Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 7.1 “Forbidden Love/The Other Man — Mr. Roarke”

Posted on July 15, 2025 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 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.

Today, we start the seventh and final season.

Episode 7.1 “Forbidden Love/The Other Man — Mr. Roarke”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on October 8th, 1983)

The first episode of the seventh season finds Mr. Roarke handling two fantasies.

Widow Margaret Smith (Juliet Prowse) comes to Fantasy Island, hoping to meet the man of her dreams. However, when she does, it turns out that he’s the ex-boyfriend of her daughter, Ginny (Jamie Rose)! Can Margaret find love without hurting her daughter? Or is her love destined to remain forbdden….

Meanwhile, Deborah Barnes (Stephanie Faracy) wants to make her boyfriend jealous so Mr. Roarke arranges for her to meet a man on the Island. But when the man is suddenly unavailable, Mr. Roarke gallantly steps into his place. That’s nice of him. It shows how far Mr. Roarke will go to make the fantasies of his guests come true. Except — uh-oh! — now Deborah’s in love with Mr. Roarke! What can Mr. Roarke do to let Deborah down easily and repair her confidence?

Wow! That’s a lot of drama for one weekend! I wonder what Tattoo has to say…?

Tattoo? Are you there?

OH MY GOD, WHERE IS TATTOO!?

Tattoo is gone, replaced by a butler named Lawrence (Christopher Hewett) who is so heavy-set that he can’t even climb the stairs to ring the bell when the plane shows up over the island. Instead, he looks up at the sky and then pushes a remote button that makes the bell ring. That’s …. just lame. Over the past few years, I have resisted making “Da plane! Da plane!” jokes but seriously, it doesn’t feel right for the show not to start to those words.

What’s especially upsetting is that no one on the show mentions Tattoo. Roarke doesn’t mention why Tattoo is no longer on the Island. Instead, he acts as if Lawrence has always been his assistant. I mean, I understand that Herve Villechaize did not leave under the happiest of circumstances but it just feels cruel not to give Tattoo a proper send-off. Tattoo was a huge part of the show. His interactions with Mr. Roarke were the most consistently entertaining things about Fantasy Island. And now, he’s gone and the show refuses to even acknowledge that he was ever there.

As for Lawrence, he’s a butler. I don’t know how the season played out but, in the first episode, it was pretty clear that Lawrence was the hired help. (Tattoo, at the very least, always seemed to be on nearly equal footing as Roarke.) Lawrence calls Mr. Roarke “sir” and it just doesn’t feel right. Instead of being equals, they are very much employer and employee.

The fantasies are okay. I liked watching Roarke trying to make Deborah fall out of love with. But the addition of Lawrence felt so wrong and really distracting. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of season 7.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.1 “Curse of the Moreaus/My Man Friday”

Posted on January 14, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 2.10 “Return of the Turks”

Posted on September 2, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

After two months, I’m ready to get back on the California highways with Jon and Ponch!

Episode 2.10 “Return of the Turks”

(Dir by Barry Crane, aired on November 25th, 1978)

It’s always bad news whenever Ponch runs into any of his old friends.

In this episode, when he pulls over a van, he’s shocked to discover that it’s being driven by his old friend, Sid (Kaz Garas). After discovering that former wild man Ponch has now become a cop, Sid spirals into a midlife crisis that leads to him and his friend Rudy (Mark Thomas) playing bumper cars on the highway. Sid is freaked out by the entire experience but Rudy discovers that he loves intentionally bumping into other cars and forcing them off the road.

This episode featured a lot of car crashes and, as usual with CHiPs, they were well-filmed. But I have to admit that I found it almost too disturbing to watch. Usually, I enjoy a good car chase or a spectacularly-filmed car crash. I like fast cars and I’ve always been aware that, when a car crashes onscreen, it’s being driven by a stunt driver. But, back in May, was Dad was in a very serious car crash. He not only broke his shoulder but the crash aggravated his Parkinson’s and the subsequent stay in the hospital and in rehab left him so weak that he died two weeks ago. As a result, I’m not really in the mood for car crashes right now. That’s not the fault of this show, of course. And, under normal circumstances, I would probably be raving about how exciting Rudy’s highway mayhem was.

Ponch is not the only one who meets someone from his past. Baker runs into Pete (James Houghton), the brother of his former partner. Pete’s brother died when he crashed his motorcycle on duty. Pete now puts on his brother’s uniform and pretends to be a member of the Highway Patrol, writing tickets and directing traffic, Because he stole and copied a page from Ponch’s ticket book, Ponch gets the credit for all the tickets but — uh oh! — it turns out that a lot of the tickets are being contested in court. Pete is a bit overzealous. Can Baker and Ponch get Pete off the street before he pulls over the wrong person? And why is a story about the brother of Baker’s former partner mostly about Ponch?

This was a rather melancholy episode. It’s easy to laugh at any episode that features people talking about how Ponch used to be a delinquent because Erik Estrada’s goofy performance doesn’t exactly lend itself to that interpretation. But, in the end, Sid, Pete, and even Rudy were all suffering from a general sort of malaise. They all regretted the way that their lives had turned out and they were all using the California highways as a way to live out their dreams. Unfortunately, by doing so, they put other people’s lives at risk. Fortunately, Baker and Ponch were there to keep the highways safe …. though only after two spectacularly-filmed pile-ups.

Horror on TV: The Twilight Zone 2.3 “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank”

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s televised horror is an episode of The Twilight Zone called The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank. It examines what happens when, in the middle of his funeral, Jeff Myrtlebank (played by James Best) suddenly sits up in his coffin and asks what’s going on. Jeff’s friends and family are now torn between being happy to have Jeff back and being worried as they try to figure out what exactly Jeff has come back as. I like this episode, largely because it’s a good example of country gothic and, in many ways, I’m a gothic country girl. Plus, it has a really great ending!

This episode was directed and written by Montgomery Pittman and originally aired on February 23rd, 1962.