Season Three of the Freddie Prinze sitcom Chico and the Man begins with a two-part episode, as Ed Brown (Jack Albertson), curmudgeonly owner of a barrio garage and the employer of lovable Latino Chico Rodriguez (Prinze, of course), discovers to his dismay that his new landlady is his old enemy Helen Rogers, the woman who'd committed the unforgivable sin of converting Ed's late wife from a Republican to a Democrat. Della Rogers is played by new series regular Della Reese, who'd been seen the previous season as a long-suffering judge in the episode "The Juror". In addition to her landlady duties, Della Rogers also runs a mobile snack wagon, thereby setting up several situations whereby the resourceful Chico tries to cadge a free meal. In another new development, retired letter carrier Louie Wilson (Scatman Crothers) is also working in Ed's garage. Guest stars this season include Dick Van Dyke Show veteran Rose Marie in the episode "Ready When You Are, CB" (the title refers not to DeMille but to the then-current CB radio craze); onetime matinee idol Cesar Romero as Chico's long-lost father in "Chico's Padre"; deadpan comedian George Gobel in "Louie's CanCan"; and perennial western sidekick Pat Buttram in "Gregory Peck is a Rooster." The third-season episode that garnered the fewest audience laughs when it originally aired on NBC was "Champs Ain't Chumps". Not that this episode was any less hilarious than its predecessors, merely that it was first telecast on January 28, 1977--one day after the suicide of 22-year-old Freddie Prinze. This devastating tragedy would have seemed to spell the end of Chico and the Man, but both NBC and producer James Komack were grimly determined to keep the franchise alive--and to that end filmed an episode in which a new and entirely different "Chico" was introduced in the form of 12-year-old newcomer Gabriel Melgar. That episode, however, would not be aired until Chico and the Man returned for its fourth and final season. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi