“The Ropers” opening theme!!

Did Norman Fell jack off onto the opening credits?!

I love the 1st Jeffrey Tambor one with the black background showing... they couldn't edit that shit out?

The little boy on the show seemed to be the loneliest little kid on TV.

Tambor was 35 ish when he did the Ropers, but was born looking middle aged, and stayed that way for awhile. McCormack hadn’t done anything of interest since the Bad Seed, so I’m sure she jumped at the chance to do a spin off to a hit tv show. But the opening is rather amateurish and cheap. It’s like they couldn’t find anything better for them to do but stand there in frame and twirl a toilet plunger or hold a tennis racket. The Ropers were always funnier on TC as the funny side story of Helen not getting any and Stanley looking at the camera.

Fuck that was unbearable. The series was doomed from the opening credits. Awkward dancing to music better suited to introducing the elephants at the circus.

As opposed to the Three’s Company opening, which was arrestingly infectious and dazzlingly brilliant from start to finish.

Nothing of interest from Patty McCormack, r4?

You clearly have not seen The Mini-Skirt Mob!

R5 is Joyce Dewitt

Think lustier, r7.

Is nothing sacred to you whores?

Thanks for the link. Evidently I’ve been misusing the word classic.

The opening credits had to be truly the most cheaply done credits ever.

It really was doomed from the start.

A good friend of mine LOVES this show, though. Like "megafan." I can't say I have ever watched even an episode.

The sad thing about The Ropers is that Norman and Audra kind of got screwed.

They sure did R12.

Jeffrey Tambor has a face only a mother could love. But he always looked to me like he was packing a Big One.

Music by Sesame Street. Really!

The dopiest music ever. We used to say it was a coworker’s theme song.

The Ropers Theme

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R13, I read that the ABC execs were contractually obligated to bring Audra and Norman back to "Three's Company" if "The Ropers" was cancelled within one year, so those shady bastards waited exactly one year +1 day to announce the cancellation even though they had planned it earlier, leaving Audra and Normal out of a job.

R14- Watching him on the Ropers he seemed a bit homosexual.

Patty McCormack used her experience on The Ropers to calibrate her Pat Nixon characters she’d have years later in Frost/Nixon. You can totally see it in the way she holds her tennis racket during those credits.

R17, they wanted another hit, let's be honest. But having them out meant swapping two salaries for one, Don Knotts, whom they preferred anyways.

The Man About the House spinoff, George and Mildred actually ran longer than the show that spawned it. But the Ropers was terrible and poor Norman Fell never wanted to do it. He was right. There was a bigger problem because with Mr. Roper in the lead, he became very unpleasant to watch as his various prejudices became harder to overlook.

The Ropers had a much weaker supporting cast, whereas Three’s Company had a strong cast with good characters.

That opening was painful to watch. It's like they were all standing in front of a chroma key wall and no one bothered to put any picture or graphic over. Why that show never did what every other show did (show clips from the show with a catchy theme song over it), we will never know.

They needed a cross-over show featuring Helen Roper and Peggy Bundy together.

R21 I wouldn’t write it off to his prejudices. Archie Bunker was worse in this department and his character was on tv 12 years. As talented as Tambor and McCormack are, their characters were fairly dull. It just wasn’t as fun not having John, Joyce and Suzanne for them to interact with. They definitely needed better, probably older, supporting characters and better writing. But even this probably wasn’t going to save the show.

Like those cheesy opening credits, the show itself just didn't seem to be trying very hard, on any level. I guess they thought the Ropers themselves would be a huge draw, and they half-assed everything else.

R3, the kid who played David was Evan Cohen and I agree, he played sad very well but he also seemed sweet. But the scenes with him and Mr. Roper seem very cringy today. Evan Cohen left the business and became a teacher.

I wanted to add I thought he would have been good as Danny in The Shining

Lucky for us we can watch the whole mess on Tubi.

WTF? I was just flipping through channels about an hour ago and “The Ropers” was actually on.

R30 What channel?

R31, Antenna TV, 1191 on my cable lineup.

R2 in the days of glass cathode ray TVs there was so much picture information lost to overscan that that background edge would have never been seen.

Remember TVs weren’t exactly perfect square boxes and a lot of them were so rounded they were almost circles.

What was Stanley’s occupation in the spin-off? I can’t remember and I can’t remember why he and Helen moved to what was supposed to be a snooty, upscale townhouse. (My father, who grew up in a row house hated the rebranding to townhouse.)

I thought the Ropers new place was unattractive and dull.

I loved the Santa Monica apartment building set.

R32 Thank you. I’m glad Antenna TV is still around.

R34, he was retired. The sale of the Santa Monica house was so large that it allowed them to move to Cheviot Hills (although the actual condo is near Paramount in Hancock Park.)

[quote] What was Stanley’s occupation in the spin-off?

American gigolo. The irony was not lost on Helen.