Stanley and Helen Roper made their final appearances 45 years ago yesterday

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/45...5e11c762&ei=14

Story by Victoria Miller



It’s been 45 years since Helen and Stanley Roper last knocked on the door of the Three’s Company gang. The TV couple, played by Audra Lindley and Norman Fell, marked their final appearance on the hit sitcom on March 17, 1981.

The episode, titled “The Night of the Ropers,” aired during the fifth season of Three’s Company, two years after the couple exited the show for their own self-titled spinoff series.

In “Night of the Ropers,” the long-married couple returns to the apartment house they once owned after getting into an argument, and a romantic triangle ensues with the new landlord, Mr. Furley (Don Knotts).

The Ropers were main characters, along with John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt, and Suzanne Somers, when Three’s Company made its debut on ABC on March 15, 1977.

A failed spinoff for the Ropers

Three’s Company was the No. 1 comedy series on TV in the late ‘70s to early ‘80s. Around that same time, the Ropers' popularity scored Lindley and Fell a spinoff. Unfortunately, the spinoff about the couple moving on up to a posh neighborhood was short-lived. The Ropers aired from March 1979 to May 1980 before it was canceled after just 28 episodes.

Fell had been upset by the spinoff to begin with. In the book Come and Knock On Our Door: A Hers and Hers and His Guide to Three’s Company, the actor noted that the show’s Saturday night timeslot was a death sentence. He also missed bouncing jokes off of Ritter on Three’s Company.

In addition, when The Ropers was canceled, producers reportedly refused to write Fell and Lindley back onto Three’s Company. Fell recalled being told, “You and Audra are too expensive; we have one person (Don Knotts) playing that part now.”

“I put it behind me,” the actor said of the failed spinoff. “I was upset about it, but I gave myself a day or so to be moody. Yeah, I could have gone on in Three’s Company for another five or six years.”

Three’s Company ultimately aired for eight seasons, ending in 1984.