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, we set sail for some very minor adventure.

Episode 8.21 “Ace Takes a Holiday/The Runaway/Courier”

(Dir by Kim Friedman, originally aired on February 9th, 1985)

Irene Patton (Florence Henderson) boards the boat with her husband Frank (Peter Mark Richman) and her stepdaughter, Sandy (Tracy Nelson). Irene doesn’t understand why Sandy doesn’t like Frank. For us viewers, it’s easy to guess that Frank is up to no good because he’s played by Peter Mark Richman and we all remember how mean he was in the Friday the 13th movie where Jason went to Manhattan. Anyway, Frank hits on every woman that he sees, including Sandy and cruise director Judy McCoy. (If Julie was still cruise director, she probably would have ended up having an affair with Frank, but Judy is a bit less impulsive.) Eventually, Irene overhears Frank being a cad. So much for that marriage!

Courier Arnold Devlin (Michael Spound) likes passenger Ellen (Charlene Tilton). It’s too bad that Arnold has a big bulky briefcase handcuffed to his wrist! Arnold attempts to romance Ellen but he can’t let the briefcase out of his sight. Seriously, that’s the storyline.

Finally, Ace injures his ankle. Kim takes over as ship’s photographer and keeps accidentally taking pictures of herself. Passenger Lisa Baxter (Marla Heasley) is more than willing to nurse Ace through his injury, but good luck getting any alone time when all the other members of the crew keep coming by the cabin to check on him. I’ve sprained and broken my ankle enough times that I cringed every time I saw Ace hopping across his cabin to open the door. LET HIM REST! Seriously, if you don’t let your ankle heal properly, you’ll end up with crazy arthritis when you’re older. That’s something that they don’t tell you when you’re a klutzy 12-year-old aspiring ballerina.

This episode was strangely insubstantial. I guess one might be tempted to say the same of this review, but there’s really not much to say about this one. It’s a bit of a throwaway episode. After eight seasons, episodes like this are going to happen to any show. The storyline with Florence Henderson and her husband would seem to indicate that the show’s writers were getting a little bit cynical about finding love on the high seas. They could have called this episode The Divorce Boat.