The Loan Arranger”

Posted on May 1, 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!

Oh, hey, Charo’s back.

Episode 4.15 “First Voyage, Last Voyage/April, the Ninny/The Loan Arranger”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on January 17th, 1981)

April’s back!

Played by Charo, April Lopez was one of the few recurring characters on The Love Boat. Whereas other actors appeared frequently but always as different characters, Charo was always April whenever she boarded The Love Boat. The first time she boarded the ship, she did so as a stowaway. The next two times, she boarded as the cruise’s entertainment. This season, however, April boards as someone who has grown tired of show business. When last we saw her, April was in love with a guy named Tex and planning on playing Las Vegas. However, when April boards this time, she quickly informs both Julie and Isaac that she and Tex are no longer a couple and Vegas didn’t work out because she was expected to play her guitar while naked.

(“They could have at least gotten you a cello,” Isaac replies.)

April wants a new career, which she gets when she meets Ty Younger (Larry Linville), who is wealthy but who also has two bratty kids who are always chasing off their nannies. They can’t chase off April, who understands that the best way to calm a bratty child is to grab your guitar and sing to them at night. April gives up show business to become a nanny but I don’t think it’ll last. April is too impulsive to settle down, and Ty’s kids really are the worst. (As well, Charo and Larry Linville didn’t exactly generate a lot of heat in their scenes together.) April may leave the boat with a new family but hopefully, she’ll return alone in the fifth season.

Speaking of the worst, Cindy Simmons (Maureen McCormick) is dying but her parents (Ty Hardin and Kathleen Nolan) haven’t gotten around to telling her yet. Cindy thinks that she’s made a full recovery from her recent illness. Her parents don’t want to upset Cindy but when Cindy meets and falls in love with Paul Harris (Jay Thomas), they realize that they’re going to have to tell Cindy the truth. Poor Cindy! Fortunately, this is The Love Boat and Paul isn’t going to let a little thing like impending death get in the way of romance. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen Maureen McCormick on both The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. For this episode, McCormick does a pretty good job with her role and she and Jay Thomas make for an attractive couple.

“I guess I’m still getting my sea legs,” Cindy says to Paul.

“Your legs look mighty fine to me,” Paul replies.

That’s about as witty as things get on this cruise.

Finally, Joey (Richard Kline) is a mob enforcer who has been sent to collect a debt owed by Tony Patacchio, a gambling addict. However, Joey gets distracted when he meets a woman named Antoinette (Lisa Hartman) who enjoys gambling. Joey falls for Antoinette and, unable to find Tony, he even spends the night in her cabin. Hmmm …. Tony …. Antoinette …. Toni….

Yes, Joey has fallen in love with the person he was supposed to rough up. Fortunately, Joey is willing to fix a poker game so that Toni can win enough of his money to pay off her debt. When Toni realizes that Joey lost his money to her on purpose, she declares that she can’t take his money. “If we were married,” Joey says, “It would be our money.”

Richard Kline is not a particularly believable debt collector. (Tony Soprano would have tossed him in a dumpster.) It’s also strange that his boss would send him to collect a debt without bothering to give him a physical description of the person he was supposed to intimidate. The whole storyline was full of holes but I’m surprised to say that I did end up rooting Kline and Hartman to get together. The two of them had enough chemistry to overcome the fact that their story made very little sense.

Previously, whenever Charo was a guest star, she dominated the entire episode, for better or worse. With this episode, she seems kind of bored with the whole thing, as if Charo was just as fed up with show business as April. Instead, it was Maureen McCormick and Jay Thomas who dominated the episode with Richard Kline and Lisa Hartman also getting their share of good scenes. It makes for a bit of an uneven episode but I defy anyone not to feel something when Paul declares that he wants to spend the rest of Cindy’s life with her. Mixing romantic melodrama and goofy comedy is what made The Love Boat a treasure of American pop culture.

Catching Up With The Films of 2018: The Last Movie Star (dir by Adam Rifkin)

Posted on December 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Vic Edwards (Burt Reynolds) was once the biggest movie star in the world.

At times, that’s hard to believe. Vic may have started out as a stunt man before moving on to star in westerns and action movies but Vic is now 80 and he moves slowly and with a permanent slouch. At times, he appears to be so frail that you wonder how he even manages to get out of bed in the morning. Though he still possesses the acerbic wit for which was once famous, the words now come out a lot slower and his voice is tinged with pain that is both physical and emotional. It’s been a while since Vic appeared on a movie set. After years of being a self-described asshole, Vic now spends most of his time alone. His only friend appears to be his aging agent, Sonny (Chevy Chase).

When Vic receives an invitation to attend a film festival in Nashville and accept a career achievement award, Vic goes in hopes of not only getting his ego stroked but also visiting some of the places where he grew up. It’s only once Vic has arrived that he discovers that the film festival is basically a group of wannabe hipsters hanging out in the back of a bar. Under the direction of Doug (Clark Duke), the film festival has previously given lifetime achievement awards to everyone from Al Pacino to Robert De Niro. Vic’s the first recipient to actually show up.

After a night of watching a younger version of himself and answering inane questions about his career and his turbulent personal life, Vic comforts himself by getting drunk and yelling at Doug and his friends. The next day, while the film festival continues, Vic get Doug’s sister, Lil (Ariel Winter), to drive him around Tennessee. Vic wants to visit the places of his youth. As for Lil, she just wants to get rid of her cranky passenger so that she can deal with her emotionally abusive boyfriend.

As you probably already guessed, in The Last Movie Star, Burt Reynolds may have been cast as a character named Vic Edwards but he was basically playing himself. (Director Adam Rifkin has said that he would have abandoned the film if Reynolds had turned down the role) When Vic watches himself onscreen, the clips are from Burt Reynolds’s old movies. When Vic falls asleep and has a dream in which he confronts his younger self, the film uses footage from Deliverance and Smoky and the Bandit. (“Slow down!” Vic yells as the cocky, younger version of him speeds down a country road.) When Vic considers his own mortality, it’s obvious that the aging and frail Reynolds was doing the same thing.

At the start of the film, both Vic and Reynolds seem so infirm that you wonder how he’ll ever make it through the weekend. But, as the film progresses, an interesting thing happens. Before our eyes, both Vic and the actor playing him become stronger. His confidence returns and, as Vic confronts the past, we finally start to see some hints of the old charisma that once made him the world’s biggest film star. As we watch the film, we realize that his body may be weak but his mind is still sharp. We come to realize that Vic now understands that he will die someday but he’s still not going to give up. He may accept his own mortality but he’s not going to surrender to it.

That Burt Reynolds passed away just a few month after The Last Movie Star was released adds an extra poignance to his performance in the film. The Last Movie Star has its flaws. The pacing is inconsistent and, when it comes to Vic relationship with Lil, the film too often falls back on anti-millennial clichés. In the end, the film works best as a tribute to its star. The film argues, quite convincingly, that if anyone deserved to be known as the last movie star, it was him.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker 1.4 “The Vampire” (dir by Don Weis)

Posted on October 14, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of Kolchak….

Kolchak is on assignment in Los Angeles and he’s shocked to discover that the town is turning into a city of vampires! This episode is a sequel to the made-for-TV movie that first introduced to Carl Kolchak to the world. Not only does this episode feature a vampire but it also features the great character actor, William Daniels. William Daniels is one of those actors who plays astonishment quite well so his scenes with Kolchak are a lot of fun.

This episode originally aired on October 4th, 1974.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4wykRWPOkQ