May 16, 2004
A Flock of Seagulls
Something that came back to me during this weekend's
TV Land Three's Company marathon -- the end credits, with Jack, Janet and Chrissy feeding seagulls at the beach. Not only was it a pretty scene, I used to find it a little
freaky how the seagulls hovered there in midair, flapping their wings in the wind (it took several viewings before I deduced that, no, they aren't held up by strings). To a 10 year old kid from Arizona who never went near a beach, it certainly was exotic and weird, that's all. Back to the weblog ...
Posted by mhinrichs at May 16, 2004 02:49 PM
I always found that closing shot sort of scary--we went to the beach 2 or 3 times every summer, and inevitably a group of people would start feeding seagulls like that until it turned into something straight out of "The Birds." I was the worrywart who always yelled at my little brother when he tried to give one of the gulls some leftover hamburger buns or something: "Don't, Mike--they'll attack you!"
One of the things I noticed that I hadn't before is that TV Land apparently is showing the original, uncut versions of "Three's Company." (Assumedly, recently made available by Don Taffner.) Because during some of the older episodes the opening credits included the rarely-heard music bridge and various clips from the show. When this show was first rerunning in the early-to-mid '80s, they cut the show up a bit and (like "Bewitched" years before it) created syndication opening credits.
Some of the best episodes are from the first and second seasons. Towards the end of the "Chrissy era," they were getting a little loopy. After that the show lost something (besides the firing of Suzanne Somers) for me.
