My Three Sons (TV Series) You Can't Go Home (1970) User Reviews

Robbie Goes Home

[wes-connors · 8/10 · 28 August 2015]

An old classmate from Bryant Park asks Rob (Don Grady) to be best man at his marriage. Happy to be going to Bryant Park for the first time since the Douglas family moved to California, Rob leaves the triplets with Uncle Charley (William Demarest) and Barbara (Beverly Garland) so he and Katie (Tina Cole) can attend the wedding. Rob is looking forward to seeing the old small town, and is anxious to share its charm with Katie. Little Dodie (Dawn Lyn) is looking forward to helping her mom take care of "Robbie's adorable rotten babies." Steve (Fred MacMurray) thinks Rob's going to be disappointed, believing you can never really go back home and accurately recapture the past...

"My Three Sons" ran out of steam after a healthy run, then more than doubled its television stay with gimmicks. Before you knew how the last change in situation or characters was doing, they changed again. These changes (some forced) were relaxingly paced, however. Arguably the most successful alteration in format was the pairing of Don Grady and Tina Cole (as Rob and Katie)...

Here, Rob and Katie take center stage as they "return" to the old Douglas home. We are bracketed with just the right amount of cast to make the entire production a winner. From young Gary Grimes to old Burt Mustin, the supporting cast is perfect. Chip and Ernie (Stanly and Barry Livingston) appear only in brief flashback, but it's a fine moment. Best of all is Bryant Park Hotel clerk Olan Soule (as Everett Mindermann). His inability to remember "Don" (!) Douglas is hilarious and Mr. Grady delivers one of his best late-series performances. In the end, we get to see what happened to the old Douglas home. It's all beautifully written by the prolific George Tibbles.

******** You Can't Go Home (Feb. 1970-02-07) Frederick De Cordova ~ Don Grady, Tina Cole, Olan Soule, Yale Summers

This episode exhibits all the problems with My Three Sons

[hansonjb-59317 · 3/10 · 26 July 2020]

This series has some good episodes but many so so ones. One of the biggest problems, especially after Season 3--the sons don't really have consistent friends. Sudsy and Hank both exited. Tim had already exited by the end of Season 2. Other than Ernie (who became a brother) and some short lived or rarely seen people--the sons have no consistent friends (Gordon for Ernie is a short lived exception). Further, beginning in Season 10--Chip and Ernie barely appear in many episodes and especially in the case of Chip don't appear at all. The show lost its My Three Sons feel (even though Katie, Barbara, Polly, and Dodie are great additions imo--its just that the three sons aren't really much of the show season 10 and after). In this episode specifically--Chip and Ernie don't appear except in a clip from an old episode. Robbie visits Bryant Park and who is he going to visit? After Hank, he doesn't have a friend from there that we really know of. Robbie's "old friends" in this episode are ones did not appear before. Who is the groom? Generic guy we don't know. It all adds up to a lifeless episode--with pictures of their old house being the only actually touching moments and that kind of epitomizes the series as a whole as it continued and finally crashed bad in season 12 when Robbie left, Chip appears in maybe 1/3 of the episodes, and Fred MacMurray doubled as his Scottish cousin or whatever.