http://jacksonupperco.com/2016/04/19/the-ten-best-mamas-family-episodes-of-season-three/

I agree that THE CAT'S MEOW is the season's best for sheer originality alone. I also love WHERE THERE'S SMOKE and saw nothing bad about Yeardley Smith starring as "The Keek". Mama's telephone scene humming along with "Copacabana" and the whole dinner sequence is hilarious.

Here are my picks:

1. An Ill Wind
2. Soup to Nuts
3. National Mama
4. Porn Again
5. Cat's Meow
6. Desperately Seeking Anyone
7. Farewell Frannie
8. The Love Letter
9. After the Fall
10. Where There's Smoke

To me, "Birthright" is the weakest episode of the season.

Honorable mention: "The Best Policy"
Most valuable episode: "Farewell Frannie"

Here are my picks:

4. Porn Again


To me, like "Supermarket", this is one of the few episodes where Mama becomes unlikable.


Most valuable episode: "Farewell Frannie"

AGREED.

For the complaints I've had about the writing of the syndicated years (more limited cast and less straying from the formula of the show), the show did an excellent job during the first three episodes of the third season easing out of the NBC years and putting themselves on solid footing for the syndicated run.
Farewell Frannie was the MVE of that season, but Best Medicine deserves a nod too IMO for the role it played in wrapping up Ellen's character.

Fran was never comedic

I guess that is a matter of opinion. Personally i found Aunt Fran quite funny at times.

(Arguing on who gets what rooms in the house)
Buzz: "I've got squatter's rights!"
Aunt Fran: "Well, I've been squatting longer than anyone!"

Aunt Fran's reactions were sometimes all that she needed. Like when Naomi got engaged to Vint and she tried to be friendly to Aunt Fran, who, feeling intimidated by Naomi's wild reputation, nervously and awkwardly makes a beeline for the door when Naomi entered the room.

Or when Aunt Fran takes over as advice columnist at the local paper and the married boss puts the moves on her over dinner, Aunt Fran gets Mama's telephone advice to her all mixed up. Can't remember exactly, but Mama tells her "Tell him if he'd take more of his meals at home, he wouldn't be hankering over fancy desserts!" A flustered Aunt Fran ends up telling him something like, "If you'd only take more meals, you wouldn't have to hanker over deserts at home!"

I realize that Rue didn't really like her character of Aunt Fran, but she did a great job of making it work, regardless.

I guess that is a matter of opinion. Personally i found Aunt Fran quite funny at times.

(Arguing on who gets what rooms in the house)
Buzz: "I've got squatter's rights!"
Aunt Fran: "Well, I've been squatting longer than anyone!"

Aunt Fran's reactions were sometimes all that she needed. Like when Naomi got engaged to Vint and she tried to be friendly to Aunt Fran, who, feeling intimidated by Naomi's wild reputation, nervously and awkwardly makes a beeline for the door when Naomi entered the room.

Or when Aunt Fran takes over as advice columnist at the local paper and the married boss puts the moves on her over dinner, Aunt Fran gets Mama's telephone advice to her all mixed up. Can't remember exactly, but Mama tells her "Tell him if he'd take more of his meals at home, he wouldn't be hankering over fancy desserts!" A flustered Aunt Fran ends up telling him something like, "If you'd only take more meals, you wouldn't have to hanker over deserts at home!"

I realize that Rue didn't really like her character of Aunt Fran, but she did a great job of making it work, regardless.

I maintain that the Aunt Fran character was never well-defined by the standards of this genre, lacking objectives, flaws, or, more elementally, the strong personal attributes necessary to push comic story and indicate a consistent personality. Can you think of traits unique to the character that were present and used for laughs in every appearance? Lines that only she could say? There probably aren't many. So much of her material was based more on plot demands, and propped up by easy jokes that anyone could utter, than her actual (albeit vague) characterization.

Now, I like the gags you mentioned above -- I think a fidgety nervousness, perhaps even eventual daffiness, could have been the start of something tangible for the character to grip going forward. And I would have loved to see Fran's feelings about Naomi more directly color their interactions (and lead actively to story). But the show never committed boldly to those possibilities in her brief two seasons. And such moments stand out because they inherently stand out -- they're uncommon.

It's a foundational issue, I think. The premise initially cast Fran as the figure most opposed to Vint and his clan -- with Mama caught between her sister and her son -- and while that seems ripe for juicy family drama, it's dependent on Fran having a persona of equal force, one that could both fight the family (putting Mama in the crosshairs) and push against Mama directly. But the show never made the character of Aunt Fran tough enough to have major clashes with anyone because it wanted to (I suppose) contrast her against the already loud, confrontational Mama. (And, of course, the decision to add Naomi into the family undoubtedly pivoted the structure too -- now it was Mama vs. Naomi, with Vint in the middle, and Fran on the outside.)

Accordingly, there was no way for Fran to serve her intended role within the premise's structure without a specific friction that was different from Mama's but of matching force. Her usage then came to hinge on something more low-concept and basic: whether she could develop a characterization that would provoke outside episodic story and provide laughs in the periphery.

Again, I don't think the show ever reliably found a way to make her commendably functional in this regard, especially compared to the other (adult) leads on the show, who were more comedically precise and narratively conducive to conflict, rendering them funnier and more dramatically utilizable characters -- ultimately, much better defined as a result. And when we compare what Rue McClanahan got as Aunt Fran to what she got as Blanche Devereaux, well, it's night and day.

I think a fidgety nervousness, perhaps even eventual daffiness, could have been the start of something tangible for the character to grip going forward.

Yes, I would have liked to have seen what Rue(and the writers) could have done with Aunt Fran, as the "fidgety" characterization can be used quite effectively in comedy(just ask Don Knotts).

But I can see what you are saying.
Aunt Fran, even if she would have stayed on with the arrival of Bubba and Iola and the shift to the broader style of comedy that Mama's Family morphed into, would have always been "the outsider" and probably would have been underused.

I never really got into Golden Girls, so I can't really comment on the comedic difference between Aunt Fran and Blanche(besides the knowledge that where Aunt Fran was prudish, Blanche was the exact opposite).

I cant believe no one has mentioned my favorite of season 3: The Best Policy. I laugh out loud everytime I watch it when Mama yells "If we die in an explosion, she's going to get an extra $50,000!!!!"
The subplot is hysterical too with the insurance guy and Naomi eating at Shanghai Ray's.

Where there's smoke is a close second. So funny. Cats Meow is funny too. The rest are good to meh to me.