NO, it got worse after Ropers and Suzanne Somers left the show.
Three’s Company was on the air before I was born, but I’ve seen some of the episodes. There’s one thing that really bothers me. The late, great Norman Fell (1924–1998) was great as the grumpy landlord Stanley Roper. The constant bickering and sarcastic comments between Stanley and his wife (played by Audra Lindley) made the show so much better and funnier.
Norman Fell on the set of Three’s Company in 1978
During the second season in 1978, Fell and Lindley were asked by the producers of Three’s Company themselves, as well as the new head of ABC, Tony Thomopolous, to do a spin-off of the show. Fell was extremely reluctant, as he was already content with his role on a show that had proven to be a success. Fell feared that a spin-off would not be successful and thus cost him a good role and job. To allay his fears, the producers of Three’s Company contractually promised Fell that they would give the new series a year to prove itself. If the show was canceled before then, he and Lindley would return to Three’s Company. Fell reluctantly agreed to the new terms. This proved to be a HUGE mistake.
NO, it got worse after Ropers and Suzanne Somers left the show.
Three’s Company was on the air before I was born, but I’ve seen some of the episodes. There’s one thing that really bothers me. The late, great Norman Fell (1924–1998) was great as the grumpy landlord Stanley Roper. The constant bickering and sarcastic comments between Stanley and his wife (played by Audra Lindley) made the show so much better and funnier.
Norman Fell on the set of Three’s Company in 1978
The theme song for The Ropers is as bad as the show itself!! Who would watch this trash?
The Ropers was introduced as a late-season replacement series in the spring of 1979, debuting the same night as Three’s Company on ABC’s successful Tuesday night block, airing at 10 p.m. During its first season, Ropers’ ratings were strong (the show finished in 8th place in the 1978–79 season) and had the second highest-rated series premiere at the time. After its season premiere, Three’s Company went on hiatus, but The Ropers remained a success. ABC re-aired episodes in the summer of 1979 (in August on Sundays) and they continued to achieve high ratings, leading many to believe that the series would be given a long-term run.
At the start of the 1979–80 season in September, ABC moved the show to Saturdays at 8 p.m., resulting in a drop in viewership that left the show near the bottom of the ratings. The move to Saturday nights, rather than ABC’s Tuesday night schedule, caused the show to immediately drop into the bottom ten (#52 out of 61 shows for the week of September 17–23, the second week of the season) as it competed directly with NBC’s CHIPs. The move so angered Fell that he actually went to ABC’s New York headquarters to plead with the network to move the show to a better time slot. His efforts were in vain, however, and the show continued to draw low ratings. The declining ratings and the fact that the show failed to attract its core young adult audience led to ABC’s announcement of the show’s cancellation in May 1980.
ABC canceled the show shortly after the one-year mark, so they were under no obligation to bring Fell or Lindley back to Three’s Company. Fell asked to return, but by then Don Knotts had taken over as host. Fell later stated that he always believed the decision to cancel the show had been made much earlier, but the network intentionally delayed the official cancellation until after a certain year mark so that they would be exempt from the obligation to allow Fell and Lindley to return to Three’s Company. The worst part for me is that Fell was actually very good as a host and could have used that money. I never felt like Don Knotts was that good on the show and his character was ridiculous. Honestly, I felt like Knotts’ portrayal of Mr. Furley was clownish. So to answer the question, Three’s Company never improved after Ropers left. The ratings dropped and never reached the heights that Ropers had when he was on the show. In my opinion, Fell had a bad agent. Just giving Fell a 1 year deal so he could return to TC if Ropers didn’t do well was worthless. A network could ruin a show’s ratings by moving it to a bad night, which is exactly what ABC did. Fell may have been right when ABC decided in September 1979 to cancel the show when it became one of the ten least-watched series on network television. ABC waited until May 1980 to officially cancel Ropers, and passed the one-year mark in March 1980. From September 1979 to May 1980, Ropers consistently ranked as one of the ten least-watched shows on network television. That’s a nine-month stretch. Why wouldn’t a network cancel a show that had such poor ratings for such a long time?
After Ropers left TC, Ann Wedgeworth (1934–2017), then 45, was cast as Lana, Jack’s love interest. Many people don’t remember her from Three’s Company. Wedgeworth had just won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her role in Neil Simon’s play Chapter Two in 1978.
Ann Wedgeworth only appeared in 9 episodes of Three’s Company and then disappeared
Her role in Three’s Company was poorly conceived. It was portrayed as Mr. Furley’s unsuccessful pursuit of Lana, just as she was unsuccessful in pursuing Jack. Lana had a small role in the show and her role was not funny. How many times can you tell the dirty jokes you want to make to Jack before they get old? Definitely 9 times because that’s how many times Lana had to make that joke in Three’s Company. After that, the producers ran out of things for Lana to do on the show.
Lana lived alone and didn’t have a roommate so she had to go to Jack every time. Wedgeworth felt that she was misunderstood for her role and her role became smaller and smaller with each episode. Wedgeworth claimed that after only 4 episodes, the cast began to dislike her and ignore her. Wedgeworth angrily quit after only 9 episodes. Lana was never seen or mentioned again. The producers admitted that the character of Lana was a mistake. Lana liked Jack but didn’t like Lana and Mr. Furley admired Lana but didn’t like him. Lana was an extremely weak character with no room for growth. There was nothing else to do with Lana and after 9 episodes, things were stale and there was no future for Lana on the show. The producers paid her for 13 episodes and her name appeared in 13 episodes but she only acted in 9. The producers told her agent that she could quit and get paid for 13 episodes and Wedgeworth agreed.
The casting in TC was really bad and there seemed to be a pattern of malicious misrepresentation of roles for actors. Fell, Lindsey, and Wedgeworth all believe they were lied to and cheated by the show.
The most watched and highest rated episode of Three’s Company aired on March 13, 1979. The episode was titled “An Anniversary Surprise” and focused on Stanley Roper selling his apartment and the Ropers moving out. The episode was followed by the series premiere of the Ropers. Three’s Company would never again achieve the success of that episode in the five years the show aired after 1979. Suzanne Somers began trying to renegotiate her contract after the Ropers left and eventually left the show. Somers’ career would never recover after leaving TC and neither would the show.
The premise of the Ropers was that they had sold their Santa Monica apartment building to live in the more upscale LA neighborhood of Cheviot Hills. Mrs. Roper wanted to fit in with her arrogant new neighbors. Mr. Roper constantly embarrasses her and acts like a jerk. That’s the whole premise of Ropers and it’s incredibly weak. Jeffrey Tambor plays their arrogant real estate agent neighbor. Tambor is not funny and the whole concept of the show is bad. There is a child actor on the show but I’ve never seen him in any of the episodes I’ve watched.
The Ropers was ranked second in Time magazine’s “Top 10 Worst TV Spin-Offs.” That’s bad. In July 2002, TV GUIDE named The Ropers the 49th worst TV show of all time. The strange and sad truth is that Norman Fell never really wanted to do a spin-off and was tricked into doing Ropers, with disastrous results for him. If you can find an episode of Ropers to watch, it’s hard to sit through it. The Ropers was an incredibly bad idea and the show was really bad. There really wasn’t enough material to make it into a series. Fell was right not to want to do a spin-off because he could see the show would never last. Only 28 episodes of Ropers were ever made. That’s too low for Ropers to ever air. In the US television industry, 100 episodes is the traditional threshold for a series to be rerun. Three’s Company would air a total of 172 episodes. It never recovered after Ropers left the show along with Wedgeworth and then Somers. If I watch the show today, I only watch the episodes where Ropers was still on the show and consider everything after that to be garbage. As for the Ropers series, I consider it to be one of those rare series that was so bad that it should have never been on the air. I believe ABC kept Ropers on long enough that they had no contractual obligations to Norman Fell when it was canceled. Under normal circumstances, Ropers would have been canceled in September 1979 when it was one of the top 10 lowest rated shows on network television. Nothing else can explain why ABC allowed Ropers to stay on the air for 9 months and consistently be a top 10 worst rated show on network television.
