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!

Gavin MacLeod of the clan MacLeod declares (after the song number) “There can be only one!”, runs amok

This episode should be called- Lying Liars Who Lie!!!!

There are three stories all of which have pathological liars. The first story is “Paroled to Love” and it is beyond impossible. Gloria Baxter (Vicki Lawrence) is a criminal defense lawyer who just got a pardon for her embezzling client Eddie (Richard Kline). As the plot would have it, Eddie and Gloria love one another, but Eddie has a secret: he done did it and Gloria thought he was an innocent man!

Sidenote: as you may know, I was a criminal attorney for a number of years and in all of those cases, I can’t say that I had no innocent clients because I had one. One!

When I told my criminal defense attorney public defender friends that I had an actually innocent client, they told me to hold on because they needed to get recesses in the courthouse so that all of the PD’s could come out and hear this tale that sounded like lore! These attorneys had been doing criminal defense for decades and never had an innocent client! There was a crowd of over 70 attorneys, both public and private! They listened rapt to every detail of my story like I was Gandolf telling the stories of the rings!

I told them that I had documented proof that the police officer had not only lied, but falsified his police report, you could feel their goosebumps. Several of them begged me to just let them sit next to me as co-council or let them file a motion for me for free just so they could be part of this once in a career event. So, why in the world did Gloria not just presume that Eddie was not only guilty but a liar? Was this her first case? Was she hit on the head with something hard? Was her law school in Candyland?

Yes, Eddie lied to Gloria so she would get him a pardon when in fact, he was an embezzler, and she insists that to have her love he must go back to jail. At first, Eddie refuses, then she changes her mind, and Eddie decides to change his mind and go back to prison! It’s weird for many reasons: lawyers can’t date their clients and once a pardon is issued, it can’t be revoked! Once a pardon is accepted- It’s over.

The second story with a lying liar who lies is the Phyllis Faraday (Carole Cook) storyline. Phyllis wants to get a part playing of Florence Nightingale so decides to be a fake nurse for the Doc in order to get practice. Sadly, there was a shuffleboard accident and she did not set a compound fracture properly, the patient became septic, died, and the show was renamed The Death Boat. The show still had song and dance numbers, but they were all by Adele.

JK, she meets a guy who’s a rancher out of Wyoming, who thinks she’s an actual nurse and he falls in love with her after 24 hours because he thinks she’s a tenderhearted nurse. However, she is not a nurse and must confess this.

But did she really need to confess anything? I mean, this guy fell in love with her after 24 hours. How do you know that he won’t fall in love with the cab driver who picked them up for the ship and took them to their hotel or a cashier or anyone he meets for any period of time over 60 seconds?

The last storyline of lying liars who lie was probably the most weird, but it did allow them to have their required vaudeville acts of impressions and singing. Doris (Leia’s Mom) and Marsha (Marilyn Michaels) started a talent company with Julie. Gotta say, Julie seems agitated – I wonder why? Could it be????

Unfortunately, Doris and Marsha booked all of these celebrities to go on the cruise, but they sent them on the wrong cruise. They sent the stars on an Alaskan cruise and they didn’t bring any warm clothes which makes me wonder. Are they all dead? Is this like “Alive?” Why would that cruise ship take these stars aboard, when they were not on the manifest? What kind of a rogue cruise ship was this? Was it, in fact, a ship devoted to human trafficking? Are all these poor Hollywood stars now in some bizarre salt mine fighting to the death for the amusement of The Rumble on the infamous Money Plane???

Doris and Marsha decide to do the most obvious thing: they pretend to be all these different Hollywood stars with OK impressions and then do a song number. Honestly, they might as well do that. It’s so hard for this show to contrive credible reasons for a song and dance number for every episode that I’ve seen so far; so, why not this?

I would describe this episode as OK.