TVFactFan
06-13-2006, 10:13 AM
Three's Company acquired the reputation for being about sex, even though no one in that ABC Comedy ever has any. We might assume that other TV characters-Archie and Edith, for instance -have a therapeutic nocturnal moment now and then, but nobody in Three's Company ever progresses beyond wiggles, jiggles, and giggles. It's a kind of sexual purgatory. But viewers seem to love it, for whatever that means about the national psyche.
The most inert relationship seemed to be between the landlord, Mr. Roper(Norman Fell) and his itchy, blowzy wife(Audra Lindley), so this pair has been spun off into THE ROPERS, another series monastic in practice but libidinous in suggestion-with enough references to bras, hot tubs, jockey shorts and other marginally naughty items to provide a lubricious atmophere. As before, the main joke is that Mrs. Roper can't get any action.
If you drained the energy out of Joey Bishop you would be left with someone like Fell, who plays Roper with a glum wariness that can be funny , as he avoids the moist embraces of his spouse. Lindley, the pinkest person in television, is a good comedienne who puts a curl in every line disparaging Roper's manhood. "Bedrooms don't interest Stanley,"she growled in the pilot, as Jeffery Tambor showed them through their new house.
Tambor plays the next-door neighbor, a sputtery blowfish who quite resaonably despises Roper. He has a sexy-perky wife (Patricia McCormick) and a carrot headed son, David(Evan Cohen) who is there to ask precocious questions. "David's got to keep his hands out of my drawers." puffed Tambor to wife. "You're his mother. That's your department." It must tax the writers terribly, slipping a mention of underwear or anatomical parts into every three lines of dialogue.
Lindley makes doomed efforts to arouse Fell's animal instincts, from hot tubs (two nubile teenagers hopped in with them) to marriage counselors. "You mustn't think of it as a duty, Mr. Roper," said the counselor. "Don't tell him that, " shrieked Audra. "That's the only edge I've got." Lindley and Fell are an artful mismatch and can be funny together. But sometimes there is a twist of cruelty in their exchanges that sets me to wincing when I'm supposed to be chuckling. When Helen discovered that Stanley had been keeping up a lovelorn one-way correspondence with Doris Day, she phoned him, pretending to be Doris, bellowed "Que Sera, Sera" in his ear and went off in cackles.
The Ropers is one of numerous comedies now exploring the rather bleak frontiers of innuendo. Small kids who watch these shows may be getting their first impression of sex: as something that makes adult nervous and giggly, that involves underwear in some way, is seldom done and never talked about seriously, but the figures somehowin the reproduction of jokes. My attitude toward the Ropers is something like Mr. Roper's attitude toward his wife. I know it's cute, but don't ask me to get excited about it.
1979 Sept 23, TV guide, Robert Mackenzie
The most inert relationship seemed to be between the landlord, Mr. Roper(Norman Fell) and his itchy, blowzy wife(Audra Lindley), so this pair has been spun off into THE ROPERS, another series monastic in practice but libidinous in suggestion-with enough references to bras, hot tubs, jockey shorts and other marginally naughty items to provide a lubricious atmophere. As before, the main joke is that Mrs. Roper can't get any action.
If you drained the energy out of Joey Bishop you would be left with someone like Fell, who plays Roper with a glum wariness that can be funny , as he avoids the moist embraces of his spouse. Lindley, the pinkest person in television, is a good comedienne who puts a curl in every line disparaging Roper's manhood. "Bedrooms don't interest Stanley,"she growled in the pilot, as Jeffery Tambor showed them through their new house.
Tambor plays the next-door neighbor, a sputtery blowfish who quite resaonably despises Roper. He has a sexy-perky wife (Patricia McCormick) and a carrot headed son, David(Evan Cohen) who is there to ask precocious questions. "David's got to keep his hands out of my drawers." puffed Tambor to wife. "You're his mother. That's your department." It must tax the writers terribly, slipping a mention of underwear or anatomical parts into every three lines of dialogue.
Lindley makes doomed efforts to arouse Fell's animal instincts, from hot tubs (two nubile teenagers hopped in with them) to marriage counselors. "You mustn't think of it as a duty, Mr. Roper," said the counselor. "Don't tell him that, " shrieked Audra. "That's the only edge I've got." Lindley and Fell are an artful mismatch and can be funny together. But sometimes there is a twist of cruelty in their exchanges that sets me to wincing when I'm supposed to be chuckling. When Helen discovered that Stanley had been keeping up a lovelorn one-way correspondence with Doris Day, she phoned him, pretending to be Doris, bellowed "Que Sera, Sera" in his ear and went off in cackles.
The Ropers is one of numerous comedies now exploring the rather bleak frontiers of innuendo. Small kids who watch these shows may be getting their first impression of sex: as something that makes adult nervous and giggly, that involves underwear in some way, is seldom done and never talked about seriously, but the figures somehowin the reproduction of jokes. My attitude toward the Ropers is something like Mr. Roper's attitude toward his wife. I know it's cute, but don't ask me to get excited about it.
1979 Sept 23, TV guide, Robert Mackenzie