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

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Originally Posted by ClarenceAlabama

It always shocked me that considering how big Three's Company was, there was never a reunion movie.

In 1986, they were planning to bring back The Ropers in an all new sitcom called "Three Apartments" with John Ritter, Joyce Dewiit, Richard Kline, and Don Knotts guest starring. So the cast were all willing to come back and portray their old characters again.

After the way they messed up the finale, you would think they would eventually do a proper send off for the fans and maybe have the movie end with a Jack and Janet wedding.

Considering how big the sitcom Three's Company (1977-84) was, why was there never a reunion movie or show? After the way they messed up the finale, you would think they would eventually do a proper send off for the fans.

[BestTVever]

It really was not a send off but a transition to the new show. Everyone always hates the final episode on successful sitcoms. I cannot think of one (Maybe Newhart) where fans loved the final show. Janet getting married was rushed but it still was a final curtain call for these lost wanderers to move on.

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Originally Posted by ClarenceAlabama

It always shocked me that considering how big Three's Company was, there was never a reunion movie.

In 1986, they were planning to bring back The Ropers in an all new sitcom called "Three Apartments" with John Ritter, Joyce Dewiit, Richard Kline, and Don Knotts guest starring. So the cast were all willing to come back and portray their old characters again.

After the way they messed up the finale, you would think they would eventually do a proper send off for the fans and maybe have the movie end with a Jack and Janet wedding.

To tell you the truth, the thought never really occurred to me until now, about why there was never a Three's Company reunion movie or limited run revival series. I agree that when John Ritter passed away in 2003, that pretty much ended any hope for a formal reunion.

Plus, I don't even know if Joyce DeWitt wanted to go back to doing television full-time after Three's Company, especially after the way that she was treated towards the end. Plus, Priscilla Barnes had gone on record in saying that her time working on Three's Company was the worst time in her career.

If there was a reunion project proposed, then we still would have to deal with the backstage controversies with Suzanne Somers. So that was probably another thing that I doubt that they would want to revisit.

I'm guessing that Three's a Crowd and its short-run, kind of gave the higher ups the impression that we already had a glimpse of Jack Tripper's life out of Apartment 201, since they flat out "rejected" it, it wouldn't be worth the trouble or time to go further.

[Dude111]

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Has Joyce and/or Priscilla ever specifically addressed the series finale and the arguable way that their characters were marginalized (and maybe even, to a certain extent, character assassinated) as a means so promoting Three's a Crowd? I'm sure that they did at some point or another. Like, has Joyce ever said anything about them just randomly marrying Janet off to some bland, random guy that she had only recently met. Or what about Priscilla's character, only getting maybe, a brief, offhand mention about her moving to Hawaii?

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Originally Posted by BestTVever

In 1997 they could not even come together for a 20th anniversary show. They hung up the phone on each other. So I doubt a movie would ever be in the works if they were not even talking to each other.

Didn't John Ritter say once on some late-night talk show (it may have been Conan O'Brien's show) like half-jokingly, that if there was ever going to be a proper Three's Company reunion show, then it would open with Chrissy's funeral? Of course, Suzanne Somers later claimed that she was able to briefly reconcile with John (with John's wife, Amy Yasbeck being a mediator of sorts) shortly before John passed. But it just goes to show how much lingering resentment John and Joyce seemed to have towards Suzanne long after Three's Company ended. I don't think that Joyce herself, even saw or spoke to Suzanne again for over 30 years until they finally "buried the hatchet" in 2012.

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Originally Posted by ClarenceAlabama

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.

At this point, I think that it was kind of "par for the course" that the producers would just coldly and systematically dispose of characters that they in their perspectives, no longer had any use for. They in the final episode, did it with Janet and Terri and to a lesser extent, Larry and Mr. Furley. And before that, they did it with Cindy, whose character was last seen in the infamous "Janet Wigs Out" episode and disappeared without any proper sense of closure.

Chrissy's departure was murkier because of the controversial circumstances behind Suzanne Somers' real life exit from the series. But even without that, there was Lana also suddenly being written out once she outlived her supposed "usefulness". Even with the Ropers, they were never brought back full-time after the collapse of their spin-off series because the producers liked the idea only having to pay one actor (in this case, Don Knotts) than two at a time (Norman Fell and Audra Lindley).

[CJMD03]

It was rushed and cheaply made. Sheer garbage.

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I don't know how to properly say this, but the final episode of Three's Company is just plain "weird". It's like, part of it is essentially, a backdoor pilot of sorts, for Three's a Crowd. Another part is a traditional series finale. While you can also look at "Friends and Lovers" as a pseudo-Season 9 premiere for Three's Company. ABC in their infinite wisdom, decide to air the series finale of one of their biggest sitcoms in the month of September as pretty much, a one-off special to directly lead into a revamped, paired down version of said show.

ABC must've had a lot of faith in Three's a Crowd if they were going to have its formal series premiere episode air exactly one week after the series finale of Three's Company. When taken out of context, the final scene in "Friends and Lovers", where Mr. Bradford barges in to tell Jack (while he's in bed with Mr. Bradford's daughter) that he's his new landlord just comes across as extremely awkward and off-putting.

Like I said before, the ending when isolated, just feels like a cruel twist ending. It's right up there if you ask me, with the "Jack's Navy Pal" episode, where the whole payoff for Jack is uncomfortably dark, cynical, and downbeat.

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Somebody on r/threescompany made an interesting point that I never really thought about until now. Have you ever noticed that there's no applause when Jack, Janet, and Terri leave Apartment 201 for the final time? There's like, total silence from the audience. That just seems awfully uncharacteristic for a decidedly campy and sleezy show like Three's Company, don't you think?

Compare that to "final" episode of One Day at a Time (I'm using quotations, because technically, there was one more episode that aired, which was really a backdoor pilot for a potential spin-off series for Pat Harrington's Dwayne Schneider character).



In the penultimate episode of One Day at a Time, "Off We Go", which aired during the same season (1983-84) as Three's Company's final season, the audience was clapping as Bonnie Franklin's Ann Romano is looking at her apartment one last time and closes the door.