For it’s time it was actually “progressive.”
It presumed that while the Ropers were so worried about morals that they wouldn’t allow a single man to live with two single women, they would allow an openly gay man to live in their apartment complex. Mr. Roper’s bad jokes and eye rolling aside, the Ropers were certainly progressive by the standards of the late 1970s.
The series was what most sitcoms back then were: Quick to produce, low budget, serviceable entertainment. The scripts were supposed to consist of a joke every other line, each character was supposed to be funny, and the premise only worked if you didn’t think about things too much. Nobody was worried about homophobia as much as they were concerned about racism and antisemitism. Gays were still a target for “jokes” and slurs and so Three’s Company could be viewed as being liberal in its attitudes for the late 1970s.
The one thing that weakened the narrative is that during its entire run, the series never attempted to onboard an actual gay performer or have a actor portray a gay character (beyond John Ritter’s Jack Tripper, the series protagonist). That would have made the series truly progressive as it would have demonstrated a measure of enlightenment that wasn’t common in that era,
By today’s standards, Three’s Company is both homophobic and offensive.
It wasn’t then, however.
