Remembering Ann Wedgeworth: The Three's Company flirt

Ann Wedgeworth had a brief but memorable role on
"Three's Company". She is seen here with series star John Ritter.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/obituaries/
(ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images)

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What does a woman see in a gay man living with two women and why does she keeping hitting on him?

Although it may look on the face of it like the ultimate irony, it was really just fodder for a slapstick 1980s comedy.

Ann Wedgeworth played the flirt, Lana Shields, in the sitcom “Three’s Company”, and she was gone almost as fast as she arrived in the fourth season.

She came to mind when I had heard she passed away.

Three’s Company

The premise of “Three’s Company” was that Jack Tripper, played by John Ritter, was a young, good-looking aspiring chef. He wanted to live with his friends Janet, played by Joyce DeWitt, and Chrissy, played by Suzanne Summers. However, the building landlord Stanley Roper would never allow co-ed living arrangements.

So Janet tells Roper that Jack is gay. Roper tolerates the arrangement but rarely passed up an opportunity to make fun of Jack. Stanley and his wife Helen moved away, because ABC spun them off in their own series simply called “The Ropers”. Ralph Furley, played by Don Knotts, then took over as landlord.

And the charade continued.

Isn’t it ironic

In the fourth season, Jack takes a job with an escort service where he meets Lana. He soon discovers instead of just dinner she wants him for dessert.

What follows is a series of episodes where she tries, unsuccessfully, to seduce him.

At the same time, Furley takes a liking to Lana, and tries to put the moves on her.

As you can imagine, in a show that made its living on sexual misunderstandings and innuendo, the confusion and misdirection never stopped.

Jack had to either completely avoid Lana or fend off her advances when he did encounter her, all the while keeping up the charade in front of Furley that he was gay.

So Jack was trying to avoid exactly what Furley wanted.

This was the circular comedy that made “Three’s Company” such a hit.

Then, in a flash, Lana was just gone.

Gone and forgotten

Wedgeworth would only appear in nine episodes of “Three’s Company” before she was just written out of the show and never referred to again.

Wikipedia reveals that star John Ritter clashed with the writers over the character of Lana Shields. He believed that Jack Tripper, as sex-starved as he was, would not avoid Lana, who was an attractive, sexy older woman. The writers reasoned her age would turn him off. In the end, she said she asked to be let out of her contract because her role was getting smaller and smaller.

Parting thoughts

A pattern seems to emerge when you look back at “Three’s Company”. They did not really treat cast well who they had an issue with. It started with the way they wrote out Suzanne Summers over her contract dispute. It ended with the way they didn’t even notify cast members there would be a spin-off after “Three’s Company” for John Ritter but no one else.

In between, was the saga of Ann Wedgeworth and Lana Shields, the “Three’s Company” flirt.

It was an idea with a lot of potential that could have worked.

Instead, they just dropped her like a hot potato, confining her to the dust bin of sitcom history.

It was ghosting, ‘80s-sitcom style, and she deserved better.