CPR IOU”

Posted on October 29, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 …. exciting and new!

Episode 6.24 “So Help Me Hannah/The Maid Cleans Up/C.P.R, I.O.U.”

(Dir by Kim Friedman, originally aired on March 12th, 1983)

This episode features Gopher bringing a CPR dummy on board. No one is that interested in learning how to perform CPR, at least not until one of the passengers, Dwaine Fenley (Steven Keats), has a heart attack. Fortunately, because of his CPR training, Gopher is able to save Dwaine’s life. Not only does this lead to Dwaine forging a stronger relationship with his father (Milton Berle) but it also leads to Gopher getting promoted to Head Purser.

(Erin doesn’t like to brag so I’ll brag for her and say that she is not only CPR-certified but she also saved someone’s life a few years ago. CRP is a good thing to learn!)

While Gopher is trying to get everyone to learn CPR, there are other things happening on the boat and, to be honest, they’re all kind of annoying. For instance, Hannah (Mary Martin) boards the boat and she’s immediately giving everyone advice and singing Cole Porter tunes. I kind of knew that this story was going to be annoying from the minute Hannah first boarded the ship and the camera zoomed in for a close-up, which was usually a sign that a guest star was going to spend the entire cruise overacting. That’s the case here, with Mary Martin delivering every line and playing every emotion as if she’s on Broadway as opposed to a television soundstage. Hannah meets an ex-boyfriend named Jarvis (Max Showalter) and they sing It’s De-Lovely while standing against the ship’s railing and, for me, it was De-Cringey. Maybe if I was of Mary Martin’s generation, it would have been less cringey. But I have to admit that I listen to most of those old songs and I think to myself, “De-lovely is not a word.” Hannah encourages Jarvis to allow his son (Timothy Patrick Murphy) to play piano instead of becoming a real estate agent.

Finally, a maid (Judy Landers) boards the boat because she knows that her employer (Caren Kaye) is cheating on her boyfriend (Ben Murphy). It’s actually a bit of a complex storyline, at least by the typical standards of The Love Boat. Personally, I like Judy Landers and Ben Murphy was appropriately rugged and handsome. Unfortunately, Landers and Murphy didn’t have much chemistry.

A mixed review for this episode, I’d say. I appreciated the CPR subplot because that was The Love Boat at its most well-intentioned. The whole thing with Mary Martin singing old songs was cringe city. And the maid subplot was just kind of boring. This was not a great cruise but it wasn’t a terrible one either. At least, after six seasons, Gopher finally got his promotion.

Summer School (1987, directed by Carl Reiner)

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Summer School was the movie that made flunking out look like fun.

Freddy Shoop (Mark Harmon) is a relaxed, fun-loving gym teacher who is looking forward to spend his summer in Hawaii until he’s assigned to spend the summer teaching remedial English in summer school. (His girlfriend goes to Hawaii without him.) Freddy’s not happy about giving up his summer and he’s prepared to just spend his days taking his students to the beach, the amusement park, and the zoo. But when he finds out that he’s going to lose his job unless his students pass the big test at the end of the summer, he gets serious and discovers what teaching is supposed to be all about.

When I was growing up, Summer School seemed to be on television all the time. If it wasn’t on HBO, it was on one of the local stations, usually right before summer began. The summer school kids seemed to be having too much fun for kids stuck in school. I don’t think my classmates in Baltimore would have been as happy about losing their summer as the students in this film. Everyone who has seen this film remembers Dave and Chainsaw (Gary Riley and Dean Cameron) making jokes and showing everyone The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They also remember Anna-Maria (Fabiana Udenio), the Italian exchange student who took summer school to work on her English. They remember Freddy letting one of his students move in with him, which doesn’t seem like a good idea even if she was played by Courtney Thorne-Smith. Myself, I remember Robin Bishop, the teacher next door, who was played by an extremely sexy Kirstie Alley. (This was one of the many 80s films in which Kirstie Alley made being uptight seem sexy.) Of course, Robin was dating the snobbish principal who was trying to get Freddy Shoop fired.

I’m not going to sit here and say that Summer School is a great film. It’s a dumb comedy with an uplifting message about what a good teacher can accomplish. However, Summer School is a very likable film, an enjoyable 80s teen romp that suggests summer school was the place to be in the late 80s. Mark Harmon, Kirstie Alley, and all the students give good performances. How many future horror nerds were inspired by Dave and Chainsaw? Legendary nice guy Carl Reiner directed and the movie itself is amiable and amusing enough to be watchable.

Film Review: Thank God, It’s Friday (dir by Robert Klane)

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, I just finished watching Thank God, It’s Friday, a movie from 1978. It’s an episodic comedy, one that follows a group of genuinely unlikable characters as they all gather in one genuinely unlikable location and proceed to have some fairly generic experiences.

For example, there’s the married couple and the husband needs to loosen up. There’s the DJ who is going to lose his job if he can’t deliver the big stars that he’s promised. There’s the short, violent guy who is upset because he’s been set up on a date with a tall woman. There’s the dental hygienist who comes across like she’s desperately trying to convince everyone that she’s eccentric when she’s really just boring. (We all know the type.) There’s the teenager girls who try to sneak into the club, despite being underage. There’s the two dorky guys who are looking for love. There’s the two dorky girls who are looking for love.

In fact, everyone in the movie is looking for love! Except for Jeff Goldblum! He just wants to get laid. He manages the club where everyone has gathered on this particular Friday. He’s a womanizer. We can tell because he wears a red jacket and his shirt is half-buttoned. Goldblum decides that he wants to break up the married couple. Boo! Hiss! But wait a minute — neither the husband nor the wife are likable or interesting. Go, Jeff, go! BREAK UP THAT BORINGASS MARRIAGE!

Oh! And Nicole (Donna Summer) is wandering around the club too. She wants a chance to perform but the DJ refuses to let her. So, eventually, she just grabs a microphone and she starts to sing. Luckily, the song she sings is Last Dance and, by singing it, she gives everyone an excuse to go home. If you’ve ever been to a karaoke night, you know that, as soon as a drunk sings Last Dance, it’s time to pay the bill and get the Hell out of there.

Last Dance was apparently written specifically for Thank God, It’s Friday. Or maybe Thank God, It’s Friday was written specifically for Last Dance, who knows? What we do know is that Last Dance won the Oscar for Best Original Song. That’s right — Thank God, It’s Friday is an Oscar winner and therefore, will always be enshrined with fellow Oscar winners like Crash, Titanic, and SPECTRE.

(Which songs did Thank God, It’s Friday beat? It defeated a song from Grease, which is a good thing because Grease is even more annoying than Thank God, It’s Friday. That’s right, I said it. And you know it’s true.)

Anyway, Thank God, It’s Friday is a really bad movie, one that is full of bad writing, bad jokes, bad performances, and indifferent direction. It’s tempting to say that the music was really good but actually, we don’t hear much of the music. The movie is often more concerned about what’s happening in the club’s parking lot than in what is happening (and being heard) on the inside. We may not hear much music but we do get to see some pretty icky racial stereotyping and who would guess that a movie about disco would be so homophobic?

(We don’t see any cocaine, though I’m sure you could probably hear the key grip and the gaffer snorting a line off-camera if you listened closely enough. A lot of the cast looked pretty wired.)

ANYWAY — here’s the important thing about Thank God, It’s Friday. Occasionally, I’ll watch a movie like Dazed and Confused or Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever and I’ll get jealous because I know that I’ll never get a chance to experience the 70s first hand. Fortunately, something like Thank God, It’s Friday will always be around to reassure me, “No, Lisa. The 70s sucked!”

Thank God, it’s Friday?

No, thank God the movie’s over.