RIP Suzanne Somers

In my tweens, one of my very favorite things was ABC's Tuesday-night lineup. I watched Happy Days at 7 Central, Laverne and Shirley at 7:30, Three's Company at 8, sometimes I took a break during Too Close for Comfort at 8:30, then my mom and I finished the evening with Hart to Hart.

Arguably the highlight each week would be the nutball situations Jack, Janet, and blonde-haired Chrissy Snow would get into at or near their Santa Monica, California apartment. Suzanne Somers, who played Chrissy, died Sunday at 77 of breast cancer in Palm Springs.

Really oddly, I got a Regal Beagle (the restaurant/bar frequented in the show) t-shirt from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law just hours before getting a breaking-news alert about her passing. She died a day before her birthday (she and I shared a birthday, October 16).

Somers ditzy persona was mesmerizing and hilarious, but in truth she was a powerhouse, getting fired from the show for demanding the same pay as John Ritter (she was getting $30,000 per episode and he was receiving $150,000) and later becoming a successful business leader, especially with the ThighMaster excercise product that she seemed to endlessly be hawking in TV infomercials.

I'll always fondly remmber her many so-dumb-they're-hilarious lines, like ""Eat your salad before it gets cold" and, when the landlord Mr. Roper showed up the shampoo the trio's rug, she asked, "Why? Does it have dandruff?"