Gopher’s Engagement”

Posted on December 27, 2023 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!

This week, Maureen McCormick returns to The Love Boat!

Episode 3.23 “Another Time, Another Place/Doctor Who/Gopher’s Engagement”

(Dir by Allen Baron, originally aired on March 1st, 1980)

Mrs. Elliott (Audrey Meadows) boards this week’s cruise with a very specific mission in mind. She wants to find a husband for her daughter, Celia (Maureen McCormick). Mrs. Elliott, whose husband owns a good deal of stock in the cruise line, at first eyes Doctor Bricker as a possible suitor for her daughter, despite the fact that the doctor is considerably older than Celia and has been divorced multiple times. However, Celia is far more charmed by Gopher, who asks Celia to dance when Julie points out how miserable Celia looks at the ship’s Charleston night.

Celia is charmed by Gopher and, when he accidentally gives her a ring that he’s been carrying around in his pocket, she assumes that he’s asking her to marry him. (The ring was actually lost by another passenger and Gopher was just carrying it around until he could put it in the lost-and-found.) Celia says yes and suddenly, Gopher is engaged! Mrs. Elliott is not happy about this, as Gopher is only an assistant purser. As for Gopher, he tries to get out of the engagement by having Isaac tell Celia that Gopher’s a drunk. This only makes Celia even more determined to marry Gopher (so she can “save” him) and this also gets Gopher in trouble with the Captain who, as the show sometimes remembers, is a recovering alcoholic.

Fortunately, Isaac eventually tells Celia the truth about what’s going on. Celia is surprisingly forgiving, returning the ring and announcing that she and Gopher will always be good friends. Celia also finds the strength to tell her mother to let her live her own life. Mrs. Elliott is okay with this, because she has another daughter who needs a husband and Doc is still single.

This was a storyline that depended too much on everyone involved acting like an idiot. Those are my least favorite stories. But, just as with last week, Fred Grandy got to show off his tragic clown qualities and Maureen McCormick was so convincing in her role that it was hard not to suspect that perhaps she related to a character who was tired to everyone assuming that they knew what was best for her and her life.

Speaking of storylines that required everyone to act like an idiot, this episode also featured Bert Parks as Dr. Michael Mervey, a noted sex therapist. Dr. Mervey boards the ship under an assumed named and tells the Captain that he just wants to relax and not have anyone asking him for any help with their problems or asking him to autograph his book. However, Evelyn Miller (Phyllis Davis) has heard a rumor that Dr. Mervey is on the boat so she boards with the intention of tracking him down and seducing him.

The only problem is that Evelyn doesn’t know what Dr. Mervey looks like. (I find that hard to believe, considering how famous Dr. Mervey is supposed to be.) When she hears Isaac refer to another passenger (Arte Johnson) as being a “doctor,” Evelyn assumes the passenger must be Dr. Mervey. But instead, he’s just Wilfred Johnson (Arte Johnson), a nerdy nuclear physicist. At first, Dr. Johnson pretends to be Dr. Mervey but when the real Dr. Mervey inevitably spots Evelyn and starts to hit on her, the truth comes out. Evelyn dumps Wilfred. Feeling guilty, Dr. Mervey tries to give them a therapy session. Neither wants to listen to Dr. Mervey but they do still realize that they actually love each other. Wilfred and Evelyn leave the cruise arm-in-arm and Mervey pats himself on the back for a job well-done.

Again, this plot was way too dependent on everyone acting like an idiot. That said, Bert Parks made me laugh as the self-important Dr. Mervey.

Finally, Jane Wyman stars as Sister Patricia, a nun who is heading to Acapulco to be a teacher. When she discovers that her ex-boyfriend, Steve Brian (Dennis Morgan), is on the cruise, she is forced to reconsider her decision. In the end, she decides to follow her calling but she tells Steve that they’ll be reunited in another time and another place. When Stubing comforts Steve, Steve replies that, “if” there’s a Heaven, they’ll be reunited.

Uhmm…. Steve, if there is a Heaven, it’s probably not full of agnostics. Just saying.

Anyway, this was a simple story and I could tell where it was going to go from the first minute the Steve greeted Patricia on the boat but it worked because of the old school charm of Dennis Morgan and Jane Wyman. These two Hollywood veterans knew just how to best embrace the melodrama.

Thanks to Wyman and Morgan, this was a pleasant cruise. Hopefully, next week will be just as pleasant.

Retro Television Review: Love Boat 1.21 “Taking Sides/Going By The Book/A Friendly Little Game”

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s time to once again experience the magic of The Love Boat!

Episode 1.21 “Taking Sides/Going By The Book/A Friendly Little Game”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on February 18th, 1978)

This week’s episode begins with the extremely nerdy Howard Wilson (Harvey Jason) preparing to board the ship. Before he does so, he’s approached by his best friend, Bernie (Paul Sylvan). Bernie gives Howard a book on how to talk to women. Apparently, this is something that Howard’s not good at but Bernie swears that the book will change his life. There’s a Roy Lichtenstein-style picture of a man and a woman kissing on the cover of the book so Howard decides that Bernie knows what he’s talking about.

On the boat, Howard immediately notices Sheila Lawrence (Georgia Engel). However, Sheila’s overprotective father (Herb Voland) has specifically asked Captain Stubing to make sure that no one seduces his daughter. The captain assigns Doc Bricker (Bernie Kopell) to keep an eye on her, which makes absolutely no sense. Over the course of the last twenty episodes, Doc has yet to meet a woman who he has not hit on. Doc is a walking HR nightmare and quite frankly, I would be kind of uncomfortable going to him for a medical examination. He seems like he would be a little bit handsy, if you get my drift.

Anyway, Doc turns out to be pretty bad at his job because Howard still manages to hit on Sheila. Of course, Howard’s just doing what the book tells him to do. Eventually, though, he realizes that he doesn’t need the book and Shelia realizes that she needs to spend more time on her own happiness and stop worry about what her father wants. Yay! It’s another Love Boat success story,

Meanwhile, Scott (Robert Urich) and Ellen (Diana Canova) are newlyweds who seem to be totally in love until they make the mistake of having dinner with an old married couple, Max (Robert Mandan) and Gladys (Audrey Meadows). Listening to Max and Gladys bicker soon leads to Scott and Ellen bickering and it looks like their marriage might be over. But again, the magic of The Love Boat leads to everyone realizing that bickering is a part of marriage and that you can still love someone even if you disagree with them. Yay! Robert Urich and Diana Canova were such a cute couple. They just looked like they belonged together.

Finally, poor old Wendell Snead (Harry Morgan) is taking his wife on a cruise that he can’t really afford. In fact, he secretly took out a mortgage on their house in order to buy the tickets. Wendell has plan, though! He has a set of marked playing cards and he beats Gopher at several games of gin rummy. When the crew discovers that he’s been cheating, their initial reaction is to cheat back. But when they learn why he’s been cheating, they give him all the money from the ship’s emergency fund. Awwwwww!

This was a sweet episode. Yes, the stuff with the book and the overprotective father was pretty stupid but the other two stories were entertaining. Harry Morgan’s melancholy performance was the episode’s stand-out. The fact that the crew gave him money instead of calling the cops brought tears to my mismatched eyes. Nicely done, Love Boat.

What will happen next week? We’ll find out in seven days!

Flesh and the Spur (1956, directed by Edward L. Cahn)

Posted on August 24, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

When farmer Matt Ransom (John Agar) is murdered for his horse and his gun, his twin brother Luke (also John Agar) sets out to get revenge. He knows that his brother’s murderer was a member of the infamous Checkers Gang. Because the gun that the killer stole was one of two identical pairs specially made for the twins by their father, Luke knows that all he has to do is find the outlaw who is carrying a gun that looks just like his. During Luke’s search, he meets several others who have their own reasons for wanting to destroy the Checkers Gang. Luke teams up with a beautiful Native American woman named Willow (Marla English), a snake oil salesman named Windy (Raymond Hatton), and a mysterious but deadly gunman named Stacy Doggett (Mike “Touch” Connors).

This B-level Western is best known for a scene where a group of rogue Indians tie Willow to an anthill in order to punish her for “traveling” with the white man. The scene was not originally in the script. It was added after a poster was designed that featured Willow bound to a stake. While the scene was undoubtedly enjoyed by the teenage boys who the film was marketed towards, it feels out-of-place in the movie. Some of the problem is that, while shooting the scene, the ants refused to go anywhere near Marla English and would instead run away whenever they were dropped on English’s feet. After spending several minutes tied to a stake and having ants poured on her, English said, “Look, you’ve got six ants there. Isn’t that enough?” Marla English retired from acting shortly after appearing in this film.

Flesh and the Spur is a B-western through and through but it has a few good moments, like the scene where Luke and Stacy check out a saloon’s gun rack to see if anyone has hung up Matt’s gun. Touch Connors is convincingly deadly as Stacy and there’s a good twist with his character at the end of the film. Marla English gives such a good performance as Willow that it’s too bad that the ants may have played a part in her early retirement from acting. Unfortunately, John Agar is just as dull and colourless as always and he was obviously too old to be playing someone like Luke, who is meant to be a naive neophyte.

Flesh and the Spur may not be a classic but there’s enough there to keep western fans entertained.