The story revolves around three single roommates: Jack Tripper , Janet Wood, and Chrissy Snow, who all platonically live together in a Santa Monica, California , [ 1 ] apartment complex owned by Stanley and Helen Roper. The show, a farce , chronicles the escapades and hijinks of the trio's constant misunderstandings, social lives, and financial struggles.
A top hit from to , the series has remained popular in syndication and through DVD releases. When Eleanor decides to move out, culinary school student Jack Tripper John Ritter crashes her going-away party at the apartment and is found by Janet and Chrissy the next morning, passed out in the bathtub.
Needing someone to cover Eleanor's share of the rent, the women offer to let Jack move in with them and he quickly accepts so that he can have a place to stay other than the local YMCA. However, overbearing landlord Stanley Roper Norman Fell refuses to allow unmarried men and women to live together in his apartment.
He allows Jack to move in only after Janet tells him that Jack is homosexual. Although Stanley's wife Helen Roper Audra Lindley quickly figures out that Jack is straight , she trusts him with the girls and keeps the secret from Stanley, who tolerates Jack, but mocks him. Frequently siding with the three roommates instead of her husband, Helen's bond with them grows through the couple's departure, leading into the spin-off The Ropers.
Jack continues the charade when new building manager Ralph Furley Don Knotts takes over the apartment complex because Mr. Furley insists that his hard-nosed brother and the building's new owner Bart Furley Hamilton Camp would also never tolerate such living situations. He originally set the series in New York, and he envisioned the male roommate as a successful, yet underpaid, chef in a fancy French restaurant, while the two female roommates were an executive secretary and a high-fashion model.
