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!

Come aboard, we’re expecting you.  And love …. won’t hurt anymore…. Actually, that’s not quite true.  There’s some real pain in this week’s episode.  Then again, there’s also Don Adams and Rich Little.  It’s all a bit strange, to be honest.

Episode 7.24 “A Rose is Not a Rose/Novelties/Too Rich and Too Thin”

(Dir by Neil Cox, originally aired on March 17th, 1984)

Hey, Don Adams is on The Love Boat …. again!  This time, he’s playing a novelties salesman who is in love with Audrey Meadows.  Meadows, however, assumes that Adams is only pursuing her because he wants to place his gag gifts in her store.  Adams doesn’t help his case by constantly bringing up his novelties.  This was a silly story.  It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t particularly memorable.  It was pleasant in the way that watching an old sitcom with a grandparent can be pleasant.

Both Doc and the Captain have fallen for Jamie Sloane (Jamie Lynn Bauer), an actress who is up for a big commercial.  Jamie worries about her weight.  She pops diet pills like crazy.  She doesn’t eat at dinner.  Yes, that’s right — The Love Boat deals with anorexia!  And there’s nothing wrong with that except for the tonal whiplash that comes from having a relatively serious story about a potentially fatal condition playing out next to Don Adams trying to sell novelty gifts and Rich Little pretending to be a woman.

Yep, impressionist Rich Little boards the cruise.  He’s playing Barry Corwin, the best friend of singer Rose York.  Rose has been hired to sing on the boat but she’s fallen ill.  So, Barry boards the boat disguised as Rose …. no, come back.  Come back.  This is really dumb but at least let me finish the review.  Of course, passenger Radford Harcourt (Arte Johnson) falls for Rose.  In fact, no one figures out that Rose is actually Barry, even though Rose has a noticeable five o’clock shadow and is wearing a pretty obvious wig.  Meanwhile, Barry falls for Julie.

And again, it’s not that this is really a bad story.  It’s pretty much a standard silly Love Boat story.  But there’s just a massive tonal whiplash here as the episode goes back and forth from Don Adams and Rich Little to a woman dying to be thin.  As such, this episode really doesn’t work.

But I know what you really want to know.

How coked up was Julie?

Obviously, very coked up.  I mean, she didn’t even notice that the cruise’s entertainer was just Rich Little in a wig.  Somehow, I can’t help but think this could have been avoided if Ace had been on this cruise but this the second week in a row that the ship has sailed without its photographer on board.

This was an odd cruise.  Eating disorders suck.