Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week’s cruise features Cyd Charisse!

Episode 2.26 “April’s Return/Super Mom/I’ll See You Again”

(Dir by George Tyne, originally aired on May 5th, 1979)

This episode’s writers would want us to believe that the most important thing that happens during this cruise is that April Lopez (played by Charo) returns to the ship.  During the first season, April was introduced as a stowaway who managed to charm the entire crew despite traveling illegally.  With the help of Captain Stubing, April has gone on to become the cruise line’s most popular entertainer and this week, she’s returns to the Love Boat!

The crew is super-excited because April is such a vivacious force of energy.  Or, at least, she was.  When she shows up on the boat, she seems to be feeling a bit down.  As she explains it to Julie, April has discovered that show business is not all that it’s cracked up to be and that it’s full of lecherous men.  (Shocker!)  April has decided that she would rather be a cruise director.  Julie agrees to show April what the job entails and …. well, it turns out that Julie actually has a pretty easy job.  She just goes to Acapulco Lounge at night, spots people who are alone or shy, and offers to dance with them.  I do that on a regular basis.  I should be a cruise director.

Anyway, April eventually realizes that she makes people happy by performing.  Charo was a popular guest star on The Love Boat and, unlike a lot of other actors who appeared in multiple episodes, she always played April.  (In this episode, she sings the show’s theme song.)  In many ways, Charo was the epitome of The Love Boat, in that her act was meant to be both sexy and old-fashioned at the same time.  The Love Boat was a show where everyone on the boat was constantly looking to get laid but the camera still cut away as soon as the cabin door closed and it was understood that sex on the boat would always lead to marriage on dry land.  It was a show with the customs of the 70s and the morals of the 50s.

The episode spends a lot of time on April’s search for happiness.  Personally, I was more excited by the fact that Cyd Charisse was on the boat.  Cyd Charisse is one of my favorite dancers of all time and was one of my personal role models when I was younger.  From the minute that Charisse boards the boat, the cameras are focused on her legs, which were just as spectacular as they were 20 years earlier in Singin’ In The Rain and Silk Stockings.  Charisse plays Eve Mills, a former USO entertainer who, by an amazing coincidence, happens to be on the same cruise as the man that she fell in love with during World War II, Frank Pearse (Craig Stevens).  By another amazing coincidence, Frank just happens to be an old friend of Captain Stubing’s!

Anyway, Frank and Eve recognize each other and they eventually work up the courage to approach each other.  Eve thought Frank was killed in the war.  Frank thought that Eve ignored all the letters that he sent her while he was recovering from being wounded in action.  (It turns out the letters were never mailed because Frank’s nurse was in love with him.)  Frank is still in love with Eve but he sees that she’s accompanied by a handsome young Frenchman named Francois (Stephen Schnetzer).  Eve reveals to Frank that Francois is not her boyfriend.  Instead, Francois is her son!  And guess who Francois’s father is?  (Really, the fact that he was named Francois should have given it away.)

Finally, Bud (Jerry Stiller) and Margaret (Anne Meara) are on their second honeymoon but, unfortunately, they’ve had to bring along their four bratty kids (one whom is played by a very young Corey Feldman).  Bud wants to have a good time.  Margaret keeps worrying about the kids.  Bud gets a dance lesson from April, which leads to Margaret getting jealous.  Don’t worry, they work it out.  Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were adorable together but this story was stressful for me to watch, just because the kids were so hyperactive and never stopped running around.  Still, the image of Charo teaching Jerry Stiller how to dance feels like it should be enshrined in a museum devoted to the 1970s.

This episode seemed to exist because the show’s producers really liked Charo and it’s hard not to feel that the rest of episode’s storylines were just treated as being afterthoughts.  That said, I enjoyed the Cyd Charisse/Craig Stevens story.  Stevens was stiff and dull but Cyd Charisse was Cyd Charisse and that’s all that really matters!