Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 7.9 “Fantasy Island Girl/Saturday’s Child”

Posted on September 9, 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.

This week, we have two fantasies that seem very familiar.

Episode 7.9 “Fantasy Island Girl/Saturday’s Child”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on December 10th, 1983)

Actress Marion Sommers (Stella Stevens) comes to the Island. Lawrence is a huge fan and can’t imagine what fantasy she could possibly have. Roarke explains that Marion wants to be reunited with her children. The twist is that her children don’t know that Marion is their mother. They think that their mother died and that they were adopted by Fran Woods (Diane Baker).

Marion is told that, because of the way she phrased her fantasy, she’ll get to meet her children on the island but she can’t tell them that she’s their mother. The children have spent the last few years with Ms. Woods as their mother. Marion agrees but she doesn’t keep her word and, by the end of her fantasy, she’s told both Bill (David Kaufman) and Ellie (Amy Linker) that she is their mother and that she wants them to come with her. Bill and Ellie reject her, saying that Ms. Woods will always be their mother. However, they would like it if Marion would be their friend.

Lawrence asks Marion to give him her autograph so he can give it to his niece. Then, after Marion leaves, Lawrence tells Roarke that he doesn’t have a niece….

This fantasy seemed awfully familiar. I don’t really have the time to go back and reread every Fantasy Island review that I’ve written but I’m pretty sure that this show has already gone to the “I’m a famous actress who wants to meet the children that I gave up” well more than a few times. In this case, it just felt like everyone was going through the motions.

As for the other fantasy, it involved the Fantasy Island Girl Beauty Pageant and, again, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen several versions of this pageant fantasy in the past. This time, it’s the pageant’s producer, Nick Gleason (Paul Burke), who has a fantasy. It seems that Nick has a reputation for fixing his pageants so his fantasy is to run a totally “clean” and honest pageant. It seems like he could have just done that on his own without even having to go to Fantasy Island. Since when have fantasies become about doing things that most people would just do naturally?

Nick’s daughter, Tina (Audrey Landers), enters the pageant and suddenly, Nick finds himself tempted to fix the pageant for her. When Roarke explains this to Tina, Tina withdraws from the pageant and Nick doesn’t fix the pageant. Nick is so happy that he finally put on a honest pageant but the only reason he didn’t fix the pageant was because Tina dropped out. If she hadn’t dropped out, he totally would have rigged it. So, I’m not really sure that Nick has anything to brag about. It’s kind of like bragging about not robbing a bank because it was closed on Sunday.

Lawrence is appointed as one of the judges for the beauty pageant. You know who really enjoyed beauty pageants? Tattoo. This would have been a fun fantasy for Tattoo. Instead, we just get Lawrence looking all huffy and puffy.

The trip to the Island was no fantasy.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 5.17 “The Return of the Captain’s Lady/Love Ain’t Illegal/The Irresistible Man”

Posted on February 12, 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 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!

It’s time for another trip on The Love Boat! We’re a little late setting sail today but it happens. Let’s see what’s happening on this cruise….

Episode 5.17 “The Return of the Captain’s Lady/Love Ain’t Illegal/The Irresistible Man”

(Dir by Howard Morris, originally aired on February 6th, 1982)

This week’s cruise is all about people being stupid.

For instance, George Boggs (Dick Martin) wants to embezzle some money from his company but he can’t run the risk of his business partner, Irwin (Robert Mandan), finding out. So, George tells his secretary, Marge (Phyllis Davis), to keep Irwin distracted while George steals the money. However, Marge really does fall for Irwin. This was a very predictable storyline and it suffered from Dick Martin continually mugging for the camera and acting so obviously guilty that there was no way that the entire world wouldn’t have noticed what he was doing. Still, if you’re a fan of sitcoms from the 70s and 80s, it’s always interesting to see Robert Mandan playing a sympathetic character for a change.

Things get even dumber when Doug Bridges (Linwood Boomer) decides that the best way to get Pam (Lydia Cornell) to notice him would be to fake being pulled into a broom closet and kissed by an amorous woman who then, in Doug’s telling of the story, runs off and disappears. Soon, the entire ship is looking for Doug’s mystery woman. Why this would get Pam to like Doug, I’m not sure. Pam’s best friend (Pat Klous) does like Doug so she pretends to be the mystery woman. Of course, Doug can’t reveal that she’s lying because that would mean revealing that he was lying and …. as I said, this story was dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

Finally, Captain Stubing’s ex-fiancé, Linda (Pat Crowley) boards the ship and the Captain is super excited! He starts to rekindle their relationship and soon, he’s even thinking of proposing. Yay! Vicki’s finally going to have a stepmom …. oh wait. Hold on. It turns out that Linda’s married and she just boarded the boat and allowed herself to be romanced by the Captain without telling him any of this because …. reasons, I guess? I mean, don’t get me wrong. Linda is not happy with her marriage and is in the process of getting a divorce but she doesn’t tell any of that to the Captain. Merrill thinks that Linda is single and ready to get married. Nope, Linda was just looking for a fling and is not ready to get married again. Poor Merrill! At least he has the crew looking out for him….

Ugh. This episode. Listen, I am more than willing to suspend my disbelief when it comes to this show. Usually, I absolutely love The Love Boat. But usually there’s at least one sort of funny or sweet story to go along with the ones that are less memorable. None of the stories worked on this cruise and that’s a shame. That said, I’ll be back next week. The Love Boat promises something for everyone, afterall.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.15 “The Trigamist/Jealousy/From Here To Maternity”

Posted on May 8, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, both Doc and Captain Stubing try to get out of doing their jobs.

Episode 4.15 “The Trigamist/Jealousy/From Here To Maternity”

(Dir by Howard Morris, originally aired on January 17th, 1981)

Finally, Captain Stubing has found love!

He is totally smitten with passenger Linda Bradley (Pat Crowley) and Linda seems to like him as well. (Why wouldn’t she? He’s the Captain. No one wants to date the people who are in the bottom of the boat and shoveling coal in the furnace. The Captain is the one who has his own special table.) Stubing is soon spending all of his time with Linda. Vicki gets jealous. Myself, I’m wondering who is steering the boat.

Vicki gets so jealous that Linda eventually picks up on it and breaks things off with the Captain. The Captain is heart-broken but, when a contrite Vicki explains that Linda was just trying to protect her feelings, the Captain cheers up, Vicki agrees to accept Linda as a possible stepmother, and Linda promises to return for another cruise as soon as possible. Will we ever see Linda again? I doubt it. Charo seems to be the only performer who regularly returns to the Love Boat as the same character. We might see Pat Crowley again but she probably won’t be playing Linda.

This storyline, I could relate to. I’m a child of divorce and I’ll just say that I was Hell on anyone who I thought was trying to be either a new father or a new mother to me. So far, at least, the stories about the Captain and Vicki have always been handled well. Gavin MacLeod is always at his best when he’s playing the fatherly side of Stubing.

Captain Stubing is not the only person trying to get laid on this cruise. Doc Bricker — of course! — is eager to spend time with his latest girlfriend, Mona (Rebecca Holden), but he keeps getting summoned by the Talmadges. Betty Talmadge (Murphy Cross) is pregnant and her husband, Arthur (Michael Young), is worried that she’s going to give birth on the cruise event though she’s not due for another 9 weeks. “I was born on airplane!” Arthur yells at one point. Eventually, Doc tells Arthur that he should take up jogging to deal with his nervousness. Arthur ends up breaking his leg as a result. That, at the very least, confines him to his cabin but Doc is now so worried about him that he still can’t find time for Mona. Finally, as the ship docks in Los Angeles, Betty goes into labor.

Finally, Judge Joanne Atkinson (Nancy Walker) boards the ship and is surprised to see that Harrison Harper (George Gobel, who is an even less convincing womanizer than Doc Bricker) is also taking a cruise. The judge previously sentenced Harrison to probation for being a bigamist. The Judge and Harrison fall in love and get engaged. Of course, Harrison is also engaged to five other women. I’m sure it’ll all work out.

This was a weird cruise. The main theme seemed to be that both Doc and the Captain will do anything to avoid actually doing their jobs. Meanwhile, the Judge and Harrison’s relationship appears to be doomed from the start. Getting arrested and being sentenced to probation has done nothing to dissuade Harrison from getting engaged to everyone he meets. Julie looks worried as Harrison and the Judge leave the ship together and I don’t blame her!

As always, the ocean scenery was pleasant and I appreciated the sincerity of the scenes that Gavin MacLeod and Jill Whelan performed together. Still, I was kind of happy when the boat docked this week.

Retro Television Reviews: International Airport (dir by Don Chaffey and Charles S. Dubin)

Posted on April 9, 2023 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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1985’s International Airport! It can be viewed on YouTube!

It’s not easy working at an international airport!

At least, that’s the message of this made-for-television film. Produced by Aaron Spelling and obviously designed to be a pilot for a weekly television series, International Airport details one day in the life of airport manager David Montgomery (Gil Gerard). Everyone respects and admires David, from the recently graduated flight attendants who can’t wait for their first day on the job to the hard-working members of the airport security team. The only person who really has a problem with David is Harvey Jameson (Bill Bixby), the old school flight controller who throws a fit when he learns that a woman, Dana Fredricks (Connie Sellecca), has been assigned to work in the tower. Harvey claims that women can’t handle the pressure of working the tower and not having a personal life. He demands to know what Dana’s going to do during that “one week of the month when you’re not feeling well!” Harvey’s a jerk but, fortunately, he has a nervous breakdown early on in the film and Dana gets to take over the tower.

Meanwhile, David is trying to figure out why an old friend of his, Carl Roberts (played by Retro Television mainstay Robert Reed, with his bad perm and his retired porn star mustache), is at the airport without his wife (Susan Blakely). David takes it upon himself to save Carl’s troubled marriage because it’s all in a day’s work for the world’s greatest airport manager!

While Carl is dealing with his mid-life crisis, someone else is sending threatening letters to the airport. One of the letters declares that there’s a bomb on a flight that’s heading for Honolulu. David and Dana must decide whether to allow Captain Powell (Robert Vaughn) to fly to Hawaii or to order him to return to California. And Captain Powell must figure out which one of his passengers is the bomber. Is it Martin Harris (George Grizzard), the sweaty alcoholic who want shut up about losing all of his friends in the war? Or is it the woman sitting next to Martin Harris, the cool and aloof Elaine Corey (Vera Miles)?

Of course, there are other passengers on the plane. Rudy (George Kennedy) is a veteran airline mechanic. Rudy is hoping that he can talk his wife (Susan Oliver) into adopting Pepe (Danny Ponce), an orphan who secretly lives at the airport. Unfortunately, when Pepe hears that Rudy’s plane might have a bomb on it, he spends so much time praying that he doesn’t realize he’s been spotted by airport security. Pepe manages to outrun the security forces but he ends up hiding out in a meat freezer and, when the door is slammed shut, it appears that Pepe may no longer be available for adoption. Will someone hear Pepe praying in time to let him out? Or, like Frankie Carbone, will he end up frozen stiff?

International Airport was an attempt to reboot the Airport films for television, with the opening credits even mentioning that the film was inspired by the Arthur Hailey novel that started it all. As well, Gil Gerard, Susan Blakely, and George Kennedy were all veterans of the original Airport franchise. George Kennedy may be called Rudy in International Airport but it’s easy to see that he’s still supposed to be dependable old Joe Patroni. Unfortunately, despite the familiar faces in the cast, International Airport itself is a bit bland. It’s a disaster film on a budget. While the viewers gets all of the expected melodrama, they don’t get anything as entertaining or amusing as Karen Black flying the plane in Airport 1975 or the scene in Concorde: Airport ’79 where George Kennedy leaned out the cockpit window (while in flight) and fired a gun at an enemy aircraft. Probably the only thing that was really amusing (either intentionally or unintentionally) about International Airport was the character of Pepe and that was just because young Danny Ponce gave perhaps the worst performance in the history of television.

International Airport did not lead to a television series. Watching it today, it’s a bit on the dull side but, at the same time, it is kind of nice to see what an airport was like in the days before the TSA. If nothing else, it’s a time capsule that serves as a record of the days when the world was a bit more innocent.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 1.18 “Last of the Stubings / Million Dollar Man / The Sisters”

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week’s cruise is all about family, love, and …. CRIME!

Episode 1.18 “Last of the Stubings / Million Dollar Man / The Sisters”

(dir by Jack Arnold, originally aired on February 4th, 1978)

Fresh from having given Isaac a lesson in black history during the previous cruise, Captain Stubing is excited to give the rest of the crew a lesson about his family. The Stubings have a long and noteworthy Naval tradition and the Captain is proud to announce that his nephew, L. Courtney Stubing IV (Peter Isacksen), has been accepted to Annapolis. But, before going to school, he’s going to work on the Pacific Princess and show everyone that he is a natural-born sailor. The only problem is that Courtney Stubing is not a natural-born sailor. Instead, he’s a tall, clumsy, near-sighted, and kind of goony guy who has no idea how to talk to the passengers and who would rather be a ballet dancer. The problem, along with the fact that he’s the last of the young Stubings and expected to carry on the family tradition, is that he’s just as bad at dancing as he is at everything else.

Now, I have to give some credit to Gavin MacLeod here because he made this storyline work. The scene where, having finally realized the truth of about his nephew, Captain Stubing tells Courtney that it’s okay not to become a sailor and that he should find out what he’s good at was well-written and sensitively acted by MacLeod. It was about as honest a moment as you’ll probably ever find on a show like The Love Boat.

While the Stubings were bonding, two sisters were fighting. Rose (Marion Ross) was upset that Noreen (Pat Crowley) was spending all of her time with the handsome Clark Tyler (Brett Halsey). Seeing as how I mostly know Hasley from his starring role in Lucio Fulci’s Touch of Death, I would have been more concerned for Noreen’s safety than upset that she was ignoring me. Anyway, it was kind of boring story but it all worked out in the end. Marion Ross would go on to become the Love Boat’s most frequent passenger, though she always played a different character. Eventually, she even played a woman who married Captain Stubing but we’ve got a long way to go until we reach that point.

A long, loooooooooong way.

Meanwhile, two passengers found love. Unfortunately, it was only after they slept together that Stephanie (Marcia Strassman) discovered that Bill (Frank Converse) had stolen a million dollars from his employer and Bill discovered that Stephanie was a cop. Stephanie explained that she would be required to arrest Bill as soon as the ship returned to the United States. Bill considered running off to Mexico but, in the end, he decided to face justice in the U.S., on the condition that Stephanie would be waiting for him after he got out of prison. Honestly, I think it would have made more sense for Stephanie to just join Bill in Mexico and thy two of them could have built a new life there. I mean, they’ve got a million dollars! But, whatever. Strassman and Converse had a lot of chemistry so, despite yourself, you really do hope that things will work out for them while you’re watching the episode.

And I hope things work for you as well, as we sail towards 2023! The Love Boat will return.

Horror on TV: The Twilight Zone Ep. 111 “Printer’s Devil”

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this episode of The Twilight Zone, Robert Sterling plays the editor of a failing newspaper. After being forced to fire all of his employees, Sterling prepares to commit suicide. However, before going through with it, Sterling is approached by a friendly old man (Burgess Meredith) who offers to both pay off Sterling’s debts and to work for him as the newspaper’s only reporter. Sterling agrees and…

Well, just the fact that this episode is entitled Printer’s Devil probably gives you a clue about what’s really going on with that nice old man…

Printer’s Devil is one of the rare hour-long episodes of The Twilight Zone. If nothing else, it’s worth watching just to compare Meredith’s performance here with his far different performance in Time Enough At Last.