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My Three Sons - General Discussion


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I saw one the other day where everybody travels to another country except Ernie and Uncle Charlie. They meet an old friend who's an actor and puts them in his TV show. I loved it

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I just got MeTV (yay me!) and I was happy to see that one of my favorite episodes is playing on Monday morning -- the one where Katie discovers she is pregnant with triplets.  Gotta love the days before ultrasounds!  I believe the childbirth episode immediately follows and that is another favorite.  

I'm really looking forward to seeing the episodes where Steve meets and marries Barbara (even if, as noted above, it introduces Dodie into the mix).   I particularly want to see the episode where Steve and Barbara go on their honeymoon and the young couples at the resort treat them like an old married couple.  

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My favorite is the episode with Katie alone in the house and hears the "heartbeat" haunted sump pump.  I loved Katie and I thought Steve was one of the best dads on television.  

 

I particularly want to see the episode where Steve and Barbara go on their honeymoon and the young couples at the resort treat them like an old married couple.

 

 

I never saw that episode, sounds like a great one!

 

I really like MeTV, but I don't get all the shows because of infomercials the station that carries MeTV runs.  I miss some good shows that way.

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I'm not arguing with that. However; the few times he was allowed to be a musician, he seemed happiest -until Steve, Katie, Bub or Uncle Charley shot down his ambition. Perhaps if they'd let him be a beatnik instead of a square, he wouldn't have taken his frustrations out on everyone else.  Just a thought.

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(edited)

I just finished reading Barry Livingston' s autobiography. It drags in some parts. But overall I found it quite interesting. He tells some amusing stories about his time on the show and being on the Desilu lot. He has worked pretty steadily as an adult in minor parts. He has been in a number of TV shows and movies that I watched but didn't realize it was him. Has anyone else read it?

Edited by Katjoy26
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Egad is right. That was the season when they showed some of the episodes 10:30 at night and I was too young to stay up to watch so never saw until now. Caught a few minutes of a Fergus episode and its cringeworthy. Looks like he wasn't around the entire season.

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Egad is right. That was the season when they showed some of the episodes 10:30 at night and I was too young to stay up to watch so never saw until now. Caught a few minutes of a Fergus episode and its cringeworthy. Looks like he wasn't around the entire season.

 

I had always heard about this "lost" season, and presumed that Fergus was around all year.  Looks like he was just featured as a 4-episode opening-season storyline arc. There are some decent fun moments, especially with Fergus trading barbs with Uncle Charlie.  Playing Fergus gave Fred MacMurray a chance to play something other than boring droll old Steve. but I can't believe how bad the voice dub is.  

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There was no one to get married off that season (Ernie too young, lol) so I guess they needed a story to reel people back in.

I couldn't take more than 15 minutes of the first episode - he shows up unexpectedly, expects a place to stay and dictates how they conduct their dinner time.

There is an amusing episode from later in the season where Steve is left with the triplets all day while the rest of the family is out (part planned, other last minute). Steve has a time keeping them from getting into trouble but manages to lose them anyway. No Fergus.

Edited by Cobb Salad
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With her carrying around her doll Myrtle all the time it was like they were trying to make her another Buffy (Family Affair) unless they thought all little girls did that.

Barbara looked too old to have a daughter around Dodie's age. If she were at least Ernie's age it would have made more sense but it seemed like they needed a little child to go along with the widow Steve was going to marry.

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While i would not like a sweet, obedient little girl in a flowery print dress and patent leather shoes, i cannot tolerate Dopey, sorry Dodie, who is a spoiled little girl who thinks the world revolves around her and also thinks the highly stressed mother of infant triplets should play dolls with her.

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It's easy to save M3S for at least a season or two more - just give it a better timeslot. If they went for the Chip and Polly's baby option - it would probably have been a baby girl in order give Dodie something to relate to in a way that she couldn't do with the male triplets.

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Dawn Lyn who played Dodie Douglas operates a Facebook profile under her character's name. Understandable, since most of the tv audience wouldn't know her real name.

One of my other online names asked Dawn if, had the show lasted to show a pubescent Dodie, would they have done a "Dodie's first bra" episode.

Her response?

" Lol! They probably would have done that episode. Why not? They obviously had no problem putting me in dresses so short that you could see my panties."

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On ‎9‎/‎11‎/‎2015 at 11:55 AM, Melissa Glenson said:

Just imagine if ABC had succeeded in its' legal attempt to force CBS to give Dawn Lyn back so she could star as Prudence in Nanny and the Professor.

but then we wouldn't have had the pleasure of Kim Richards on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I was so bummed when this show was cancelled. It was a part of a great Friday night line up along with The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. Yes, those were the good ole days.

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Yay!  The California Episodes finally began this week on MeTV.  

MeTV shows them in wide-screen (letterboxed on my Comcast), but there appears to be little distortion. Not sure if they re-mastered the originals (unlikely) or just are using some really creative/good cropping of the top/bottom of the screen.  It's so good to be away from dreary Bryant Park.

Hopefully MeTV keeps the show on the schedule for the Katie Year, the Triplet Year, the Barbara Year, the Polly Year, and (dare we dream) the Fergus Year.

The final Fergus Year used to be on youtube, but it went away. Perhaps that means it has been sold off into the MeTV package and we will see in on-air for the first time since the 1970s.  Of course, that would be months from now as we have to cycle through the earlier CA seasons.

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I hope they show the rest of the series too as there’s a bunch of episodes from the last season that I’ve never seen.   I caught a couple of them on You Tube but it seems the whole season was never there.  Now I have to remember when it’s goung to be on...

I have Comcast too and haven’t noticed any distortion, maybe it’s the MeTv affiliate that’s the issue.  

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49 minutes ago, Cobb Salad said:

I have Comcast too and haven’t noticed any distortion, maybe it’s the MeTv affiliate that’s the issue.  

What I meant was that the show has no noticeable distortion.  Sometimes when they turn a 4X3 screen to a 16X9 screen, the actors turn a bit portly. Or they lose the top of their heads. The picture seems really clear and crisp, so maybe it's possible that they did some type of re-mastering from the originals.

The last time the CA episodes aired on my MeTV affiliate, the entire station was still airing in the old-style 4X3 format.  And the M3Sons episodes often looked grainy and fuzzy. The first two Katie Episodes were crisp and bright and colorful.

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On 2/3/2018 at 5:23 PM, SanDiegoInExile said:

Yay!  The California Episodes finally began this week on MeTV.  

MeTV shows them in wide-screen (letterboxed on my Comcast), but there appears to be little distortion. Not sure if they re-mastered the originals (unlikely) or just are using some really creative/good cropping of the top/bottom of the screen.  It's so good to be away from dreary Bryant Park.

Hopefully MeTV keeps the show on the schedule for the Katie Year, the Triplet Year, the Barbara Year, the Polly Year, and (dare we dream) the Fergus Year.

The final Fergus Year used to be on youtube, but it went away. Perhaps that means it has been sold off into the MeTV package and we will see in on-air for the first time since the 1970s.  Of course, that would be months from now as we have to cycle through the earlier CA seasons.

What is the Fergus year?  I consider myself a My Three Sons aficionado, and I do not remember this. 

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Laird (Lord) Fergus McBain Douglas of Sithian Bridge was Steve's lookalike cousin from the "old country". Fred MacMurray portrayed him and another actor dubbed in all his words with a heavy (Scottish?) brogue. It's comically bad dubbing.  He came to visit the Douglas Family and romanced a waitress to launch the last season.  I called it the Fergus Year, but really he was only around at the beginning of Season Twelve.  

Several years ago (2010?), all Season 12 episodes were on YT for quite awhile.  Not sure when they disappeared, but they are not there anymore.

http://sharetv.com/shows/my_three_sons/episodes/season_12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Three_Sons

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(edited)

I have to admit that the wives intrigued me more than I would have expected (at least via seeing them rerun decades after the show).

Since Katie was the first female to marry into the Douglas Clan since the late 1st Mrs. Steve  (and not amscray like Meredith MacRae's character did with the original Eldest Son Mike), I thought it was intriguing seeing her bringing some feminine touches into the 3 generational male household- and initially butted heads with Uncle Charley but soon worked out an agreeable truce.  The wedding episode was funny in that it showed how she and her almost entirely female family  and bridal party were carefully pacing  themselves through every detail to get everything just right the morning before the wedding- while Douglas Clan woke up at virtually the last minute,frantically dressed and barely made it to the church on time. The downside was that they made it seem as though her bearing and caring for triplet sons was as easy as falling off a log!  Also, since Robbie had abruptly left to work in Peru for the last season (since the late Don Grady parted ways from the show), I could imagine she was hanging onto the union just to get help with triplet caregiving from her extended and extensive in-laws but perhaps would split from Robbie once the triplets were old enough for school and she could work outside the home.

Barbara had a little more spunk than Katie and it was interesting to see her sometimes defer to the younger woman's judgment re how to deal with all these guys solely due to Katie having been married to Robbie longer than she'd been to Steve. Yeah, it also seemed odd that she seemed to relate more to her husband, stepsons-in-law, stepdaughters-in-law, stepgrandsons and even Uncle Charley (her stepsons' great-uncle) than her own too-young daughter who looked as though she'd picked up at the last minute from a hippie commune bake sale rather than someone she had borne and raised from birth.

  Polly was intriguing in that she seemed more desperate to marry to escape her domineering father than actually being in love with her husband  Chip. I mean, even Steve gave Polly's father a jaundiced 'get lost' look rather than buy that he was SO concerned for Polly's wellbeing re them eloping. Oddly enough, I could imagine her splitting from Chip ASAP once she realized that she didn't need him to save her.

Edited by Blergh
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In my story where the Douglas boys are supernaturally transformed into girls, I have Ernie subvert the "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" trope by having him freak out when he realizes that he will be the one filling out a bikini in California.

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Beverly Garland was 43 when she started the show. Who knew? Yup! That was very old to have a kid that age in 1969. That said, it's not unheard of today. Maybe, Barbara was ahead of her time. LOL!!!!

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Having Barbara have that young of a daughter was ridiculous, but I guess if a younger actress was cast, people would have thought Steve was robbing the cradle.

The addition of Dodie was totally not needed IMO.  She was gratingly annoying.

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On 3/25/2018 at 1:51 AM, JacquelineAppleton said:

Don Fedderson tried to create another Buffy Davis in Dodie - as for that weird puppet Myrtle *shudder*

Other than both being young girls, I see no similarities between Dodie and Buffy.

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