YMMV / The Three Friends... and Jerry

• Adorkable:
  • Jerry, being a woobie with a playful and innocent personality who just wants to have friends. Not to mention his obsession for ants.
  • Thomas tries to hide it, but sometimes he just can’t help himself, especially when it comes to his passion for dancing. He also loves ostriches, even buying books about them and knowing how to make their sounds.
  • Eric is quite dorky and adorable, being a Dumb Jock.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • In the first episodes, the Three Friends are more friendly with Jerry, to the point they express concern for him after they believe he's been hospitalized in "Ant Hill". But in later episodes, they want nothing to do with him, to the point they seem to hate him and want him dead. Are they frustrated with Jerry getting them in trouble too many times? Or Characterization Marches On? "The Move" seems to imply the former.
  • Jerry in "The Move". Is he a fool who's willing to ditch healthy friendships due to his toxic relationship with the Three Friends? Or he's been abused so much that he wasn't used to the kindness of the new kids?
  • Frank. Is he the bully he acts like and is simply cruel and harsh, or is it all just a cover-up to hide his insecurities?
  • Jerry's father taking a level in jerkass in Season 3. Is he angry and humillated after what happened in "The Move"? Or a case of Flanderization?
  • Vicious Oscar framing Jerry for the lost gifts in "Christmas Party". Is it another case of Jerry's Cosmic Plaything status? Or Oscar wanted payback against the kid who indirectly ruined his life years ago?
  • Tess showing the wrong photo in "Girls Clothes". Was it truly as mistake, as she claimed? Or she didn't want to humiliate Eric on his birthday?
• Awesome Music: What 90's kid didn't get the opening song stuck in their head from time to time?
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The sketch with Jerry claiming his father to be an secret astronaut. At first it seems like one of usual lies, only for it to be Real After All.
  • Midway through "Catch the Girl" Jerry is wearing a BDSM costume and carrying a whip, with the narrator explaining he was at Frank's house playing medieval torture. Not only it has nothing to do with the episode, it is never mentioned again.
• Catharsis Factor: Jerry's Designated Monkey status may be brutal but this actually makes the few instances where he triumphs over Frank's beyond satisfactory even if only happens for a small gag in the middle of an episode where he still loses at the end.
• Common Knowledge: The American Moral Guardians outrage which supposedly resulted in the show's cancellation after just one season never happened. In fact, Fox Family ran the show for three seasons lasting through at least through spring 2000, as this schedule page from their website-archived via the Wayback Machine-will gladly clarify.
• Designated Monkey:
  • The writers intended for Jerry to be this, making him so obnoxious that the viewers would think whatever bad thing happened to him is funny, but it backfired due to the sheer amount of hatred he received from others. Especially in Season 3, when he gets blamed for things that happened due to Frank's poor impulse control.
  • Frank in his spotlight episodes. Most of the time he gets hurt, humiliated, or just generally has bad things happen to him for no reason whatsoever (such as "Supermarket" or "Neat and Tidy"). And even when he does deserve it, the punishments he receives tend to be too much or too harsh to really find amusing.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: In a cast of full off eccentric characters, Jerry's dad (the PE teacher) remains a standout among fans due to his absurd machismo that makes him a near endless quote mine.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Fans like to ship Jerry with Linda, mostly due to the chemistry they had in "Miss Jerry". And because they think Linda hooking up with Frank would be squicky.
  • Eric and Tess are often paired together too.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Anytime Roy Johnson is cruel to Oscar, especially after "The Beauty Contest". It turns out Oscar used to be a famous tv star until he failed to take a bribe from Roy, resulting in the latter ruining his career out of spite and Oscar becoming a crazy bum.
• Ho Yay:
  • In "Kissing Linda", Eric and Thomas try to kiss her, only to have an Accidental Kiss with each other.
  • In a short sketch, the Girls trick the Three Friends and Jerry into turning down the lights, making them think they'll make out with them. Jerry ends up kissing Thomas and Frank ends up kissing Eric.
  • How about Jerry and Thomas's "wrestling session" in "Neat and Tidy"?
  • Easy to miss, but in "Garden Party" Eric seems to be staring too much at Jerry in his Stripperiffic statue costume.
• The Scrappy: Linda, Mimmi and Tess especially the former, for being typical one-dimensional jerks.
• Signature Scene: "Tempting Fruit" is probably the most memorable episode, due to the rumors it was the episode that resulted in the show's cancellation.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Since around the time the show premiered, many people believed that the show was a ripoff or inspired by South Park. Ironically this show was produced years earlier than South Park.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: A frequent complaint with the series is how it could be hard to find someone to root for. The Three Friends and the Girls largely lose a lot of the sympathetic qualities they had in the earlier episodes, and the retribution they receive can often be overkill for the shenanigans they get up to. And even for the characters that do manage to remain sympathetic (Jerry, his mother, Dick Priest), it can be hard to watch them constantly getting beat up by everyone else.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The Three Friends. While yes, sometimes they go too far in mistreating Jerry, he did get them in trouble too many times.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Dick Priest comes off as this with the reveal he's Vicious Oscar's younger brother. While he tries his best to help him, it's only after Oscar lost all his status and sanity.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Jerry, at least in later episodes. While he's often depicted as a nerdy Loser Protagonist who gets screwed over by his so-called-friends, he's still popular among the fanbase due to how endearing and sympathetic he is (at least when he's not behaving like a selfish bastard).
• Values Dissonance:
  • The more questionable jokes weren't a big deal for a kids' show in Europe, where there is less prudishness on crude humor. In America, people were wondering how it got on kids' TV in the first place.
  • Mimmi is a Chinese caricature with literal yellow skin and Asian Buck Teeth. It is very unlikely that such a character would be designed like that today.
• Values Resonance: The hairdresser couple, being confident and out and proud gay men definitely has aged well.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Some fans find Eric and Thomas as this. While certainly not one-note characters, they're average and rather generic preteen protagonists who aren't entertaining or funny like Frank or Jerry.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: It's very easy to mistake Eric for a girl due to his long hair and soft voice.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Despite airing on kids' channels and blocks worldwide and being intended for children, the show has an abundance of kid-unfriendly content, such as sexual references, racial stereotypes, offensive language (in the original Swedish version only), incest, and morally questionable actions. Because HIT Entertainment distributes the show worldwide and they had a stake in Sprout, this show actually aired on Sprout in its early years, despite Sprout being a preschool network (due to this it and other non-preschool programming were removed from the lineup in 2006). The series is essentially Sweden's version of South Park (the show was actually pitched to Comedy Central at one point, but rejected for being too similar to South Park).
• The Woobie:
  • Jerry has this in episodes when he gets the spotlight. He's such an upbeat boy who's desperate to fit in and wants to help, but his ideas have an unfortunate tendency to backfire and result in various problems and the Three Friends having less and less patience with him.
  • Frank might be a bully, but his low tolerance for Jerry's antics is usually justified. Not to mention his attempts to woo, impress, or otherwise have fun with Linda always end in humiliation, disappointment, and a near-death experience.
  • Thomas in "Our Son is an Ostrich". He confides to his friends about his fascination for ostriches, only to be mocked for it. Then an ostrich steals his hat and sends him to the hospital for a week. And his parents never realize that he's gone, having mistook him for the aforementioned bird. Hard not to feel sorry for him when he breaks in tears by the end.
  • Jerry's mother, especially after her husband Took a Level in Jerkass in Season 3, ending with her constantly being pushed aside and mistreated. Not to mention he tries to cheat on her with an attractive teacher in "Swimming Teacher".
  • Tess in "Pen Pal". Not only her crush Eric doesn't notice her, but she gets catfished and humillated by a fake pen pal created by the Three Friends. All she wanted was a friend, dammit!
  • Vicious Oscar might be a crazy hobo, but his life was ruined over failing to take a bribe from Mimmi's father.
  • The ant from "My Friend is an Ant". After it's taken away from Jerry to be dissected, it valiantly escapes the school and tries to reunite with its owner again....only to be accidentally squashed by Jerry.

---