My Three Sons (TV Series) Whatever Happened to Ernie? (1972) User Reviews

Unknown Farewell

[drsconsulting · 7/10 · 6 October 2021]

Decent storyline where Steve's boss at the plant has trouble with his teenage son, asking the Douglas's for advice.

Sort of an odd way to end such a long-running TV Series, perhaps the actors/writers didn't know this was their last episode? And is just me, or do the parents of this teenage boy seem super old, like they'd be his grandparents instead of his parents?? In any event, it's always sad to come to the end of a great era like ending a wonderful television show. But fortunately we have reruns to watch in forever-land.

Thanks Ernie

[BigSkyMax · 7/10 · 23 January 2020]

My title is the last words spoken in the series, by Fred MacMurray to the last of his three sons (there were four actually). Twelve years on, what had started as a whimsical comic vehicle for Fred MacMurray crashed on a serious note. Son Ernie is tasked by a friend of Steve's to narc out their sullen teenager. Surely a Douglass lad, so straight an arrow, can reform any deviant. And of course he does, with the show's trademark 'Sure Dad!' effortlessness. And that's why we won the war on pot. Everyone expected the M3S dream to go on for another season and were caught unprepared when it didn't. But 1972 was a world of different from 1960, and all the stars of the 1940s were shown the TV door around the same time. There was no room for maudlin sentiment on television anymore. They had to make room for the Brady Bunch.

It's A Pity

[therealamypie · 1/10 · 12 September 2023]

I finally saw this episode (I may have seen it in its original run, but it's been over 50 years and I don't remember) and it is really a pity that this wound up being the unintended farewell episode. Such poor material, I found myself feeling terribly sad for Fred MacMurray, Beverly Garland and Barry Livingston having to work with it. The actors that played the "troubled" teen's parents were just horrible, like it was their first time acting! I know that the quality and subject matter of the scripts have been going downhill for a few seasons, particularly season 12, but this was just hard to watch, almost as though it was sabotaged. The cast and crew deserved better than this, at very least a special holiday episode that would have sort of tied things up, or at least left viewers with a good feeling. I loved this show as a kid, and I still love watching it now, but the original black and white episodes with William Frawley were the best.