Why Did 'Three's a Crowd' Fail (Last One Season)?

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Originally Posted by glickmam

I think what Mace Dolex is referring to is the fact that The Cosby Show heavily revolutionized how sitcoms were seen, and how it sort of made farce comedy a very tough sell to go by, given that viewers now wanted their sitcoms to be witty and sophisticated.

It simply wasn't considered a great time for the sitcom genre prior to The Cosby Show. In 1983-84, Three's Company's final season on the air, the only sitcom to make it into the top ten of the Nielsen ratings was Kate & Allie.

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Originally Posted by glickmam

I think what Mace Dolex is referring to is the fact that The Cosby Show heavily revolutionized how sitcoms were seen, and how it sort of made farce comedy a very tough sell to go by, given that viewers now wanted their sitcoms to be witty and sophisticated.

I'm guessing that besides Three's Company, Garry Marshall-style sitcoms (a la Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Mork & Mindy), which were also you could say, of the slapstick and farce comedy variety felt old hat by the time that The Cosby Show came along. Laverne & Shirley (which ended in 1983) and Mork & Mindy (which ended in 1982) were already finished with their runs before Three's Company was. Happy Days was the last of Garry Marshall's big three sitcoms standing, ending just around the same time that Three's Company ended in 1984.

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Originally Posted by JackJanetChrissy

It failed because it wasn't Three's Company, the characters (other than Jack) were boring or outright annoying, and it was the last gasp of the creative corpse that Three's Company was becoming in Season 8. Three's A Crowd was the spoiled and picked-through Three's Company leftovers the producers tried to serve the public as a TC replacement. The producers wanted to wring that Three's Company franchise dry, and it showed. I used lots of crappy metaphors to prove my point.

I also think that the network and producers mistakenly assumed that people watched Three's Company solely for John Ritter (and not his interactions with his roommates like Joyce DeWitt, Suzanne Somers, and Priscilla Barnes or landlords like the Ropers and Mr. Furley) and figured that what worked there could easily work elsewhere. Three's Company I suppose, was sort of a lightening in a bottle type of show, where "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." This could also probably, explain somewhat why the Ropers (Norman Fell and Audra Lindley) failed in their own spin-off.

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Originally Posted by Duster76

What's the old saying, don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle. What were they rolling out here from the audience perspective, another nontraditional living situation. Except traditions were changing, in 1980 there were 1.5 million couples living together without being married, by 1984 it was about 2 million. So it was kind of like, they're not married, OK, big deal, what's the rest of it, and the rest of it sounded similar to Three's Company. If the audience was getting tired of Three's Company, how was this banality going to generate any new enthusiasm. And to add insult to injury casting Mary Cordette as the female lead, that was supposed to make the series appointment television! This relationship had to grab the audience by the lapels, and there was nothing like that going on here.

Also, Three's a Crowd arguably, came from a position of negativity and cynicism (which to me, was the complete antithesis of Three's Company) within its premise at least. The whole set-up is that Jack is living with this woman who is not Janet, Chrissy, Cindy, or Terri, who doesn't want to marry him because she's so traumatized from her parents' divorce. And the woman's father is a meddling a-hole, who can't mind his own business. I mean, Mr. Bradford's daughter is a grown woman, and Jack is a nice guy who is a self-made businessman. So, what exactly is Mr. Bradford's issue with Jack again! And to add insult to injury, Jack as it is, virtually as little to no chemistry with this particular woman who is now, his live-in girlfriend.