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!

Love, exciting and new …. come aboard, they’re expecting you….

Episode 5.18 “His Girls Friday/A Wife for Wilfred/The Girl Who Stood Still”

(Dir by Robert Scheerer, originally aired on February 13th, 1982)

Wilfred (Tom Smothers) is a single guy who tells the crew that he’ll pay $10,000 to whoever helps him find a wife on the cruise.  The members of the crew each introduce Wilfred to a different woman and soon, Wilfred has five women following him all over the boat.  However, when Isaac hears Wilfred bragging about how he conned the crew into doing all the work for him and how he was lying about the $10,000, the crew hires Marilyn (Connie Stevens), who runs the ship’s flower shop, to pretend to Wilfred’s wife.

Ha!  Joke’s on Wilfred!  No wait, the joke’s on the crew.  Marilyn and Wilfred fall in love.  Meanwhile, Julie remains single.

Meanwhile, Howard Ethan (Dick Van Patten) boards the ship with his loyal and superefficient secretary, Doris (Rue McClanahan).  Doris is a great secretary but when Howard finds out that Cindy Nevins (Judy Landers) is looking for a secretarial job, he tries to figure out how to get Doris to quit so that he can hire Cindy.  Maybe he and Doris could just fall in love.  Myself, I wonder why people were always doing work while on The Love Boat.  Isn’t a cruise supposed to be a vacation?  And yet, every episode seemed to feature someone determined to spend the cruise in their cabin and getting some work done.  I appreciate the spirit, I guess.  I mean, I write film reviews while I’m on vacation so I guess I can relate.  But still, if you’re going to pay for a luxury cruise, wouldn’t you at least want to use it as an excuse to forget about your responsibilities on the mainland?

Finally, Bess Hensinger (Vera Miles) boards the boat with her daughter, Abigail (Denise Miller).  Abigail is stunned to learn that Bess invited a boy that Abigail likes to join them on the cruise.  How will Jim (James Osmond) react if he discovers that Abigail has …. scoliosis!?  This storyline was actually the best of the episode, if just because it was the only one where the male half of the romantic pairing didn’t come across as being totally sleazy.  Jim was a genuinely nice guy and, needless to say, he didn’t care that Abigail has scoliosis.  Denise Miller give an excellent performance as the insecure Abigail.  As an asthmatic teenager, I always dreaded the thought of using my inhaler in front of other people so I could relate to what Abigail was going through.  I may not have cared about the other two stories but I was happy things worked out for Jim and Abigail.

One good story out of three is usually not something brag about but Abigail and Jim were such a winning couple that they really did make this episode worth the trouble.  Despite Wilfred and Howard, this was a good cruise.