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.

Welcome to the sixth season of Fantasy Island!

Episode 6.1 “Curse of the Moreaus/My Man Friday”

(Dir by Bob Sweeney, originally aired on October 16th, 1982)

A new season has begun and the fifth season’s Julie experiment is officially over.  Mr. Roarke is back and Tattoo is once again his only assistant.  Julie is not only missing but she’s not even mentioned in this episode.  Personally, I think Julie went to college on the mainland or maybe she married Gopher from the Love Boat.  Either way, Julie is gone and Fantasy Island is back to normal.

This week’s fantasies both felt familiar.  It was another haunted house fantasy and another “secretary-becomes-the-boss fantasy.”  After spending nearly ten years as a secretary at an ad agency, Linda Whitney (Pamela Hensley) has watched as her stupid boss, Ed Turner (Avery Schrieber) has taken credit for all of her ideas and as everyone has gotten promoted but her.  Linda wants to be an executive and fortunately, Mr. Roarke knows the president of her company.  Linda has received a promotion to the executive suite.  She has 48 hours to prove herself or she’ll be “demoted” back to secretary.

(Demoted is in scare quotes because, right out of college, I worked as an administrative assistant and let me just say that a good assistant is the most important person in any office.)

What’s odd about this fantasy is that Mr. Roarke arranges for Linda’s office to be transported to Fantasy Island.  But all of Linda’s co-workers are transported to the Island as well.  In fact, the entire building seems to now be on Fantasy Island.  I mean, at this point, we all know that Mr. Roarke can pretty much do anything but even this seems a bit extreme for a fantasy that is clearly established as not being something that’s just happening in Linda’s head.  Mr. Roarke is somehow transporting office buildings now.  Were Linda’s co-workers given any warning before being transported to the Island?

It’s not easy being an executive.  Her old boss wants her to fail.  All of her former secretarial colleagues want her to fail.  Can Linda get land the big account?  Sure, she can.  Luckily, she has a male secretary named Jack Friday (James Houghton) to help out!  By the end of the episode, Linda has come to realize that she treated the handsome Jack almost as poorly and objectified Jack almost as much Ed Turner did to her.  Then again, Jack does introduce himself by saying that he likes working for women because they have “better legs.”  All that said, I liked the fantasy.  I liked that Linda kept her promotion.  I liked that she worked with Jack without falling in love with him.  I like that she left the Island on her own, satisfied with her new career.

As for the other fantasy, Jack Moreau (Stuart Whitman) is haunted by nightmares in which he kills his wife, Kathy (Barbara Rush).  Agck!  It turns out that Moreau men are cursed.  They murder their wives on their 50th birthday.  Jack failed to mention this to Kathy when they got married.  That’s probably grounds for divorce.  Anyway, Mr. Roarke sends them to spend Jack’s birthday weekend in the Moreau plantation, where they are watched by a mysterious servant (Raymond St. Jacques) who seems to be all about driving Jack to murder his wife.  Fortunately, Jack does not murder his wife.  Kathy tells Jack that she loves him and the curse is broken.  Hey, that was easy!  That said, I enjoyed this fantasy.  The Fantasy Island haunted house stories always have a lot of atmosphere to them.  They’re fun to watch.

This was a good start of the season.  It was nice to see Tattoo and Roarke joking again.  Tattoo points out that a good boss needs good people working for him and Tattoo’s absolutely right.