Helen Page Camp | 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!

Come aboard! Love is life’s sweetest reward….

Episode 6.17 “Gopher’s Daisy/Our Son, The Lawyer/Salvaged Romance”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on January 29th, 1983)

Gopher has a new exercise machine but only he and the Captain know about it. All through the cruise, Gopher and Stubing disappear into Gopher’s cabin, put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign and then groan and moan while using the exercise machine.

At the same, the ship has a stowaway. As a part of her sorority initiation, Jennifer Canfield (Chanelle Lea) has to take a cruise without paying for it. (That’s an odd initiation ritual.) Having figured out Gopher’s schedule, Jennifer secretly stays in his room whenever he’s doing his duties. Julie and Isaac both spot Jennifer sneaking in and out of Gopher’s cabin and they quickly decide that both Gopher and Stubing must have brought her aboard to be their — what? Their personal sex slave? That seems to be the implication. Strangely, neither Isaac nor Julie seem to be too upset about that implication. Julie has a cocaine problem so I guess I can understand her attitude but Isaac …. well, I expect more from Isaac.

Eventually, Jennifer is caught. Instead of having her arrested, the Captain allows Julie and Isaac to pay for Jennifer’s fare on the boat. So, does this mean that Jennifer’s not going to be allowed to join the sorority?

(Myself, I’m just considering the amount of people who have stowed away on the Love Boat over the past few seasons. Seriously, taking a cruise without paying for it appears to be the easiest thing in the world.)

Meanwhile, James Coco and Doris Roberts play Harriet and Lou, a married couple who board the boat with their son, Jonathan (Adam Arkin). Now that Jonathan has graduated law school and passed the bar, he thinks that it might be time for him to move into a place of his own. Harriet is so traumatized at the thought of Jonathan moving out that she demands a divorce from Lou. Both Harriet and Lou want to be represented by Jonathan. Run, Jonathan, run! In the end, the marriage is saved and everything get worked out but seriously, Jonathan needs to do more than just get an apartment of his own. He needs to move to another state or maybe even another country.

(Also, in the past, there’s no way Julie would have ignored a handsome, single lawyer on the ship. Unfortunately, Julie now seems to be more concerned with finding her next fix than finding a husband.)

Finally, Allison Newman (Joan Rivers) is a recently divorced woman who starts a tentative shipboard romance with passenger Max Glutovsky (Alex Rocco). However, when Max tries teacher her how to play shuffleboard and puts his hands around her waist, Allison yells for him to leave her alone and runs away. Max thinks that Allison is rejecting him because he’s not as rich as she is. Max, you dumbass! Allison has just had a mastectomy, Her husband left her after the operation and now, she’s feeling insecure about getting close to anyone. Of the three stories, the one worked the best, due to the performances of Rivers and Rocco.

The Rivers/Rocco story was effective. The storyline with Roberts, Coco, and Arkin was rather shrill and left me feeling sorry for Adam Arkin’s character. (Casting Doris Roberts as an overly possessive mother made this story feel like an unsuccessful dry run for Everybody Loves Raymond.) Isaac and Julie thinking Gopher was sex fiend? That was just silly. In other words, this was a pretty uneven cruise.

Next week, hopefully things will look up with a two-hour episode set in Greece!

When I was a kid, FOX-16 out of Little Rock, Arkansas would have “Charles Bronson weeks” where every night they’d show a different Bronson film. I saw several of his films for the first time during those weeks and TELEFON was one of those movies. I remember really enjoying it that first time I saw it, and I’ve always carried that positive feeling with me.

The plot of TELEFON is pretty interesting. In a nutshell, Charles Bronson is Russian KGB agent, Grigori Borsov, who’s been sent to the United States to stop radical Russian Nicolai Dalchimsky (Donald Pleasance), before he can set off more hypnotized human time bombs. Lee Remick is a beautiful Russian agent (double agent?) who helps him with his mission.

I personally think TELEFON is an underrated Charles Bronson film, and it seems like a movie that has almost been forgotten. This is strange to me because it had quite the pedigree at the time of production. Bronson was a huge star at the time, and the director was Don Siegel, the man behind such classics as DIRTY HARRY, ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ, and THE SHOOTIST. The cast is exceptional as well, with Bronson being joined by the likes of Donald Pleasance, Lee Remick, Tyne Daly, Sheree North and Patrick Magee. The screenplay was co-written by Peter Hyams, who would go on to direct such excellent films as OUTLAND, THE STAR CHAMBER, and RUNNING SCARED. My point of sharing all of this is that true professionals were at work in front of, and behind the camera, and they created a damn fine Cold War thriller. I was glad that Shout Factory put out a nice blu ray of the film in January of 2024. Hopefully film enthusiasts will begin discovering the film again.

With that said, TELEFON isn’t a perfect film and I do have a few small complaints. First, Charles Bronson doesn’t appear in the film until we’re already 21 minutes deep. That’s a long time for me to have to wait for the man! Second, Bronson and Remick don’t have a lot of sexual chemistry. She’s beautiful and he oozes masculinity, but somehow it doesn’t really extend to a real connection between their characters. That’s one of the reasons I like it when Bronson works with his wife Jill Ireland. That chemistry is usually there between them. Third, Donald Pleasance wears several wigs and looks kind of dorky at times. Fourth, Sheree North wears a housecoat during her section of the film. If you’ve seen her in BREAKOUT with Bronson from a couple of years earlier, you understand just what a missed opportunity that was. Finally, Tyne Daly is so good in her small role, but she ultimately just kind of exits the film. I’d have liked even more of her. These are small complaints, with the exception of Bronson’s entrance & North’s wardrobe choice, that I don’t really hold against the movie.

The last thing that I want to mention is that there are a couple interesting pop culture references to TELEFON in movies that came out later. First, the writers of THE NAKED GUN borrowed the plot about hypnotized human time bombs in their own plot to assassinate the visiting Queen of England. Certain scenes are taken directly from TELEFON. I remember watching THE NAKED GUN in theaters in the late 80’s and wondering if I was the only person who realized this fact. Second, in DEATH PROOF, Quentin Tarantino used the major plot device of quoting the Robert Frost poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” in order to trigger something. In TELEFON, it was human time bombs. In DEATH PROOF, it was human lap dances. God bless Quentin Tarantino!