What are some dark things about the 1970s sitcom Three’s Company that viewers seemed to ignore?

Let’s see:

1. The Ropers (especially Stanley aka Mr. Roper) seem to be a rather odd set of bigots — They don’t want single men to live with single women outside of marriage, they don’t mind if Jack Tripper lives there, but they don’t want him to have a gay companion, and they oddly don’t seem to have any minority tenants despite the fact that the Greater Los Angeles area has had a substantial minority population since its inception. The Ropers seem to have attitudes that fit more into the 1950s, than they would the late 1970s, and one of them seems to be a dislike for minorities and other groups.
2. Mr. Furley (Comic veteran Don Knotts) is a voyeur — While that was moderately funny in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s also rather creepy. His leering at Janet, Chrissie, Cindy and Terri (also Lana during her brief run on the series) becomes distasteful very quickly, he seems to be “around” even when there’s no good reason for him to be, and he constantly stares at the show’s female characters longer than is appropriate. Basically his presence becomes unnecessary as the character does nothing but eye hump the female characters at every opportunity.
3. Jack Tripper seems to be truly lazy — There were THOUSANDS of restaurants in the Los Angeles Metro area in the 1970s but Jack (who is supposed to be an exceptional chef) instead of getting a job at one or more them and working his way up the ladder, decides to spend nearly a decade in culinary school which normally only lasts 1–3 years AT MOST. Despite being so broke that he has to live with four different women, none of whom he’s sleeping with, Tripper decides to take the toughest route to becoming a chef, which he finally does years after he could have been one. He also doesn’t work an extra job to make ends meet, and he seemingly is broke or nearly so at the beginning of every episode. Basically, Jack Tripper is a bum and the series celebrates that deficiency.
4. Jack kept up the “ I’m trying f*ck you/Not really” vibe long after it was no longer funny — If Jack wasn’t going to try to bang any of the four women who live with him, then he should have left that avenue alone within weeks or months of moving in, at the longest. Instead Jack tried the “Whoops, we almost f*cked” gag up until the seventh season when he meets his eventual wife, who although wealthy, doesn’t allow Jack to move in with her, and remove the temptation for him to tap his attractive and straight female roommates. Again it was “funny” in the first season, but dull and eventually creepy in the later ones.
5. Larry, the upstairs neighbor, kept up the “I’d like to f*ck you” gag with all four of the female roommates far longer than would be viewed as being amusing — Most women don’ like a guy creeping on them for weeks or months on end, and if they can avoid that individual, they do if they don’t straighten him (if possible) early on. Larry’s attempts to plow the roommates isn’t funny, and comes creepily close to sexual harassment and assault on multiple occasions. It was really never amusing and it grew progressively darker as the character received more airtime.

Three’s Company was a bizarre program, filled with a collection of creepy and sad characters, most of whom apparently are sexually dysfunctional. The Ropers are a kindly old who also happen to be bigots. And Mr. Furley is a dirty old man, but not in the harmless manner that might be amusing.

Watch it at your own risk….