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, The Love Boat has a very special passengers!

Episode 3.27 “Invisible Maniac/September Song/Peekaboo”

(Dir by George Tyne, originally aired on April 19th, 1980)

This week, the pop cultural stars align as a young David Hasselhoff boards the Love Boat!

Hasselhoff plays Tom Bell, a 20-something attorney who is dating a 30-something attorney named Cathy (Shelley Fabares).  Cathy insists that they keep their romance a secret due to the age difference.  She doesn’t want people to think that she’s a cradle robber or an older woman with a gigolo.  (Cathy might also want to consider that she’s a senior partner at the firm while Tom is just a junior partner.)  Tom doesn’t care about the age difference.  In fact, he wants to marry Cathy!

And yes, they do eventually get married.  Tom even has his grandparents waiting for them when the boat docks in Los Angeles so that they can act as witnesses.  There’s not really any suspense as to whether or not Tom and Cathy will end up married because this is The Love Boat, the show that combined the swinging culture of the 70s with the morality of the 50s.  The Hoff is his usual dramatic but self-aware self while Shelley Fabares is endlessly likable.  They’re a cute couple and, minor age difference aside, they just look like they belong together.  It was a sweet story.

As for the other passengers:

Fay Piermont (Peggy Cass) is married to Bill (Gordon Jump).  Bill’s a nice guy but Fay fears that they’ve become a boring couple.  She wants to be an exciting couple and she’s figured out that the way to do this is to get a makeover, buy a new wardrobe, and then toss her glasses and all of her frumpy clothes overboard.  (At first, both Julie and Vicki are worried that Fay is planning on throwing herself overboard.  One would think that would be cause for ship-wide alarm but Julie and Vicki just check on Fay occasionally to make sure she’s still alive.)  At first, Bill is freaked out by Fay’s new attitude but, eventually, he comes to accept it and Fay comes to realize that she loves Bill, even if he is a bit reserved.  This is the type of story that The Love Boat did frequently.  Fay and Bill are a nice couple, even if they’re no Tom and Cathy.

Finally, Isaac is reunited with a former high school classmate, a model named Janet (BernNadette Stanis).  Janet is upset that her husband (Clifton Davis) is more into sports than romance so she tries to make him jealous by lying about what a womanizer Isaac was in high school.  Gopher overhears and tells Isaac that Janet referred to him as being “all hands” in high school.  Now, most people would understand that Janet was just trying to make her husband jealous but Isaac somehow becomes convinced that he is a womanizer but he just can’t remember his actions because he suffers from dissociative identity disorder and he even goes to Doc Bricker for help!  Why would Isaac believe that?  It makes no sense that Isaac — cool, calm Isaac — would suddenly be so stupid.  This is something that would happen to Gopher not Isaac.

That one silly storyline aside, this was a pleasant cruise on The Love Boat.  I’m glad things worked out for Tom and Cathy.  Seriously, the world is so lucky to have The Hoff.