The Oilman Cometh”

Posted on February 21, 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’s cruise is all about simple misunderstandings that could be easily cleared up by people just not acting stupid for a few seconds. Unfortunately, that’s too much to ask.

Episode 4.4 “Target Gopher/The Major’s Wife/Strange Honeymoon/The Oilman Cometh”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on November 8th, 1980)

Lo and beware! Here comes the idiot plot!

As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, there’s nothing that bothers me more than an idiot plot. That is when a TV show — usually a sitcom — builds an entire episode out of a misunderstanding that could be easily cleared up by everyone just not being an idiot. These are the type of episodes where everyone talks over each other and runs off before they can get a full explanation of what’s happening. They are frustrating to watch.

This episode of The Love Boat has not just one idiot plot but several of them. I usually love this show but this episode made me cringe from start to finish.

Consider:

Oilman Mason Fleers (Dale Robertson) has chartered the boat for his company. He is not only giving everyone a free cruise but he hopes that he’ll be able to sign a big oil deal with Prince Hassan (Pat Harrington, Jr.), who is excited to see the ocean because “my country is covered in sand.” Mason has arranged for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (playing themselves) to provide entertainment. Even though the cheerleaders were on the ship last season, everyone acts as if this is the first time they’ve ever seen them. Doc Bricker is especially excited to see them, even though it’s debatable that a glamorous NFL cheerleader from a land-locked city would ever fall for a middle-aged guy who works on a boat for a living.

Prince Hassan boards the boat looking for a new wife. (He already has several but he specifically wants an American.) When Mason’s assistant, Ted (David Cassidy, with a rather unflattering mustache), attempts to give Prince Hassan the gift of a computerized chess game, Prince Hassan thinks that Ted is actually giving him Ted’s girlfriend, Janet (Janet Gunn). Prince Hassan thinks that Janet will be his new wife and he immediately makes plans for the marriage ceremony to take place on the boat. Ted, Captain Stubing, and Janet could clear all this up by telling Prince Hassan the truth but instead, they just try to hide Janet from him. And then Ted decides that maybe he could win Janet back from the Prince.

One word for all of this: Idiot.

Mason, for his part, falls for one of the cheerleaders (Jayne Ann Maxwell), and pressures her to spend time along with him. Jayne reacts to this by randomly declaring her love for Gopher. Gopher plays along so Mason decides to get revenge by walking up behind Gopher, surprising Gopher, and then collapsing to the deck and pretending that Gopher knocked him out. Gopher is suspended from his duties while the cruise line investigates. There were plenty of people on the deck at the time but no one steps forward to say that Mason clearly faked getting hit. Or maybe someone could point out that Mason has spent the entire cruise harassing a cheerleader who is not interested in him. But no one does. Why?

Because this is an idiot plot.

Walter Henson (Al Corley) was planning on spending his honeymoon on the cruise but then he found out his wife-to-be cheated on him. He left her at the altar. He still takes the cruise but he brings his brother, Hud (Mark Pinter), with him. When Doc, Isaac, and Gopher learn that Hud and Walter are both in the honeymoon suite, they assume that they’re a couple and, because this episode is 44 years old, start giving each other funny looks. It doesn’t occur to anyone that Walter and Hud might have the same last name because they’re related. When Hud falls for a cheerleader, he continually makes excuses to keep her from finding out that he’s traveling with his brother. Why?

IDIOT PLOT!

Major Ross Latham (Robert Culp) boards the boat with his shy and modest wife, Nara (Nobu McCarthy). Surprise! Gloria Beaumont (Jo Ann Pflug) is also on the boat. She and the major are old friends and soon, they’re spending all of their time together. Julie and Vicki assume that Gloria is trying to steal Ross away from Nara. Nara doesn’t suspect a thing.

Idiot. Plot.

Needless to say, everything work out in the end but this episode leaned way too heavily on everyone being an idiot. The Love Boat should be entertaining, not frustrating. This was one of those episodes that just left me wanting to jump overboard.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 2.12 “The Captain’s Cup/ The Folks From Home/ Legal Eagle”

Posted on May 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the Love Boat departs on one weird cruise.

Episode 2.12 “The Captain’s Cup / The Folks from Home / Legal Eagle”

(Dir by Alan Rafkin, originally aired on December 2nd, 1978)

This was a strange episode.

Let’s start with the simplest of our three stories first. Danny Holt (Bert Convy) is recently divorced and still crying over having to pay his wife alimony. When he boards the boat, he specifically asks Gopher if there are any single men onboard who might be interested in marrying his ex-wife. His ex isn’t even on the cruise! Danny is one bitter passenger. From the minute he boards the boat, he’s whining about how unfair his divorce was and how badly he was treated by his wife’s divorce lawyer, Ann Sterling (Leigh Taylor-Young).

Uh-oh, it turns out that Ann is one the cruise as well! And she’s been assigned to be Danny’s dinner companion. Danny isn’t happy about this but then, from out of seemingly nowhere, the two of them end of falling in love. It’s hard to say why they suddenly fall in love. Danny is superbitter over his divorce and Ann knows all of the details about what type of husband he was so it seems like the last thing that would ever happen would be them leaving the ship, arm-in-arm. But somehow, that’s what happens. It was a straight-forward story but it lacked any scenes that would have explained why the two of them fell in love. They just did because they were characters on The Love Boat. (It certainly wasn’t due to any noticeable romantic chemistry between Bert Convy and Leigh Taylor-Young.) This story felt lazy and generic.

In the episode’s second storyline, Captain Stubing is excited because he’s due to receive the Captain of the Year Cup. Diane DiMarzo (Florence Henderson, proving that former Bradys just cannot stay off The Love Boat) boards the ship with the Cup but she’s shocked to discover that 1) her boss — the guy who actually decided to give Stubing the Cup — will not be on the ship and 2) Stubing fully expects her boss to personally present him with the Cup. Now, I’m not really sure how the logic works here but apparently, Diane could lose her job if her boss isn’t there to give Stubing the cup. But why would that be Diane’s problem? She did what she was supposed to do. She boarded the ship with the Cup. Her boss is the one who decided not to show up and he is the boss so it’s not like there was anything Diane could have done about it.

Anyway, Diane recruits one of the ship’s handymen to pretend to be her boss. Though he works on the boat and the rest of the crew know him, it appears that the Captain himself has never met Hank Vosnik (Pat Harrington, Jr.), which kind of leads one to wonder if Stubing really deserves his award. Anyway, Hank falls in love with Diane and is crestfallen when she turns down his marriage proposal. (Seriously, at this point, they had only known each other for like three days so I’m not sure what Hank was expecting.) But, despite being turned down, Hank still pretends to be Diane’s boss. So, Diane decides that she might as well marry him. WHAT!?

Finally, Doc Bricker is happy to meet two passengers from his hometown. George (John McIntire) and Gloria (Jeanette Nolan) spend every moment with Doc and they even announce that, as far as they’re concerned, the 40-something Doc is a member of their family. Doc is touched. But then Gloria falls down a flight of stairs and Doc has to do emergency surgery on her. Gopher calls a doctor in San Francisco and he talks Doc through the surgery. Doc removes Gloria’s spleen and saves her life! Yay! Only at the end of the surgery does he get George to sign a consent form. In real life, that would lead to Doc to losing his job and the cruise line getting sued. But, on The Love Boat, it just leads to more laughter.

On the plus side, this storyline featured the charming performances of McIntire and Nolan, who were married in real life. The story was also written by Fred “Gopher” Grandy and Bernie “Doc” Kopell so, not surprisingly, it actually allowed Grandy and Kopell to do something more than just leer at the passengers. The show rarely gave Grandy or Kopell a chance to show off the fact that they were both capable of giving good dramatic performances so, whenever they got that rare chance to do so, they took advantage of it. That said, it was still a bit awkward to see Doc suddenly performing major surgery in his tiny examination room. It was all for the best on the show but, in real life, it would have led to a major lawsuit. Even though Doc Bricker saved Gloria’s life, it still seems like the ship could probably be held liable for her getting injured in the first place. I mean, the boat is in the middle of the ocean. Shouldn’t there at least be a warning posted on the stairs?

Well, who knows? Strange things happen at sea. Let’s just be happy that everything worked out in the end.

Horror on TV: Circle of Fear 1.21 “The Ghost of Potter’s Field” (dir by Don McDougall)

Posted on October 21, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

While doing research for a story at Potter’s Field, a reporter (Tab Hunter) sees a stranger who looks much like him. At first, the reporter thinks that it’s a coincidence but then the reporter starts to run into the stranger everywhere. His friends think that he’s getting upset over nothing. His girlfriend thinks that he’s in danger. The reporter knows that he has to figure out who the stranger is and why he’s haunting him.

The second-to-last episode of Circle of Fear aired on March 23rd, 1973. Tab Hunter is a bit of a bland hero but the episode still had creepy moments.

Enjoy!

Horror On TV: Kolchak: The Night Stalker 1.13 “Primal Scream” (dir by Robert Scheerer)

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight on Kolchak….

What happens when an oil company discovers new, undefined organic matter in the arctic circle?

Well, first off, they mishandle it and it ends up turning into a prehistoric, killer ape-man.

Secondly, it’s time for a corporate cover-up!

Fortunately, the world’s greatest (if unluckiest) journalist, Carl Kolchak, is on the case!

Anyway, this is an okay episode of Kolchak. If I don’t seem as enthused about it as I’ve been about some of the previous episodes, it’s because a killer, prehistoric ape-man just isn’t as much fun as a Cajun demon or a killer robot. Still, this episode has a nicely done, underground tunnel-set climax. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with an underground tunnel.

This episode originally aired on January 17th, 1975.

Enjoy!

Shattered Politics #25: The President’s Analyst (dir by Theodore J. Flicker)

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“If I was a psychiatrist, which I am, I would say that I was turning into some sort of paranoid personality, which I am!” — Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn) in The President’s Analyst (1967)

Let’s just be absolutely honest about something. Judging from what they regularly get caught saying and from some of the policies that they support, a good deal of politicians could probably use some sort of professional help. That’s probably especially true of the men who sit in the Oval Office. It can’t be easy to have to hide so many secrets, tell so many lies, and be constantly aware of how close the government is to actually collapsing. We’ve had 44 Presidents and I imagine all of them probably could have used someone to talk to.

But here’s the thing. We spend so much time worrying about the well-being of the President that we often don’t stop to think about the people who have to listen to them speak on a daily basis. I imagine that being the President’s therapist must be a thankless job. Not only do you have to spend hours listening to someone who you may not have voted for but, at the same time, you can’t share any of the information that you’ve learned.

That would certainly seem to be what’s happening with Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn), the title character of the wonderfully psychedelic 1967 satire, The President’s Analyst. At the start of the film, Sidney is a supremely confident psychiatrist. He can calmly and rationally deal with all of his patients problems and, in order to keep from getting overwhelmed, he has his own analyst (Will Geer).

One of his patients is Don Masters (Godfrey Cambridge), an agent for the Central Enquiries Agency (CEA) who is first seen casually murdering a man on the streets of New York. (When Sidney discovers that Don is an assassin, he’s thrilled and impressed to discover that Don has managed to channel all of his hostility into his job.) What Sidney doesn’t realize is that Don is testing him to see if he’s up to the job of serving as the President’s analyst.

At first, Sidney is thrilled with his new position but he soon discovers that being the closest confidante of the leader of the free world has its downside. For one thing, Sidney is viewed by suspicion by Henry Lux (Walter Burke), the head of the Federal Bureau of Regulation (which, in this film, is exclusively staffed by people who are less than 5 feet tall). Even beyond being targeted by the FBR, Sidney struggles with not being able to see his own therapist and discuss what he’s been told by the President. Soon, Sidney is becoming paranoid and is even convinced that his girlfriend is a spy.

(And, of course, she is.)

So, Walter does what any sensible and paranoid person would do. He makes a run for it. Pursued by the FBR, the CEA, and a Russian assassin (a funny performance from Severn Darden, who also played Kolp, the sadistic torturer in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes), Sidney hides out with everyone from a group of hippies to a family of heavily armed, karate-trained, middle class “militant liberals.”

(The father of the militant liberal family is played by William Daniels, who decades later would play Mr. Feeney in Boy Meets World.)

Of course, there’s an even bigger conspiracy at work than even Sidney realizes. The real threat is the TPC and I’m not going to tell you what that stands for. You need to see the movie.

And really, The President’s Analyst is a film that you really should see. What makes this film truly special — beyond the clever dialogue and the excellent performances and the great direction — is that it’s both a product of when it was made and a timeless portrait of power and paranoia. It’s a time capsule that still feels incredibly relevant.