Suzanne Somers, best remembered for her starring role in the iconic 1970s sitcom Three’s Company, has passed away at age 76. Somers leaves behind a husband and a son, and I send both of them my condolences. Her passing reminded me of the fact that Three’s Company was both a show from a much more innocent time as well as a show that paved the way for the cultural dissolution that characterizes 2023.

If you’re younger than I am, here’s the premise of Three’s Company, which debuted in 1976 and ran until 1984: Jack (John Ritter) needed a place to live. His friends, Chrissy (Somers), a ditzy, busty blonde, and Janet (Joyce DeWitt), the sensible brunette, needed a roommate.

The problem was that, in those more conservative times, having a man living with women was unacceptable to the strait-laced, tightfisted landlord, Mr. Roper (Norman Fell), married to the sex-starved Mrs. Roper (Audra Lindley). The solution: Have Jack pretend to be gay. In fact, Jack was a red-blooded American male living platonically with two beautiful women.

And that was the show, week after week, even after Suzanne Somers, believing she was destined for better things (she wasn’t), left the show to be replaced by Priscilla Barnes. And even after Norman Fell (a WWII Army veteran) left the show to be replaced by Don Knotts (another WWII Army veteran). I mention their veteran status because they were the last of their generation to be a major part of pop culture.

Image: Suzanne Somers. YouTube screen grab.

The show was remarkably silly. My parents despised it, although I think my dad enjoyed the female jiggle factor. There was a remarkable amount of jiggling from Sommers, DeWitt, and Barnes. The actors were competent, and John Ritter periodically broke free from sitcoms’ limits, as when Jack danced with surprising skill and elan after having accidentally mixed drugs and alcohol. Even my folks laughed.

What the show really did, though, behind all the nudge-nudge, wink-wink jokes about cohabitation, was to normalize a break from the traditional family unit. In 2011’s Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, Ben Shapiro wrote:

When I asked [ABC President] Fred Silverman if Three's Company was making any social statement by promoting a menage à trois, American style, he denied it strenuously. “The fun of Three's Company is that everybody, starting with Roper, thought that there was something going on. And there really wasn’t… It’s kind of like French farce. I once got criticized for comparing it to Molière at the Writers Guild. I'll never hear the end of that.”

Of course, Silverman left unspoken the understanding that Molière was not merely a writer of French farce—he was a satirist of French society. And in many ways, Three's Company satirized American society in the same vein. It substituted friends for family; it substituted liberal living arrangements for more traditional ones. And it made us laugh. (Page 117; emphasis added.)

Shapiro explains that the show’s primetime sexual obsessions offended the Religious Right, which pushed back. “In 1978, after being labeled as the nation’s third-largest advertiser on sex-soaked programs by [the Religious Right’s Rev. Donald Wildmon], Sears pulled its sponsorship from Three’s Company.” (Page 278.)

It’s hard to imagine that in today’s world. Now, Disney aggressively indoctrinates children in the LGBTQ+ spectrum, Wisconsin fourth-graders are being forced to learn that “gender is assigned at birth,” a major airline celebrates a man as “woman of the year,” and venerable Maybelline promotes its makeup using bearded men. Back in 1978, though, Americans still objected to TV shows that brought even coy sex to their children.

Suzanne Somers wasn’t making any social or political statements when she got the role of Chrissy in the British transplant that became Three’s Company. She was just an actress who got a chance to be in a show that took off, making her famous and rich.

However, her passing is an opportunity to look at how drastically American values have changed in the 47 years since Three’s Company made cohabitation outside of marriage something cute, funny, and acceptable. Along the way, it also helped bring homosexuality further out of the closet, given the subplot that Jack was allegedly gay.

Silly jiggle comedy, yes, but also a show that shifted the Overton window in ways we could never have imagined.

RIP, Suzanne Somers, who charmingly and comedically bounced her way into America’s cultural history.