Dodie.......UGH


I can't stand her at all. That woman is WAY to old to have a daughter that young(if you can even call her a daughter). He hair cut is way to butch, and that weird puppet she carries around. PLEASE, just keep her off the show!

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Even as a kid, I thought Dodie was annoying!

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And, a la Cindy Brady, her underwear were always showing under super-short dresses!

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and I thought I was THE ONLY PERSON who felt that way about Dodie, Thank you

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Nope, it's a pretty universal feeling. I am pretty sure I saw her in some lebian documentary a few years later. "The Word is Out" (1977)

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Beverly Garland/Barbara was *not* too old to have a child of Dodie's age. Beverly Garland was born in 1926, so she was about 42 or 43 when she joined My Three Sons. Dodie was about 5 or 6, so Beverly would have been only 37 or so when a child of Dodie's age was born. Lots of women over 35 and even over 40 are having babies, and they were even back then. I think Lucille Ball was around age 40 or so when she had her real-life kids, Lucie and Desi.

I do agree, though, that Dodie was a very annoying character and child actress.

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dodie was garbage as well as katie. lets face it, the girls ruined that show and it wasnt anything great to start with. and now (on metv) barbaras feeble father in law is visiting telling steve how lucky he is to have barbara and dodie! ugh ugh ugh!

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i liked dodie. i was a tomboy just like she was and i could relate to her.

and don't even start me on the one 'barbie-like' doll that me and my sisters owned. every other doll of our collection had a 'sorta' mate...someone who matched up with the other doll..male or female, but our 'dodie' had no one. and to this day me and my sisters call a 'dodie' a 'dodie', meaning they are an outcast and a loner. they are on their own and they have no connection with anyone. to be a 'dodie' is to be an isolated soul. weird, i know, but that is what a 'dodie' is to us.





hi, my name is carleen...i'm harmless.

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I have a love-hate relationship with the character of Dodie. Sometimes she seems to just bug me. But then on some episodes, Dodie is all right. In fact, as a little sister, she was kinda cool with Chip and Ernie. She and Ernie definitely hit it off pretty well...actually she and Chip were also cool. And she wasn't a stupid little kid either. She was pretty perceptive.

I did NOT like the clothes they made that child wear....the dresses. They dressed Dodie, who was in 1st-3rd grade during the show's run, in LITTLE girls' dresses; the kind you'd buy a kid who is UNDER 5. You saw the difference when she went to school and other little girls her age dressed more age appropriate. Poor Dodie. If I were here I'd wear pants all the time just for that reason. Oh, that's right, this is a time when girls were not allowed to wear pants to school. Poor Dodie.

Also, what I didn't like is how they made that little girl start calling Steve "Daddy" almost immediately after the wedding. Really? I mean, can't the kid get to REALLY know you first? They didn't rush the boys with calling Barbara, "Mom". But little Dodie is basically FORCED to call Steve "Daddy". smh

“Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with” –Brian to Tracy in Mahogany

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Dodie and her mom were the "Shark jump" I hated Dodie as a kid. I always thought the mom was gonna poison Steve and take his money. Dodie seemed retarded to me. Who thought it was cute to have little girls underpants showing?

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It started with Shirley Temple in the 1930's.
Actually, some of the camera angles on her were perverse.
In fact, author Graham Greene referred to ST films as "soft-core porn".

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Speaking of shark-jumping, there used to an independent site, jumptheshark.com, but now that just redirects to tvguide. But on that site was an old disorganized message board, per se, in which discussions took place, and because so many MTS fans said it was Dodie coming in (rather than Barbara) that made it plain the show had jumped the shark, Dawn Lyn answered some of those things said about her character. They were highlighted in red, so I presume that should be a sign that it was authenticated that it was really she. She said she was embarrassed, even at that age, to wear the dresses they had her wear. As for being annoying, like the dresses, she could do nothing about it, but she just did and said what she was instructed. She did admit some disappointment at the things people say about her character, especially in using insulting words like "retarded" to describe her, or saying they ought to have left her to live with her grandmother instead of coming to live at the Douglas house.

My own view is that the show was clearly taking a more serious approach than in its early years, which seemed to begin with the move to California, which also began the Robbie/Katie facet. That season and each succeeding one began by introducting a new plotline, then developed it over a few eps, then having a season's climax quite early. After Robbie and Katie's marraige, the next year was the birth of the triplets, the next Steve & Barbara, and the next Chip & Polly (then the final, which really shouldn't have happened). But the dramady seemed to increase every year, so it shouldn't be surprising that some elements are not simple and rosy. Dodie may have been baggage that came with Barbara-- and the show was set up from the beginning for the right woman to come into Steve's life-- but that's just reality. Kids that come into a second marriage are quite likely to upset some things; almost inevitably to upset the 'normalcy' of the familiar. And since the show was by then becoming more drama-- almost soap-opera like at times-- a perfect kid wouldn't have matched that direction. Of course, it may be argued, therefore, that Barbara, like Katie before, was almost too perfect a wife, so then, why not a perfect kid? [I know Tina Cole once described those years of the show as "the Stepford Wives era."] So, I don't know-- except it was surely easier to have her play a less-than-perfect kid; perfection would take a lot of time, you know.

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One immediately comes to mind: Family Affair - Buffy's Mrs. Beasley doll. Like Buffy asked, "What happened to Mr. Beasley?"

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You know, it seems to me that when "Barbara" & "Dodie" joined the series, there is an ep where someone asks Barbara about Dodie, saying, "That's Mary's child, right"?

Meaning...Barbara adopted Dodie perhaps???

I have the whole series, will have to do a refresher, and try to identify which ep this is.

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Great point and rebuttal, "mg1119!"

Even though I was an adopted son, my parents were also, like Beverly Garland's character of "Barbara Harper Douglas" in "My Three Sons," older parents who waited until they were in their late 30s to adopt my older sister, and were in their early 40s when I was adopted.

Part of the reason for having adopted children later is my parents were probably trying to conceive for several years before finding out they were unable to do so (also, perhaps, an early indicator of the cancer my mother later developed, which took her life at only 55 years old in 1970), as well the fact they waited until such a time they could afford to responsibly provide for two children, not a bad idea at all whether raising adopted or biologically-conceived children.

Another point to ponder is, in the years (the 1950s) my parents were trying to conceive, the medical technology was more primitive--no in vitro fertilization nor ultra-sound technology available to prospective parents. Today, even with one or both parents sterile, the possibility of a mother carrying an artificially-inseminated fetus to term gives parents something closer to their own biologically-conceived offspring than in those primitive days previous to the 1970s. And I also really think someday it will be possible to even choose the gender of one's biologically-conceived children. I suspect many parents have had unwanted children trying to conceive that boy or girl they felt missing from their ideal families.

But, of course, it is not whether one is an adopted or biological child, nor even the age of the parents that matter, but whether a child is cared for and loved by whoever are her or his parents.

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Oh, I sooooo can't stand Dodie! Not cute, annoying, bad actress, etc, etc.....

The most annoying episode was the one where Dodie feels her brothers are playing too rough w/ her & spends the entire episode crying about every little thing. The part where the football accidentally bumps her arm & everyone rushes over & to fawn over the poor little princess makes me puke every time.

Someone should have just told her- "Suck it up, buttercup!" instead of reinforcing her babyish behavior.

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She NEVER seemed happy! She was always complaining or depressed.

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OMG it's called writing. Not the girls fault at all. It's the writers and the director's fault.

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"OMG it's called writing. Not the girls fault at all. It's the writers and the director's fault."

Thank you! Look at some of the dialogue that Chip and Ernie use to spit out. "Dumb junk"
I just recently watched an episode the other morning. It took place in the Chip and Polly period.
He had told his dad that he loved Polly and he wanted to marry her. I noticed that when he was around Polly he said some really strange things. He acted as though he was embarrassed to show any affection. He acted more like a brother!
One could say that growing up in a house of men might have something to do with that but I think it had a great deal to do with writing and direction.

As for Dodie, I agree that the character was cringe worthy. Don't know about Dawn, the little girl who played her. All I know is that she was just reading her lines and following her cues. That's a lot for a little girl who isn't a great actress to handle.

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To the OP & everyone else: I think I can explain why they put Dodie in. (The Jump The Shark site used to refer to it as Add a Brat ) In the case of "My Three Sons" Ernie was getting too old to be "cute" so they added Dodie so the show to still "be cute" (To me they should have waited for the triplets to get older so the show could still add to the "cute" factor.But that's just MY opinion)

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this seemed to be a default for any show that was in trouble.bring in a cute kid to try to boost ratings e.g.The Partridge Family,All In The Family.in every case it was too little too late.

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this seemed to be a default for any show that was in trouble.bring in a cute kid to try to boost ratings e.g.The Partridge Family,All In The Family.in every case it was too little too late.

The Brady Bunch, Married With Children, The Cosby Show...

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Someone on JTS said that they diapered the wrong end of Dodie... AMEN to that!

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I still think Dawn Lyn was a good little actress except she screamed all her lines. It kinda gives me a headache when shes talking. But she's a little girl who did a good job as the character.

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I felt that they could've found a better looking girl for the role because she looked like a little boy and they dressed her like one too always wearing pants with that same striped t-shirt instead of a cute girly blouse but when she did wear dresses, they were too short and ugly. She was a brat too!!

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She wasn't a brat at all! What show were you watching? And she was a good little actress.

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Dodie was such the brat, she was rude, inconsiderate, with no conscience or empathy, demanding constant attention like a puppy and then running off on her own without any guilt or responsibility ever shown or instructed to her. She constantly inconvenienced others and her mother never parented her. Girls Gone Wild! It was like the producers wanted to totally cancel the positive addition of Katie as the new wife. Far worse than "The Andy Griffith Show" character Helen Crump or even Ellie Walker who tried their best to destroy the soul of Sheriff Taylor. When Dodie arrived, suddenly it seemed a female conspiracy to be loud, proud, and unlikeable was underway. I only watch My Three Sons up to this point because the show was about a family and the interpersonal relationships, foibles, and lessons learned while living without a mother. With a mother and Dodie, she learned nothing. Peanuts' Peppermint Patty had more charm and warmth. What in the world was Steve Douglas thinking?

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If M3S had been ten years later, would we have seen a Very Special Episode where Dodie is captured by a child molester ala the Gordon Jump episode of "Diff'rent Strokes"?

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