Three's Company: The Complete Fifth Season [Import]

The laughs continue with Season 5, in which Suzanne Somers' Chrissy is replaced by Jenilee Harrison as her cousin Cindy. While much smarter than Chrissy, Cindy proves to be a klutz, frequently tripping, knocking things over and running into people...usually Jack, who was the main source of physical comedy to this point.

Although Somers still appears in the opening credits, she only appears in small segments at the end of episodes, where she is supposedly at her parents' home, calling her old friends. This was, supposedly, because Somers had walked off the set upset over her salary, and was no longer on speaking terms with the cast. (In fact, Somers came to the studio to record her end of the telephone conversations early in the day, before either John Ritter or Joyce DeWitt, so she would not have to interact with them. The scenes were later edited to appear as if the characters were together.)

While providing some sense of continuity, the calls are rather ridiculous...even for Chrissy, who had always been portrayed as ditzy and dumb. Her end of the conversation is always so exasperating that Jack or Janet are shown rolling their eyes and putting down the phone in frustration. Instead of showing a connection with their old friend, it seems more like writers felt a need to keep showing Somers in some fashion, yet were venting their frustrations toward her with over-the-top, superfluous scenes.

Season five of Three's Company while remains consistantly funny, it is also the year that is known as the last season that Suzanne Somers appeared in, and then, in only two full episodes.

In year five, Three's Company was sold into syndication making a ton of money for the producers, and its three stars in terms of residuals if Somers and her husband had looked in the long term; but Somers and her husband tried to re-negotiate while the show was in full production for more money. Somers started to miss work, conveniently blaming it on a back injury she sustained. So entered Cindy Snow, played by Jennilee Harrison.

With all due respect, Harrison was not an experienced actress, much less an experienced comedic actress. Unlike Priscilla Barnes, whom the producers had ample time to find, Harrison was a last minute replacement that the producers had to scrambled to find with pratically just days on their hands. Furthermore, while Teri Alden was a completely original character, Harrison was stuck with a character whose purpose was use up the scripts that was already written with Chrissy in mind. You have to admit that Harrison was faced with a bunch of hurdles while on the show.

While I sympathize with Harrison, I still have to admit, she is no Chrissy Snow or Suzanne Somers, although she did made a good effort and showed that another blonde roommate other than Chrissy is possible for the show. After Suzanne Somers left, something did went out with the show that it never could quite replace. Ironically, Harrison would have some her best moments in Season Six, particularly in the episode "Maid to Order", where the storylines were actually written with her character in mind.

In any case, season five still managed to generate a lot of laughs in episodes such as "And Justice For Jack", "Downhill Chaser", "The Case of the Missing Blonde", "Dying to Meet You", "Father of the Bride", and Somer's last full show: "A Hundred Dollars a What". But still I wouldn't say that this year deserve a five stars rating, which is another problem I have with people who review on Amazon.com...they give out five star ratings like Halloween candy.

As for the DvD cover, it is misleading to show Suzanne on the cover, but perhaps, it is done contractually....during the entire season of Seasn Five, Suzanne is still billed as the star while Harrison got relegated to "guest-starring" status. No doubt her image will probably be on one of the discs.

I may be in the minority, but I believe that Three's Company got better once Suzanne Somers left the show. The story lines really started to let John Ritter showcase his physical comedy and while Jenilee Harrison is not usually thought of as the best of the blond roommates (I prefer Terry myself) I really believe that she brought John Ritter's physcial comedy up a notch. They work well together. And with this fifth season, the show really started to leave the confines of Apartment 201 and expand. Not to mention that we meet, for the first time, Mr. Angelino and Felipe in the hilarious episode of "The Not-So-Great Imposter. "The "Upstairs, Downstairs, Upstairs" episode is as good an episode of any in the show's eight seasons. The extras are a little bare boned compared to the previous seasons, but at least we are treated to a brand new Jenilee Harrison interview. It's too bad that we never got to hear from Suzanne Somers; I hope Priscilla Barnes will participate next season. But in an era where a Seinfeld DVD release gets all of the hype,let's remember a classic sitcom that I'm sure more than inspired Kramer's own physcial comedy a decade later.