The Three's Company Finale Still Bothers Fans To This Day

[JonathanM]

I always found it odd that Janet's parents weren't at the wedding. The finale was a mess, yeah.

[CJMD03]

The wedding was absolutely thrown together. As I said, it looked so cheap and low brow.

[TMC]

They didn't really give Jack a happy ending (at least when compared to Janet and Terri) when you get right down to it. I think that's especially why people have an issue with the series finale. Jack is practically trapped in a sexless relationship with a prudish child woman, who doesn't want to get married because she's so "traumatized" by her parents' divorce. And he also has to deal with his new girlfriend's obnoxiously meddlesome father, who has a bone to pick with him despite Jack completely not deserving it.

[BestTVever]

The wedding was cheaply put together. I do agree with many here how Jack changed and suddenly wanted to get married while his girlfriend didn't was a bad set up.
But we must remember these episodes of Threes Company did not air until September because they were using them as a launch into the new show just weeks later. So in some weird way they are more Threes A Crowd than Threes Company.
I was just watching it last night and I caught something. There is a phone call that interrupts the wedding and Jack answers and yells into the phone "the wedding is starting" and hangs up. At the end of the episode Vicki's father comes running to the apartment thinking Vicki got married. They have a conversation and Vicki asks something like why did you come here and he says something like I tried to call. So it may have been Vicki's father that was calling and a set up into the plot. I never caught that before.
I always laugh at the woman who appears to play the organ. The wedding was so cheap yet they hired an organ player?

[rusty spike]

Good points about having a cheap wedding, hired organist.

Does anyone else feel they should have paid Fell and Lindley to reprise their roles?

It would have garnered more laughs to have the Ropers there with Stanley playing his bugel and Helen with a collapsed cake.

[CJMD03]

That era of the show was done and gone, sadly. However, it would have been nice to have seen Stanley and and Helen again.

[JumpSteady]

Originally Posted by BestTVever

I agree it was a quick send off to transition to the spin off. However at least there was an ending. There are countless other sitcoms that ran longer that had no send off like The Jeffersons, etc. Good Times also had a quick send off. There is no good way since its a sitcom and supposed to be funny. Alice also had a quick rather abrupt ending for a 10 year run. But I would rather have a bad ending compared to no ending at all when a sitcom gets cancelled and there was no ending in the script.

Totally agree with this. Any ending is better than none.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by biffbronson

I think Mary was a good-looking woman, but as you've indicated maybe somewhat lacking in the "hotness" factor needed for a lead role. And the wardrobe was a little dowdy (with those legs, she would look great in a black leather miniskirt!).
Attachment 292549

I guess, that Mary Cadorette from a certain angle, kind of and vaguely resembles a brown eyed variation of Ashley Williams, who was on Good Morning Miami, How I Met Your Mother, The Jim Gaffigan Show, etc. in that she's attractive in a "girl next door" or a girl that you would meet at church or at the PTA meeting sort of way.



What's weird is that I genuinely find Mary far more attractive and desirable looking in Stewardess School, which came along about a year after Three's a Crowd was canceled.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by BestTVever

The wedding was cheaply put together. I do agree with many here how Jack changed and suddenly wanted to get married while his girlfriend didn't was a bad set up.
But we must remember these episodes of Threes Company did not air until September because they were using them as a launch into the new show just weeks later. So in some weird way they are more Threes A Crowd than Threes Company.
I was just watching it last night and I caught something. There is a phone call that interrupts the wedding and Jack answers and yells into the phone "the wedding is starting" and hangs up. At the end of the episode Vicki's father comes running to the apartment thinking Vicki got married. They have a conversation and Vicki asks something like why did you come here and he says something like I tried to call. So it may have been Vicki's father that was calling and a set up into the plot. I never caught that before.
I always laugh at the woman who appears to play the organ. The wedding was so cheap yet they hired an organ player?

Part of the problem I think when people say that the last few episodes of Three's Company feel rushed, is the general format of the show itself. Before all of this, Jack and Janet were never to the best of my recollection or knowledge, depicted as being in long term romantic relationships. So right from the jump, there's barely any emotional investments once they get involved with Vicky and Phillip respectively.

Three's Company was never a show that cared much about long term plot development or continuity so having Jack and Janet suddenly want to get married to people who we the viewers barely know feels completely inorganic. It also reflects how poorly planned that final season was if the whole intent was to lead to Three's a Crowd over a year later.

[BestTVever]

Originally Posted by TMC

Part of the problem I think when people say that the last few episodes of Three's Company feel rushed, is the general format of the show itself. Before all of this, Jack and Janet were never to the best of my recollection or knowledge, depicted as being in long term romantic relationships. So right from the jump, there's barely any emotional investments once they get involved with Vicky and Phillip respectively.

Three's Company was never a show that cared much about long term plot development or continuity so having Jack and Janet suddenly want to get married to people who we the viewers barely know feels completely inorganic. It also reflects how poorly planed that final season was if the whole intent was to led to Three's a Crowd over a year later.

I agree. But when you are ending an iconic sitcom you have to develop some sort of long term situation. Having Janet get married and Jack fall in love seemed just about right. It definitely was against the grain of the entire series but they were getting old and something had to happen.
In the beginning Jack had no job and Chrissy and Janet were struggling. At the end Jack owned his own restaurant, Terri was an emergency room nurse, and Janet was the manager of the Flower Shop doing side jobs like an aerobics instructor. There was no reason for them to share a 2 bedroom apartment. But they made the decision to grow the characters. Janet started the series in patch jeans and ended it wearing expensive fashion outfits and even had money to buy a car that lasted one day

[TMC]

After Years of Being Mostly ‘The Jack Tripper Show,’ Three’s Company’s Series Finale Went All the Way

In the latest in a feature spotlighting backdoor pilots, Brian shows how the Three's Company series finale sidelined the rest of the cast to push Jack's new spinoff with his new girlfriend.



Today, we look at how the series finale of Three’s Company sidelined the rest of the cast to set up Jack’s spinoff series.

This is Back Door Blues, a feature about “backdoor pilots.” Backdoor pilots are episodes of regular TV series that are intended to also work as pilots for a new series. Sometimes these pilots get picked up, but a lot of times they did not get picked up. I’ll spotlight examples of both successful and failed backdoor pilots.

December is a month of Back Door Blues! Following our look at how The Facts of Life‘s series finale tried to set up a new series, we’ll look at a week’s worth of series finales serving as backdoor pilots!

CONCEPT: Three’s a Crowd – Jack Tripper (John Ritter) moves in with his girlfriend, Vicky (Mary Cadorette), much to the consternation of her father, James Bradford (Robert Mandan).

SERIES IT AIRED ON Three’s Company

I’ve noted a few times over the years that Three’s Company really got weird for me when Jack Tripper (John Ritter) received his own restaurant, Jack’s Bistro. The show was always a star vehicle for Ritter, but when he gained his own restaurant, the show essentially became The Jack Tripper Show, with occasional guest appearances by the other cast members of the series (his two roommates, Janet and Terri, played by Joyce DeWitt and Priscilla Barnes) and the building’s super, Mr. Furley (Don Knotts), who only allows Jack to live with Janet and Terri because Jack pretends to be gay.

In an unusual move, the series finale aired in September 1984, months after the nominal May finale setup the events of the finale, namely that Janet is getting married, and Jack meets a flight attendant named Vicky, who he falls for.

In the series finale, the first part has Janet and Phillip’s wedding, and the sudden reveal that Terri received and accepted a job offer in Hawaii (out of NOWHERE just to give her SOME sort of plot), and Jack proposing to Vicky, who turns him down, because her parents’ divorce soured her on marriage. Her position is kind of ill-considered and silly, as she wants to live with Jack and EFFECTIVELY be married, just not actually married, because somehow just the act of getting married will tear them apart for some reason.

Jack doesn’t want that, but in the end, he agrees, and they move in together into the apartment above Jack’s restaurant. The thing is, the second part of the episode is all about Jack and Vicky for the first ten minutes or so, then there’s eight minutes of everyone saying goodbye, before they go back to Jack and Vicky for six minutes at the end of the episode, with her father (who doesn’t want his unmarried daughter living with another man) barging in on them in bed, announcing that he bought the building, so is now Jack’s landlord!

They literally end the episode with the name of the spinoff, Three’s a Crowd, scrolling on to the screen, as it would debut the following week.

DID THE PILOT GO TO SERIES? Obviously, as it was built into the show (note that Three’s a Crowd follows the setup of the spinoff sequel, Robin’s Nest, of the British TV show that Three’s Company was based on, Man About the House). So this was likely always seen as a fait accompli, since Robin’s Nest was as big of a hit as Man About the House, so the producers likely figured Three’s a Crowd would be a similar success.

SHOULD IT HAVE? I mean, John Ritter was always good as Jack Tripper, and, again, that was the setup for the British version, so I guess fair enough, but Three’s a Crowd was BAD, and only lasted a single season.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by BestTVever

The wedding was cheaply put together. I do agree with many here how Jack changed and suddenly wanted to get married while his girlfriend didn't was a bad set up.
But we must remember these episodes of Threes Company did not air until September because they were using them as a launch into the new show just weeks later. So in some weird way they are more Threes A Crowd than Threes Company.
I was just watching it last night and I caught something. There is a phone call that interrupts the wedding and Jack answers and yells into the phone "the wedding is starting" and hangs up. At the end of the episode Vicki's father comes running to the apartment thinking Vicki got married. They have a conversation and Vicki asks something like why did you come here and he says something like I tried to call. So it may have been Vicki's father that was calling and a set up into the plot. I never caught that before.
I always laugh at the woman who appears to play the organ. The wedding was so cheap yet they hired an organ player?

Three's Company is the only network sitcom that I'm aware of that had its series finale aired in the month of September that it wasn't due to say, being a midseason replacement, was being quietly burned off by its network, nor was it delayed by anything else like industry work stoppages.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by JonathanM

I always found it odd that Janet's parents weren't at the wedding. The finale was a mess, yeah.

As others have pointed out, Cindy and Mr. and Mrs. Roper should've also been at Janet's wedding, if they were really serious about this being the series finale for Three's Company. Were Jenilee Harrison, Norman Fell, and Audra Lindley not available? And it couldn't have been that they had any real "bad blood" with the producers like Suzanne Somers had.

[ClarenceAlabama]

Originally Posted by TMC

As others have pointed out, Cindy and Mr. and Mrs. Roper should've also been at Janet's wedding, if they were really serious about this being the series finale for Three's Company. Were Jenilee Harrison, Norman Fell, and Audra Lindley not available? And it couldn't have been that they had any real "bad blood" with the producers like Suzanne Somers had.

Jenilee Harrison first episode of Dallas aired a few weeks after the Three's Company finale. She might have been under contract with CBS at the time.

The Ropers should have been there. I don't know what Norman Fell and Audra Lindley were doing at the time. I wonder if the producers were being cheap and didn't want to pay them big bucks for 1 episode.

It seems like the producers didn't care about the Three's Company fans and only cared about John Ritter and the new show Three's a Crowd.

[rusty spike]

Originally Posted by ClarenceAlabama

...

It seems like the producers didn't care about the Three's Company fans and only cared about John Ritter and the new show Three's a Crowd.

Spot on.