy and treat her cancer with alternative medicine." It doesn't sound like she truly stuck with that plan though, as the article goes on to say she used radiation treatment.
