The Partridge Family: Season 03 (1972)

That popular singing aggregation the Partridge Family -- mom Shirley (Shirley Jones), sons Keith (David Cassidy), Danny (Danny Bonaduce), and Chris (Brian Foster), and daughters Laurie (Susan Dey) and Tracy (Suzanne Crough) -- is back for more music and mirth in season three of The Partridge Family. Also on hand is the family's avaricious agent, Reuben Kinkaid (Dave Madden), who stills insists that he hates children, but isn't fooling anyone. This season opens with a typical "1970s" episode, in which gender roles are reversed, with the Partridge boys learning housekeeping and knitting skills and the girls taking up industrial arts and self-defense. Other classic episodes find Keith Partridge being set up for a fall when he is tapped to star in a movie, Danny Partridge winning a broken-down race horse in a raffle, and Laurie Partridge clearing herself of theft charges levied by her math teacher. Guest stars in season three include Edgar Buchanan as a crooked small-town judge who arrests Shirley after she runs through a speed trap; future Rockford Files regular Stuart Margolin as a lovelorn motorcycle hippie named Snake (a role played in the previous season by Rob Reiner); Bert Convy as a congressional candidate and potential suitor for the widowed Shirley; Arte Johnson as an impish escaped convict who holds the family hostage -- with a harmonica; Anthony Geary, several years removed from his tenure as Luke on General Hospital, as a minister for whom Laurie harbors a crush; Jodie Foster as an obsessed fan who won't leave Danny alone; and John Astin as a Hughes-like reclusive millionaire who adopts several disguises to attend a Partridge Family concert. Possibly the season's most talked-about episode is the one filmed on location at the King's Island amusement park in Cincinnati -- in which former Cincinnati Reds player Johnny Bench pops up unexpectedly in the role of a waiter! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi