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!

Love won’t hurt anymore….

Episode 7.9 “Long Time No See/The Bear Essence/Kisses and Makeup”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on November 12th, 1983)

This week, it’s a carnival cruise!

No, I don’t mean the type of cruise that starts as a dance party and devolves into a riot.  I mean, there’s an actual carnival occurring on the cruise.  The head of the carnival (Howard Keel) is an old friend of Captain Stubing’s and Stubing loves a carnival.  That’s all good and well but I hope they gave the passengers fair warning what type of cruise they were buying tickets for.  I don’t mind carnivals but I wouldn’t necessarily want to deal with one while on a romantic cruise.

Young photographer Aurora Adams (Jan Smithers) takes an interest in the carnival owner.  Is she hitting on a man old enough to be her father?  No, specially because the man is her father!  She doesn’t reveal this until towards the end of the cruise.

Meanwhile, Chip Ryan (Michael Lembeck) and Chester O’Brien (Christopher Mayer) are a comedy team who are training a bear.  When it turns out that the bear cannot be trained to follow orders, they decide that one of them should wear a bear suit and…. no, I’m not making this up.  Anyway, Chip and Chester both fall for Dottie Becks (Randi Oakes) and, by the end of the cruise, it looks like they’re going to have a very modern arrangement.  *wink* *wink*

Newlywed Scott Pryor (Dean Butler) is overwhelmed by the beauty of his wife (Crystal Bernard).  His wife takes off her makeup and he doesn’t recognize her.  Eh.  Let’s just ignore this storyline.

So, this episode …. you know, the newlywed and the long lost daughter stories were both pretty dumb but the bear storyline was just silly enough to be fun.  I would not have chosen to take this particular cruise but, if I did, I’d spend the whole time watching the bear.