Carlee Watkins | Through the Shattered Lens

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, the Love Boat gets a new photographer!

Episode 7.18 “Ace in the Hole/Uncle Joey’s Song/Father in the Cradle”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on January 28th, 1984)

This episode featured the usual three story structure. One story I was indifferent too. One story kept me entertained. And one story made me cry.

The story made me cry featured Barnard Hughes as Joseph Stobble, a former kids’s show host who has retired because he feels too old for kids to relate to. Isaac grew up watching Uncle Joey and even gives Uncle Joey a replica of Flapjack, the sock puppet that served as Uncle Joey’s sidekick. Uncle Joey meets Scott Russell (David Faustino), a child who has recently lost his father. Uncle Joey helps Scott deal with his emotions by assuring him that it’s okay to cry.

I cried! Hell, I’m crying just typing this up. Now, I should clarify that I have a reason for crying. The end of May will also be the two-year anniversary of the auto accident that eventually led to my father’s passing on August 19th, 2024. To be honest, there hasn’t been a day over the past two weeks that I haven’t cried at some point. When my father died, I threw myself into taking care of my aunt. After my aunt died (and she died exactly one year after my father), I threw myself into trying to make the holidays perfect for my sisters. And, after that, I threw myself into cleaning the house. Looking back, I understand that I kept throwing myself into new activities because I was trying to outrun just how sad I was. It’s only now that it’s finally all hitting me.

Would I have cried over Uncle Joey’s story if I wasn’t currently feeling sad? I think I would have. It was a sweet story featuring good work from Hughes, Faustino, and the always reliable Ted Lange.

As for the indifferent story, it featured Larry (Michael Spound) getting upset when he meets his mother’s (Lee Meriwether) new husband (Dean-Paul Martin). It turns out the son and the stepdad are both the same age! It was kind of boring, to be honest.

Finally, the third story featured Ted McGinley — yay! — as Ashley “Ace” Covington Evans, the new ship’s photographer! Gopher hired him but he soon regrets it when all the women on board fall for Ave instead of Doc and Gopher. However, Ace has a problem. He’s a good photographer but he doesn’t know how to develop film! (My first thought was that surely someone on the ship had to have a laptop and a printer but then I realized that this was apparently before the age of even digital cameras.) The ship’s passengers and Stubing are curious as to why Ace hasn’t put up any of the pictures that he’s taken. Vicki and Julia help out by putting up a bunch of pictures from a past cruise….

(Uhmm, how would that help? I would assume that the passengers would expect to see pictures of themselves.)

Ace comes clean to the Captain and offers to spend three weeks learning how to develop film. “Then we shall see you in three weeks,” a very understanding Stubing replies. (Stubing perhaps knows that Vicki would never forgive him for firing Ace.)

Why did this story work so well? Ted McGinley, that’s why! And now, apparently, Ted’s a new cast member. YAY! The Love Boat is going to be better than ever!

Set sail for adventure, your mind on a new romance….

Episode 5.12 “Take a Letter, Vicki/The Floating Bridge Game/The Joy of Celibacy”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on December 12th, 1981)

Captain Stubing notices that Vicki seems to be depressed. He asks his crew if they have any idea what’s wrong with her.

Actually, he could have just asked me. Why is Vicki depressed? Maybe it’s because she’s a teenage girl who spends all of her time on a boat surrounded by people who are all at least twenty to thirty years older than her? Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have any friends her own age? Maybe it’s because Julie’s now too coked up to be the surrogate mother figure that she was during the previous two seasons? Seriously, there’s a lot reasons why Vicki might be depressed but they all have on solution. Let Vicki go to school on the mainland and allow her to have some friends her own age!

The crew, however, thinks that the Captain should just hire Vicki to be his secretary. Stubing agrees. Vicki is happy to have a job and she immediately does the exact same thing that I would do under those circumstances. She rearranges the captain’s entire office. The Captain can’t find anything but personally, I think his office does look better once everything has been straightened up. A messy office leads to a messy mind and, on a cruise ship, a messy mind can lead to a collision with an ice berg.

Vicki then issues a cheerful memo, telling all the members of the crew that they should give the Captain a daily run-down of their plans for the day. Again, I think that makes total sense. The crew, however, is outraged. The Captain is worried that Vicki is taking her position too seriously but he doesn’t know how to fire her. (When did Captain Stubing become a wimp? This is a weird episode.) The crew decides to give Vicki so much work that she’ll quite out of frustration but they discover that Vicki is determined to do a good job. No one knows what to do….

LET HER HAVE FRIENDS HER OWN AGE AND A NORMAL LIFE! THAT’S THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO DO!

Anyway, the overworked Vicki eventually falls asleep on the job. The Captain uses that as an excuse to fire her. Vicki smiles because she didn’t really enjoy the job in the first place. Usually, the relationship between the Captain and Vicki is one of the better elements of The Love Boat but this episode left me feeling really bad for Vicki. She’s really missing out on the best years of her life.

As for the other two stories, neither was very interesting. A bridge club made up of four widows takes the cruise and are shocked when one of them (played by Nanette Fabray) decides she would rather spend time with a handsome dentist (Robert Alda) than play bridge. My question here is why would you spend money to play bridge on a cruise while you could just play at home for free. If you’re on a cruise, enjoy the scenery! Don’t just play bridge. Meanwhile, Barry Styles (Jim Trent) pretended to be a big believer in celibacy in order to get “ice queen” Linda Trent (Carlee Watkins) to fall for him. Doc and Gopher made a bet on whether or not he would be successful. DOC! GOPHER! You two know you’re better than that!

This week’s cruise was just sad. The bridge club wasted a lot of money. Linda was the center of a misogynistic bet. Vicki is still going to be lonely and depressed next week. What a sad trip on The Love Boat.