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 1986.  Almost entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!

This week, Tattoo goes rogue!

Episode 3.14 “Lookalikes/The Winemaker”

(Dir by Lawrence Dobkin, originally aired on December 22nd, 1979)

“Ah.  So you thought you would handle her teeny, weeny fantasy your teeny weeny yourself,” Roarke says to Tattoo as they watch a nun depart from the plane and step onto Fantasy Island.

On the one hand, after the past few episodes, I guess we should be glad that Roarke is actually talking to Tattoo again.  But, as the comment shows, it’s pretty obvious that Roarke still despises his assistant and Tattoo doesn’t have much respect for Roarke’s authority.

As for the fantasy, it involves Sister Veronica (Celeste Holm), a wine-making nun who wants to enter her wine in the Fantasy Island Wine Tasting Contest and hopefully win enough money to save her orphanage.  At first, Roarke is a bit annoyed that Tattoo promised Sister Veronica a fantasy that Roarke is not sure that he can make come true.  (Of course, after three seasons, we know that Roarke can do just about anything so, to be honest, Roarke’s objection mostly seems to be about having to do anything to help out Tattoo.)  When Roarke tastes Veronica’s wine, he is pleasantly surprised.  It’s quite good, he says.  However, when he and Tattoo taste the wine a second time, they discover that it’s actually quite bad!

At first, Tattoo tries to substitute a different wine for Sister Veronica’s but Roarke catches him and tells him that the integrity of Fantasy Island cannot be compromised.  However, greedy winemaker Armand Fernandel (Ross Martin) decides do to the same thing, switching the label of a bottle of his wine with the label of a bottle of Sister Veronica’s.  As a result, Veronica wins the competition but has the win taken away when the judge (Jonathan Harris) discovers that the labels were switched.  (Armand doesn’t get the win either, having been disqualifies for cheating.)  So, it looks like Veronica’s fantasy is a bust….

….except, amazingly, oil has been discovered on the grounds of the orphanage.  Yay!  Everything works out and Tattoo is able to keep his promise to Sister Veronica.

As for the other fantasy, it features Ken Berry as Harry Simpson, an Idaho salesman who is convinced he has an exact double and who wants to live the double’s life for a weekend.  It’s an oddly specific fantasy but somehow, Roarke pulls it off.  (But if Roarke could find Harry’s double and allow Harry to live the double’s life, why couldn’t he fix a wine tasting competition?)  It turns out that Harry’s double is a high-living gambler.  Harry is excited to live his life until he discovers that his double is in trouble with a gangster (Michael V. Gazzo) and that he owes all of his gambling success to a 12 year-old card reader named Jimmy (Johnny Timko).  In order to adopt Jimmy and give him a normal childhood, Harry has to win a game of blackjack on his own.  Once again, it’s time to head down to the Fantasy Island casino!  Mr. Roarke, of course, will not allow Jimmy to help Harry because the casino has a strict 18 and over age requirement.  It’s strange how sometimes, Mr. Roarke is in charge of the casino and how other times, Roarke claims to have absolutely no power over the casino.  Personally, I suspect the casino is a money laundering scheme.

This was an enjoyably silly episode, featuring guest stars who appeared to be having a good time.  Celeste Holm is convincingly saintly as Sister Veronica while Ross Martin is enjoyably cartoonish as the greedy Armand.  Ken Berry is so totally cast against type as a gambler that it actually kind of works.  This episode managed to strike a balance between over-the-top silliness and melodrama and, as such, it was an entertaining weekend on the Island.