Three’s Company made its television debut on ABC in the spring of 1977. The hit sitcom centered around Jack Tripper (played by John Ritter), who poses as a gay man so that his uptight landlord will allow him to share an apartment with two single women. Though controversial in its day, it was also a ratings success, and would be immortalized through reruns on retro networks like Nick at Nite for decades to come. Interestingly enough, it was because of those constant repeats that Three’s Company became one of the rare sitcoms to stir up controversy years after it left the air.
In the 1983 episode “The Charming Stranger,” which aired during the show’s final season, a handsome Englishman moves in next door to Jack and the girls, and Janet and Terri (Joyce DeWitt and Priscilla Barnes) become enamored with him. Jack, however, is convinced that the man is a wanted criminal and sets out to collect the reward for his capture. At one point, Jack walks into his bedroom, where he plops down on the bed and overhears the guy next door talking to somebody. Take a look below and see if you can figure out why the scene in question made the news two decades later.
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Give up? Alright, so, in March 2001, an eagle-eyed Nick at Nite viewer called up the network to report that the clip you just watched “exposed some things that probably shouldn’t be seen on television.” In other words, the viewer claimed, Ritter’s testicles were briefly on display in that shot for anyone who happened to be staring in the direction of his crotch. The folks at Nick at Nite were in shock because they estimated that the episode had been shown hundreds of times since the 1980s. A network spokesperson confirmed the so-called blooper, saying, “Yes, his scrotum falls out of his shorts,” and promised that the offending shot would be removed from future broadcasts.
Ritter addressed the issue in a 2003 interview on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and jokingly insisted that it was a serious matter that could be damaging to his career. He went on to explain that back when Three’s Company first aired, viewers didn’t have pause buttons, allowing the slip-up to go unnoticed for nearly two decades. Ritter’s secretary insisted that he put out a statement when it came to light, and in doing so, he hilariously suggested that Nick at Nite air both versions of the scene because “sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don’t.”
You can check out Ritter’s full response from O’Brien’s show right here:
The post The ‘Three’s Company’ Blooper That Went Unnoticed for Nearly 20 Years, Until One Viewer Finally Caught It appeared first on VICE.