every since John died 8SR has taken a new road. this road seems to be a road full of guest stars. has anyone else noticed this? i'm not complaining though. I think JTT has been a great guest star, as well as the addition of James Garner and David Spade to the cast. D.S. is so hilarious..sarcastic, but hilarious!

are any other guest appearances planned?

Peter Bogdanovich and Connie Stevens are guest appearing next week. After that, I don't know.

I am surprise that the ratings for the show despite John's untimely and unexpected(very unexpected!!!) death, it is doing great and it has not made John and/or his character Paul "in the background" but at the end of the show the cast read Paul's letters and notes he left and glad that is so touching and so heartfelt. It is a rarity that a show when the main character dies is still going strong but when somebody dies in real life the ratings go south. Case in point:

Freddie Prinze's shocking suicide at 22 at the peak of "Chico & The Man" and then adding despite the cute little boy could never fill Freddie's place

Jon-Erik Hexum of "Voyager" & "Cover-Up" had a promising career and the latter show was going to be huge and he accidentally shot himself and then a week later after his Russian Roulette stunt was declared "braindead" and his replacement could not fill the void and the Cover-Up show faded very, very quickly

Samantha Smith was going to be a big star on Robert Wagner's "Lime Street" and then she was killed in a plane crash along with her dad in 1985 before the series premiered. She is better known for her letter and message of piece to the then Soviet Union and was also making another trip there when the fatal crash occured. The show was short-lived as well.

the show's doing pretty great, it has about the same rating as it did last year, which is pretty good! the guest stars are pretty good...they had guest stars before john died as well. also, i've noticed that a lot of the abc sitcoms (like according to jim, i'm with her, etc.) use a lot of guest appearences. i guess it's just something abc likes to do or something. plus, it's always nice to see a star you haven't seen onscreen in a long time, ie JTT haha.

I'd trade them all to have John back :(

Originally posted by MandieR1980
I'd trade them all to have John back :(

No doubt. There's only one John Ritter. I'm just glad they're putting his classic, 'Three's Company' on DVD, so we can enjoy them anytime.

Originally posted by EricIdlefan
I am surprise that the ratings for the show despite John's untimely and unexpected(very unexpected!!!) death, it is doing great and it has not made John and/or his character Paul "in the background" but at the end of the show the cast read Paul's letters and notes he left and glad that is so touching and so heartfelt. It is a rarity that a show when the main character dies is still going strong but when somebody dies in real life the ratings go south. Case in point:

Freddie Prinze's shocking suicide at 22 at the peak of "Chico & The Man" and then adding despite the cute little boy could never fill Freddie's place


Hi!
Well, I just wanted to try to explain the difference as to why "Chico" went under and 8SR hasn't. The main reason for it is that the show 8SR has dealt with John(Paul)'s death. You saw the family lose and go through the motions of missing him. They didn't just stick a replacement in for him, which is basically what Chico tried to do. Chico did not handle Freddie's death at all. They sent Chico off to Mexico to be with his father and then didn't even mention him again until the middle of the last season. The only thing that Ed(Jack Albertson) Brown really told Raul(Gabriel Melgar) was that he had passed away. They didn't give the audience a chance to adjust. It wasn't fair to anyone involved with the show, so I for one am very proud and glad of how 8SR has handled the whole situation.

I read that the red-headed guitarist in the band that was playing in the background during Katey Sagal's singing scene was played by Jon Wamsley, who played Jason Walton on "The Walton's," which of course John used to star on before "Three's Company." It seems that now that he's gone, all his friends want to honor him in some way.