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Johnny Cash rules. Everyone agrees. Even Justin Timberlake thinks so. With his 1990s, Rick Rubin-engineered career renaissance, a whole new generation discovered what many before already knew: that Johnny Cash was one of the coolest musicians of the century. The Man in Black rocked. Point taken. We can all agree.
But let us not speak of Johnny Cash. Let us speak, instead, of John Ritter. Because it seemed, sadly, somehow fitting that Ritter should be overshadowed even in death, because he was often overshadowed, or at least taken for granted, in much of his life.
Of course, back in the 1970s, Ritter was one of TV's biggest stars. As the girl-ogling, double-date-arranging, couch-hurdling centerpiece of Three's Company, he was at least as famous as, say, Ray Romano is today.
But even back then, fame came with a caveat. Critics hated Three's Company. This included my parents -- who, while not professional TV critics, were always quick to offer an opinion, usually right before snapping the TV off. They, like most right-thinking parents everywhere, thought of Three's Company as vaguely immoral, distastefully lascivious trash. Little did they realize that it existed, in fact, in the august tradition of French bedroom farce, with its heavy reliance on mistaken identity and miscomprehended conversations. Little did I realize that either, since I was about eight years old at the time, and in any case was too busy laughing at Jack Tripper-fall-down-go-boom.
All I knew was that this show was forbidden fruit, and that it was funny. It was very funny -- much funnier than the snooty and highbrow sitcoms that my father and older brother chuckled through, while I stared dumbly: shows like Barney snooze Miller and All in the yawn Family and Ta zzzzzz xi.
Yes, looking back, I realize that those shows were landmarks of TV culture. And, I'm sure, that if I rewatched much of Three's Company now, it very well might not stand up. But I still love Three's Company more. Because John Ritter was to me, from a very young age, the very model of the modern man I aspired to be.
Sure, he was so klutzy that he couldn't walk past a dormant sofa without ending up face down on the carpet. Sure, he told the occasional semi-harmless fib. (He was the only one who got harmed. In fact, I still remember an episode in which he resolved to tell only the truth -- and wound up insulting everyone else. Truth = trouble: message received, TV!)
And sure, he got in hot water from time to time, having to run up and down the stairs between his apartment and Larry's because he'd scheduled two dates on the same night, and then the whole scheme would get ruined anyway because Mr. Roper would show up and tell both girls that Jack was...you know, and then he'd make that Tinkerbell motion with his hand.
But come on! Two girls! A beach house! That feathered hair! That insouciant beachbum lifestyle! Plus, he was a chef! He opened his own restaurant! Jack's Bistro! To an eight-year-old, homeboy had the whole package.
After the show shut down, and viewers were no longer invited to come and knock on its door, Ritter seemed to fall into that post-hit purgatory that afflicts so many former sitcom stars. Still, I followed his career closely and with enthusiasm.
I cheerfully tolerated Three's A Crowd, the ill-advised spin-off that was almost as ill-advised and unnecessary as AfterM*A*S*H*. I watched all the episodes of Hooperman, the before-its-time dramedy with no laugh track. And I will always sit through Hero At Large, the 1980 movie in which Ritter plays a guy who's mistaken for a superhero, whenever I catch it on cable, which is increasingly infrequently these days.
(Okay, no, I didn't watch Problem Child or Problem Child 2 or any of Fish Police or Hearts Afire. I said I admired John Ritter, not that I married him.)
But I always rooted for him, in the way you root for favourite stars, your ears pricking up whenever you hear their names mentioned, incongruously, on Entertainment Tonight, or you see them, after all these years, turning up in People magazine. John Ritter? In Sling Blade? And he's getting great reviews? To me, that was good news, like hearing a promising weather report. It made me, for no good reason, a little happier.
And when 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter premiered, I was much older and in no mood for yet another assembly-line produced family comedy about rascally kids and their shrugging, eye-rolling parents. But then again -- John Ritter. I was really happy he was back, that he hadn't faded totally into obscurity, or turned up hosting some real-live-video police-chase show.
Instead, He was on TV, doing comedy, which made the world seem right again, or at least as good as it was back when I was eight, eating cookies, and spitting out my milk while watching Jack Tripper dance around a party with a plant on his head like Carmen Miranda, because he took a bunch of tranquilizers before boarding a plane, and was now as high and as giddy and as happy as a loosed kite.
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