Three's a Crowd

The finale of Three's Company has Janet having her wedding in the apartment. Jack Tripper (John Ritter) and flight attendant girlfriend Vicky Bradford (Mary Cadorette) get into a fight caused by her disapproving father James (Robert Mandan). She turns down Jack's marriage proposal due to her parents' troubled divorce. Jack agrees to live together with her in an apartment above the restaurant. The couple is surprised by her dad who bought the building along with the restaurant from Mr. Angelino. Jack hires surfer dude EZ Taylor as his assistant chef. A recurring role is Vicky's mother Claudia (Jessica Walter).

Three's Company presents itself as a young, sexy sitcom but at its core, it's a standard conservative show. The problem with the sequel is that it starts with Jack being the conservative partner. Vicky is doubly a dud. They're like an old married couple despite their living-in-sin situation. That's fine but nothing else is funny. Mandan is a standard sitcom comedic heavy. EZ contributes nothing. No matter how hard John Ritter tries, few of this works. The basic premise is flawed and it gets tired trying to live up to its predecessor's success. The title probably came first and then the premise got assembled after that. I would have put a young teen girl as the third wheel in the apartment. That would be a more direct symmetry to the first show. It would also allow Jack and Vicky be the old couple trying to corral a rebellious teen who would essentially be the new Chrissy. In that case, the dad James would become the Ropers and Mr. Furley and Mr. Angelino combined into one. It's an easier group than this one. The continuing conflict between Jack and Vicky about marriage gets tiresome. Even the theme song sounds tired. Despite being a new show, this is actually running on fumes from its predecessor. As for Janet and Jack doing the new show together, Janet would definitely have more chemistry than Vicky. It's still no guarantee that it would work much better. It's not like the show had a great track record of good spinoffs.

I don't understand why this show wasn't a hit, It only lasted one season, In my opinion it was slightly funnier than Three's Company. I taped many episodes about three years ago when a local channel aired it in syndication. Oh well...

Just finished a Three's Company marathon, complete with spin-offs (I also wrote a review for The Ropers).

TAC is not as bad as some other reviewers have stated, but it's certainly a letdown after Three's Company. It doesn't help that by the time Season 8 of Three's Company came around, the show had grown a bit stale: still enjoyable but running out of steam. That does not make for a great hand-off to the new show.

And the new show is in a lot of ways the same as the old show, only much more tepid. Mary Cordette as Vicki Bradford, Jack's girlfriend, is perfectly fine, but comedy is not her metier. Robert Mandan as Mr. Bradford is a pro. His presence is stabilizing, as is the reoccurring role of Jessica Walter as Claudia, Vicki's mother. Alan Campbell as Jack's surfer-dude sous-chef is a bit grating.

But tepidity is the issue. The show doesn't know what it wants to be. The first five or six episodes are sluggish because they mostly continue the new-couple-in-love storyline that, quite frankly, dragged down the final episodes of Three's Company. In fact, this rom-com-lite feel permeates the entire single season of TAC. Other times, the show tries to go for the tried-and-true formulae of TC: the physical pratfalls of Ritter, the double-entendres, the overheard conversations, the misunderstood conversations. Occasionally, they are hilarious, and one is briefly reminded of the pure farce of TC.

Farce. That's what I and so many viewers loved about TC. The original show did not try to be serious. It did not try to lecture or pander. It refused to turn mawkish or maudlin (NOTE: The show's final hour-long episode is an exception, awkwardly going for gush instead of gut-busting laughs). TAC, thus, is in an awkward position. If it tries to rehash TC's blueprint, it risks being lambasted as unoriginal. If it tries to go in a different direction--lukewarm and fuzzy romance with dashes of humor added in--the show is also painted into a corner.

Nonetheless, the show is far from awful. In fact, it finds its semi-stride for a number of mid-season episodes. TAC is harmless and nostalgic, especially for anyone, like me, who misses Ritter, Three's Company, and 80s neon fashion!

After fantastic 8 seasons of "Three's company" I was left disappointed with how the things wrapped up for the gang - the creators basically crumpled Terri & Janet's character's exits from the show instead focusing the last episodes on Jack and his new relationship with Vicky almost completely. Suffice it to say that Three's a crowd felt out of place and none of the cast members (except Richard Klein's Larry) ever appeared on the show or were even mentioned by name once: after so much time together the creators could have at least acknowledged their own characters with a line or two. Besides this fact the series was flat, tired and uninspiring and there are only 3-4 episodes out of the whole season of 22 that really stand out - all the rest is filler leading the characters nowhere; multiple episodes ended without proper resolution of the story arcs - so what was the point of this whole show? Beats me. Though there was a nice addition to the cast in the face of E.Z. character played marvellously by Alan Campbell and John Ritter and Mary Cadorette were a great on-screen couple, they sadly got their chemistry wasted on this mess of a TV spin-off of a far superior original.

When I first watched Threes a Crowd I didn't really like it. It felt odd. I am a Threes Company fanatic and I think I didn't want change. Now that I watch it on PlutoTV while I work from home I really appreciate it. EZ grew on me and Vicki's father cracks me up. Great cast all around. I think one more season would have been neat but hey it's more Jack Tripper. That works for me.