TBT: When Jack Tripper Went A Little Nuts On “Three’s Company”

"Come on knock on our door, we've been waiting for you..."
From: NewNowNext

 John Ritter played Jack Tripper, the womanizing bachelor who pretended to be gay for all eight seasons of the sex-crazed ABC sitcom Three’s Company, but in the final season Ritter flashed more than his pearly whites to the audience at home.

 In episode 161 there’s a quick scene where Jack goes into his room to change. As he sits on the bed to take off his shoes some skin is visible under his boxer shorts:

The episode aired in 1983, but it wasn’t until 2001 that an eagle eyed viewer spotted Jack’s junk and reported it to MSNBC’s Jeanette Walls. It turned out that Ritter had been flashing the entire world for the past 18 years of countless hours of reruns.

Nickelodeon, who at the time was airing Three’s Company as part of their Nick at Nite block of programming, even released a statement saying “yes, his scrotum falls out of his shorts.”

Ritter himself acknowledged the TV urban legend during a Conan O’Brien skit entitled “Secrets”:

The actor also commented on it during another appearance on O’Brien’s talk show:

It was a brief shot, and only lasted a second. No one back then noticed it, and when it went out over the air, there were no VHS recorders or DVD players around that could catch it. Then, very recently, some guy with a freeze frame caught the image when pausing the recording. So he called Nick at Nite.

The clip of the shorts reveal posted online is supposedly unedited, but unless a pre-2001 version of the episode is found, it is hard to tell since the flash is so fast.

Ritter had the final say on the matter when the New York Observer asked him about the incident: “I’ve requested that [Nickelodeon] air both versions, edited and unedited,” said Ritter. “Because sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don’t.”