Tag Archives: Anson Williams

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.11 “The Songwriter/Queen of Soaps”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984.  Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites.  Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week, things get a bit soapy on Fantasy Island.

Episode 6.11 “The Songwriter/Queen of Soaps”

(Dir by Philip Leacock, originally aired on January 22nd, 1983)

Dan O’Dwyer (Anson Williams) is the grandson of composer, Jeremy Todd (David Cassidy).  Todd was a important figure during New York’s tin pan alley days but, in 1983, he’s a nearly forgotten figure.  He died in World War I and there are some people who claim that Todd didn’t actually write the songs that he’s been credited with.  Dan’s fantasy is to go back into the past so that he can meet his grandfather and bring some of his compositions back to the present day.  Mr. Roarke makes it clear that Dan cannot tell anyone that he’s from the future nor can he try to change history.  Jeremy Todd is going to die no matter what.

Dan agrees and he goes back to the past.  He meets his grandfather and they get along famously.  Dan even finds what he’s looking for, the compositions that prove that Jeremy wrote his own songs.  However, Dan also meets and falls in love with a singer named Carol (Donna Pescow).  Dan may have what he wants but he’s going to lose the love of his life once the fantasy ends.

Except …. what if Carol is someone with a fantasy of her own?  That’s right, Carol’s another guest on the Island!  I can’t say that I was surprised by this because this is a twist that the show has used several times.  Still, Anson Williams and Donna Pescow made for a cute couple and even David Cassidy wasn’t as annoying as usual in the role of Jeremy Todd.  This was a good fantasy.

And hey, the second fantasy was pretty good as well!  Gina Edwards (Susan Lucci) is a soap opera star who worries that she’s being taken over by Andrea, the evil character that she plays on her show.  The audience loves it when Andrea is wicked and dangerous but the pressure of playing a character so unlike herself is getting to Gina.  She fears that she is literally going to turn into Andrea and perhaps harm her husband, Jeff (Chris Robinson).  Jeff is also the director of the show so a lot of the pressure that Gina is feeling is coming from him.  Fortunately, Mr. Roarke is able to show Gina and Jeff that they are both just working too hard.  They decide to take a step back and just enjoy life.

This fantasy was fun.  It was not only about a soap opera but it paid homage to daytime melodrama as well.  (Tattoo, it turned out, was a huge fan of the show.)  Susan Lucci, not surprisingly, was totally convincing as a soap opera diva.  This fantasy had some enjoyably creepy moments and also a few humorous ones.  It was everything you could want from Fantasy Island.

This was a great trip to the Island!

Your Mother Wears Combat Boots (1989, directed by Anson Williams)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jimmy Anderson (David Kaufman) drops out of college and enrolls in the Army without telling his mother.  He wants to go through basic training and then do Parachute airbone training at Fort Benning, just like his father did before he died in Vietnam.  When Barbara Anderson (Barbara Eden) finds out what her son has done, she rushes down to Georgia to try to stop him.  When she discovers that Jimmy has already entered Fort Benning, Barbara assumes the identity of an AWOL trainee so that she can enter the base.  All she wants to do is track down her son and convince him to leave.  However, Sgt. Charlie Burke (Hector Elizondo) fully expects Barbara to complete her training and, in a few weeks time, to jump out of an airplane.

Probably the most interesting thing about this made-for-TV comedy is that no one seems to find it strange that a 58 year-old woman claims to have just completed basic training.  Barbara Eden looked great in this movie and she put a good deal of energy to going through all the usual Private Benjamin routines but she was still clearly too old to have ever recently enlisted in the Army and, even if she wasn’t in her 50s, the fact that she doesn’t know how to salute nor does she understand any of the basic army terminology used by Sgt. Burke should have been dead giveaways that she wasn’t who she was claiming to be.  That could have been funny if the movie had acknowledged Barbara’s age or maybe even had her act shocked that she was somehow getting away with her ruse.  Instead, the movie itself doesn’t seem to understand how strange it would be for a 58 year-old woman to show up for Parachute training.  The movie never finds the right balance between comedy and sentimentality but Barbara Eden gives it her all and the dependable Conchata Ferrell scores some laughs as a specialist who “eats recruits for breakfast.”

This film was directed Anson Williams, a.k.a. Potise from Happy Days. Ron Howard and Henry Winkler weren’t the only directors to come out of that show.

A Blast From The Past: The Drug Knot (dir by Anson Williams)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1986’s The Drug Knot, Dermot Mulroney plays a high school student.

At the time this show aired, Dermot Mulroney was 25 years-old and he looked like he was 30 but, looks aside, he actually gives a pretty convincing performance as Doug Dawson.  Doug is a smart and musically-gifted high school senior.  He’s talented enough to make beautiful music with a saxophone and rebellious enough to skip class so that he can play the sax in the school locker room.  His girlfriend, Kim (Meryl Streep look-alike Kim Myers), is totally in love with Doug but she also worries that he’s getting too heavily into dugs.  He’s gone from smoking weed to snorting cocaine.  He hides his drugs in his bedroom.  His mother (Mary Ellen Trainor) has no idea that Doug is a drug addict while Doug’s little brother (David Faustino) wants to be just like him.

Can you see where this is heading?

In order to combat the school’s growing drug problem, the school has invited a speaker named David Toma to give a speech at a school assembly.  Toma is a former cop who struggled with addiction himself.  He inspired not one but two television shows, one called Toma and the other called Baretta.  He goes from school to school and he gives speeches about all of the teenagers that he knows who have died as a result of doing drugs.  As we see throughout the episode, Toma is a confrontational speaker, one who is not afraid to yell at his audience.  Doug shows up for the assembly but his bad attitude leads to Toma kicking him out.

Personally, I’ve always had mixed feelings about the idea of trying to change people’s behavior by yelling at them.  I know that it’s a popular technique and there’s been a lot of television shows (Intervention and Beyond Scared Straight come to mind) that are all about getting in people’s faces and screaming at them.  My feeling, though, has always been that this approach is more about making other people feel good than actually changing behavior.  Everyone wants to see the people who have caused them stress get yelled at.  On talk shows, audiences would applaud whenever a disrespectful teen got sent to boot camp but it’s rare that you ever heard about whether or not the approach actually worked.  I mean, I assume the approach works for some people but I know that if someone yells at me not to do something, my usual reaction is to go ahead do it just because I resent authority.  David Toma’s approach would not have worked with me.

(One interesting thing about The Drug Knot is that David Toma is a real person and he plays himself.  Apparently, he’s still out there and still at it, even though he’s in his 90s now.  I should note that, on YouTube, there’s a lot of comments from people who say that getting yelled at by David Toma saved their lives so maybe the yelling approach does work for more people than I assumed.)

Anyway, as always when it comes to these made-for-TV anti-drug programs, the drugs lead to tragedy and The Drug Knot ends on a particular dark note.  For once, there is no redemption.

Here is The Drug Knot, complete with an anti-drug message from Michael Jordan:

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 1.12 “The Old Man and the Runaway / The Painters / A Fine Romance”

Posted on 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!

Welcome aboard!  We’re expecting you.

Episode 1.12 “The Old Man and the Runaway / The Painters / A Fine Romance”

(Directed by Stuart Margolin and James Sheldon, originally aired on December 24th, 1977)

Hey, this episode of The Love Boat aired on Christmas Eve!  Oddly enough, unlike last week’s episode, it was not a holiday-themed episode.  You really do have to wonder if there was some sort of scheduling snafu at ABC and perhaps the episodes were shown out-of-order.  Then again, it could be that ABC realized that everyone would be busy getting ready for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve so they decided to burn off a lesser episode while no one was watching.

(Doesn’t everyone spend Christmas Eve getting ready for Midnight Mass while their aunt tells them to dress more like the Virgin and less like the Magdalene?  Or was that just my experience?)

Yes, this is a lesser episode of The Love Boat.  It’s not a terrible episode but, at the same time, it’s not all the memorable.  A big problem is that there’s not really much romance on this cruise.  The show was called The Love Boat for a reason and, when there’s no love, it just doesn’t feel right.

For instance, one subplot dealt with two incompetent painters (played by Arte Johnson and Pat Morita) painting the captain’s office during the cruise.  They kept screwing up the job, which led to Captain Stubing getting progressively more and more annoyed.  From the start, I guessed that the punchline would be that the painters were screwing up on purpose so that they could stay on the boat and get a free cruise and …. yep, that’s exactly what it was.  Johnson and Morita were a good comedy team but the story itself felt like filler.

Meanwhile, a grumpy old widower (Will Geer) discovered that he was sharing his cabin with a teenage runaway (Bayn Johnson), who had stowed away on the ship and who was planning on meeting up with her boyfriend in Mexico.  Once he got over complaining about her being young and irresponsible, Geer convinced her to return to her parents.  Again, it wasn’t terrible and Bayn Johnson did a good job of keeping her character from getting annoying but it felt a bit out of place on The Love Boat.  Obviously, the 75 year-old man and the 16 year-old runaway weren’t going to fall in love and leave the ship arm-in-arm while the crew smiled knowingly.  Instead, this was a typical generation gap story.  The most interesting thing about this story is that this was the second time that a runaway managed to stowaway on the Love Boat.  Does that boat not have a security team?  Don’t you actually have to show your tickets to board the boat?  How does these people keep sneaking aboard?

Finally, the third storyline felt a bit more like a Love Boat story.  Cruise director Julie (Lauren Tewes) is super-excited when she sees that Sean McGlynn (Anson Williams) is a passenger on the cruise.  Julie and Sean grew up together and Julie always had a crush on him.  At first, Julie and Sean have fun hanging out but, whenever Julie tries to flirt, Sean panics and runs off.  Julie worries that there’s something wrong with her (oh, Julie!) but …. nope, Sean’s a priest.  Apparently, he was having a crisis of faith when he boarded the boat, which is why he didn’t tell anyone he was a priest.  But, when his roommate (Tom Poston) has a heart attack, Sean delivers the last rites and his faith is restored.  (Don’t worry.  His roommate survives and has a surprisingly quick recovery.  Doc Bricker is a miracle worker!)  Anyway, Sean leaves the boat wearing his collar and Julie stays on the boat, no doubt waiting for someone else from her past to buy a ticket.  It’s a bit of a shame, as Lauren Tewes and Anson Williams did make a cute couple.  Then again, we all know that Julie and Gopher belong together.

Like I said, this was not a terrible episode.  It just wasn’t particularly memorable.  It needed just a bit more romance.  After all, love is life’s sweetest reward.

Rebel Days: All-American Murder (1991, directed by Anson Williams)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Artie Logan (Charlie Schlatter) is a wannabe James Dean who keeps getting kicked out of school because he is such a rebel.  His father, a judge, gives Artie one more chance.  Artie can either enroll at Fairfield College or he can go to jail.  Artie chooses Fairfield, where he meets and falls for the beautiful and popular Tally Fuller (Josie Bissett).  However, no sooner does Artie show up for their first date than someone sets Tally on fire and crashes through a window.  Artie is the number one suspect but Detective P.J. Decker (Christopher Walken) still gives him 24 hours to solve the murder and clear his name.  Artie investigates and discovers that Tally was not the innocent, all-American girl that everyone thought she was.  This leads to a nudity-filled flashback that explains why All-American Murder was an HBO mainstay in the 90s.  It also leads to other people being murdered by snakes and hand grenades.

Despite some bloody murders and the presence of Walken and Joanna Cassidy in potentially interesting supporting roles, All-American Murder fails because it asks us to accept Charlie Schlatter as being a charismatic rebel.  When Joanna Cassidy tells him that he’s a “renegade,” not even she sounds like she believes it.  The murder mystery is intriguing but Artie is so obnoxious that you want him to go to prison whether he’s guilty or not.

All-American Murder was directed by Anson Williams, who is best known for playing Potsie on Happy Days.  The Fonz could have framed Ralph Malph for this murder in half the time that it takes Artie to solve it.