In Defense Of "Three's Company"

Let’s not dismiss the importance of seeing a man about the house.

I know our media elite like nothing more than to judge the works of the past as if they were being created in our current cultural climate, but this kind of historical revisionism cannot be allowed to stand: For all its faults, “Three’s Company” played a valuable part in helping to satirize the oppressive gender roles of its area, thus hastening their destruction. You could even make the case that “Company,” in seeking to smash the idea of women as delicate creatures who were incapable of living with an unrelated male, made the possibility of a female President of the United States ever more acceptable to the general public. Talk all you want about this being the Golden Age of Television but you discount the subtle, subversive influence shows like this had on their viewers at your — and history’s — peril. This discussion does not even take into consideration the important work the writers and performers of “Company” did in demonstrating the devastating toll the widespread prevalence of comical misunderstanding took on everyday Americans in a post-Watergate era, but you could write an entire dissertation on that and have plenty left over for a TED Talk. God. Stereotype-shattering art didn’t start with “Six Feet Under,” you know.