The Starmaker”

Posted on June 19, 2024 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 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 …. it’s one of the best episodes of The Love Boat ever!

Episode 4.18 “Aquaphobiac/Humpty Dumpty/The Starmaker”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on February 7th, 1981)

David Hasselhoff boards The Love Boat, for the second time!

This time around, the Hoff is playing Brian Kiley. Brian and Julie went to college together. Brian was the star quarterback and, as he explains it, he and Julie were a pretty serious couple at the time. But, in the end, Brian ended up marrying Julie’s roommate and his own playing days came to a premature end when he broke his arm. Now, he’s on the Love Boat and he wants to not only get back together with Julie but he also wants to make a comeback in the NFL!

Julie is tempted. How couldn’t she be tempted by the Hoff? But watching Brian talk about his glory days on the football field, she realizes that he’s living in the past and, to an extent, so is she. Brian is, at first, upset by Julie’s feelings but then he realizes that she’s right. He makes peace with his years as a famous quarterback and he leaves the boat not as Julie’s lover but as her good friend….

MY GOD, JULIE — IT’S THE HOFF IN HIS GLORY DAYS! WHO CARES IF HE TALKS ABOUT FOOTBALL!? CHASE AFTER HIM!

The Pointer Sisters also board the ship, this time as employees of the cruise. Isaac want to impress a talent agent (Jeff Cooper) so he recruits the sisters to serve as his backing vocalists. After seeing them perform, the talent agent is impressed but only by the sisters. They get a recording contract while Isaac …. well, Isaac goes back to pouring drinks. POOR ISAAC! But give credit to Ted Lange, who brought a lot of sincere feeling to what could have been a throwaway storyline.

Finally, Glenn Dobson (Louis Nye) and his fiancée, Vanessa (Audra Lindley), board the boat so that they can get to know each other before the wedding. Glenn has severe aquaphobia and cannot bring himself to take off his inflatable life jacket. Vanessa tries to help him conquer his fear but nothing helps. Glenn fears all the other passengers are laughing at him. So, the crew and the passengers all put on their own life jackets to show Glenn that he has nothing to be ashamed of.

“Tonight,” Stubing announces, “we are truly a boat of love.”

Awwwwww! Seriously, who would have guessed that The Love Boat would make me cry? This was such a sweet story and both Louis Nye and Audra Lindley really seemed to be invested in their characters. When Glenn finally removed his life vest and took a few stumbling steps into the pool, I wanted to cheer.

What a great cruise this turned out to be!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Baywatch Nights 1.2 “Bad Blades”

Posted on November 21, 2023 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, an detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on Youtube!

This week, David Hasselhoff battles John O’Hurley on Baywatch Nights!

Episode 1.2 “Bad Blades”

(Dir by George Fenady, originally aired on October 7th, 1995)

Cosmetics mogul Frances Sandreen (Lois Nettleton) has hired Mitch, Garner, and Ryan to help her track down her wayward son, Todd (Jason Hervey). Like a lot of rich and spoiled kids, Todd has had his problems with the law. He’s a wanderer, someone who has spent most of his short life pursuing extreme sports and who dropped out of college after just a semester or two. Mitch and Garner think that the kid sounds like a spoiled brat but they need the money so they take the case.

(Why is Mitch so poor? He never seemed to be struggling financially on Baywatch.)

Unfortunately, Todd has fallen in with an even worse crowd than his old prep school friends. He’s joined a group of roller-skating burglars who rob apartments and delivery vans and then skate away into the darkness. One reason why they’re so good at their job is because they spend hours every day practicing. If you’ve ever wanted to spend 20 minutes of your life watching footage of people skating off of ramps in slow motion, this episode should be right up your alley.

Leading this gang of thieves is the impeccably-dressed Kemp. Kemp is played by John O’Hurley of Dancing With Stars, Family Feud, and Seinfeld fame. (O’Hurley also appeared in a few episodes of Baywatch, always playing a different character.) With his perfect haircut and his resonant voice, O’Hurley makes for an entertaining villain. There’s nothing about O’Hurley’s performance that suggests that he is in any way taking the role of Kemp particularly seriously. O’Hurley plays him like a comic book villain and that is definitely to the episode’s benefit.

As entertaining as O’Hurley and the skating scenes are, this episode reveals a huge problem with the first season of Baywatch Nights. Other than the fact that Hasselhoff is wearing a shirt for the entire runtime, there’s nothing about this episode to really distinguish it from a typical episode of Baywatch. Baywatch has its share of episodes about spoiled rich kids and their worried parents. Baywatch was always looking for an excuse to pad out an episode with some extreme sports footage. Even the scene where Garner and Mitch chase the thieves across the Los Angeles river felt like it was lifted from Baywatch or any other Los Angeles-based crime show for that matter.

As well, it’s impossible not to notice that, for an a show called Baywatch Nights, most of the action takes place during the day. I thought being a private eye was only supposed to be Mitch’s night job. Who is watching the beach while Mitch is investigating crimes? It really does seem like Mitch is violating some sort of lifeguard code here.

Next week: Mitch searches for the only witness to a murder!

A Movie A Day #150: Back to School (1986, directed by Alan Metter)

Posted on June 7, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) started with nothing but through a combination of hard work and chutzpah, he started a chain of “Tall and Fat” clothing stores and made a fortune. Everyone has seen his commercials, the one where he asks his potential customers, “Do you look at the menu and say, ‘Okay?'” He has a new trophy wife named Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau) and a chauffeur named Lou (Burt Young). Thornton never even graduated from high school but he gets respect.

However, his son, Jason (Keith Gordon), doesn’t get no respect. No respect at all. Jason is a student at a pricey university, where he is bullied by Chas Osborne (William Zabka) and can’t get a date to save his life. Jason’s only friend is campus weirdo Derek Lutz (Robert Downey, Jr.). When Thornton sees that his son isn’t having any fun, he decides to go back to school!

Back to School is a predictable but good-natured comedy. It is like almost every other 80s college comedy except, this time, it’s a 65 year-old man throwing raging parties and making the frat boys look stupid instead of Robert Carradine or Curtis Armstrong. On the stand-up stage, Dangerfield always played the (sometimes) lovable loser but in the movies, Dangerfield was always a winner. In both Caddyshack and Back to School, Dangerfield played a self-made man who forced his way into high society and showed up all of the snobs. While Back to School is no Caddyshack, it does feature Rodney at his best.

Rodney may be the funniest thing about Back to School but a close second is Sam Kinison, who owed much of his early success to Rodney Dangerfield’s support. Kinison plays a history professor, who has some very strongly held views about the Vietnam War and who punctuates his points with a primal screen.

Also, keep an eye out Kurt Vonnegut, playing himself. Rodney hires him to write a paper about Kurt Vonnegut for one of his classes. The paper gets an F because Rodney’s literature professor (Sally Kellerman) can tell that not only did Rodney not write it but whoever did knows absolutely nothing about the work of Kurt Vonnegut.

So it goes.