The Professor’s Wife”

Posted on October 23, 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, we start season 5 of The Love Boat!

Episode 5.1 and 5.2 “The Expedition/Julie’s Wedding/The Mongala/Julie’s Replacement/The Three R’s/The Professor’s Wife”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on October 10th, 1981)

The fifth season of The Love Boat opens with a two-hour spectacular. Our Love Boat crew is in Australia, where they will be guiding The Sea Princess on a voyage through the South Pacific. It’s a bit odd to start off a season of The Love Boat on a different boat but I guess the plan was to show off all the different ships that sailed for Princess Cruise Lines. This episode was actually shot on the boat during a cruise. It’s interesting to see how different the Sea Princess is from the show’s usual location. It has nicer hallways than the Pacific Princess and a much larger lobby. However, I prefer the relative privacy of the Pacific Princess’s multi-level dining room to the wide open space provided by the Sea Princess.

Captain Stubing, Gopher, Isaac, and Doc are shocked when Julie does not board the ship. She’s been on vacation with her boyfriend, Tony (Anthony Andrews), for the last few months. Tony lives in Australia so, really, it shouldn’t be too hard for Julie to make it to the ship. Instead, a substitute cruise director named Yvonne (Delvene Delaney) shows up. Doc and Gopher are happy because it gives them a new co-worker to lust after. Captain Stubing is upset because Julie has sent them all a letter in which she explains that she will be marrying Tony and retiring to the animal habitat where he works. She asks Stubing to give her away and she invites Vicki to be a bridesmaid. Gopher, Isaac, and Doc will be ushers.

Doc is briefly distracted from chasing Yvonne when he spots Barbara Carroll (Michelle Phillips) boarding the boat. However, Barbara has eyes for Ralph Sutton (Patrick Duffy), a rancher who is blind without his glasses. Unfortunately, that means that he can’t read the love letter that Barbara wrote him. Because she wants Ralph for herself, Connie Walker (Jennilee Harrison) lies about what the letter says. *GASP* (Don’t worry, it all works out.)

Meanwhile, an expedition headed by shady Deke Donner (Jose Ferrer) goes to an island and captures a hairy man (Patrick Ward) who they believe is the Mongola, a.k.a., the missing link! (Wait, what?) They hide the ape-man in the ship’s cargo area (huh?) and try to keep anyone else from learning that they’re transporting a living thing. Everyone acts like he’s a caveman but it’s kind of obvious that the Mongola is just a confused guy with a beard. Dr. Jill McGraw (Donna Dixon) falls in love with the Mongola, much to the consternation of her colleague, Dr. Barry Mason (Gary Frank). Meanwhile, Deke’s old friend, Prof. Milo Ender (Harry Morgan), is stunned to discover that the Mongola has a vaccination scar. Milo’s wife, Vivian (Katherine Helmond), encourages Milo to keep the secret to himself so that they can at least make some money off of the Mongola. (Like, seriously, what the Hell is even going on with this story?) Milo agrees, though it doesn’t seem to occur to him that, if he could notice the vaccination scar, then pretty much anyone could notice the vaccination scar. Eventually, the Mongola gets loose from his cage and jumps overboard. “He’s shark food,” Deke says. (What in the name of God is going on here?) However, the Mongola apparently survives because the police are waiting to arrest Deke as soon as the ship docks in Australia.

But what about the wedding!? you’re saying. Well, the wedding doesn’t happen. It nearly happens. Julie shows up at the church. However, Tony finds out that he’s going to die in a month or two so he leaves Julie at the altar. Julie flies back to Los Angeles with the rest of the Love Boat crew.

Seriously, this is the most morbid episode of The Love Boat that I’ve ever seen.

Still, morbid or not, it’s an entertainingly weird episode and the Australian and New Zealand scenery is lovely to look at. (As with all of the two-hour episodes of The Love Boat, there’s a lot of travelogue padding.) There’s something oddly appealing about seeing the usual Love Boat shenanigans mixed in with a story about the Missing Link and Julie discovering that the love of her life is terminally ill. I mean, the song isn’t lying. The Love Boat really does promise something for everyone.

I mean, in the end, we all know that Julie couldn’t get married because then she’d have to leave the show and that wouldn’t happen until Lauren Tewes’s cocaine use became a problem during the seventh season. Tony could either cheat on her or he could die. (Better he die than do what almost every man does at his bachelor party.) The episode ends with Tony still alive so I guess the show’s writer were leaving their options open. Maybe Tony will make a miraculous recovery, who knows?

Myself, I’m just happy that the crew is back together. It’s time to set sail …. again!

Desolation Canyon (2006, directed by David Cass)

Posted on January 17, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

After robbing a bank in a small western town, an outlaw stops by the home of his estranged wife and takes his own son hostage. The town’s aging sheriff (Patrick Duffy) teams with the boy’s grandfather (Stacy Keach) to take the outlaw down and save the child’s life. Accompanying them is the bank president, Edwin Bornstein (David Rees Snell). Edwin may be a city boy who talks about how much he’s always wanted to say “I reckon,” but it turns out that there’s more to him than meets the eye. He’s also good with a gun.

I probably should have given up on Desolation Canyon as soon as I saw that it was a “Hallmark Presents” film but I like westerns and Stacy Keach has always done well whenever he’s been cast as a gunslinger so I decided to give it a try. Starting with a bank robbery and endings with a duel, Desolation Canyon is about as old-fashioned as an old-fashioned western can be. Because it was made by Hallmark, there’s nothing dangerous or edgy about the film. A few people do get shot but there’s no blood. The shoot outs in Red Dead Redemption are more violent and suspenseful than anything to be found in this film. (Of course, that’s because most of the shootouts in Red Dead Redemption occur because the play pushed the wrong button while trying to greet someone. I still feel bad for accidentally shooting the kindly old homesteader who just wanted someone to help him collect some flowers for his wife.) This is the type of western that you can safely watch with your grandparents, since that’s who the film was made for. That’s not bad because grandparents need movies to but if you’re looking for a complex or an unpredictable western in the style of a Larry McMurtry novel or a later Eastwood film, I reckon this ain’t it.

Giving some credit where credit is due, Stacy Keach, David Rees Snell, and even Patrick Duffy are credible in their roles. Stacy Keach is especially convincing a former gunfighter who can still outdraw anyone. Stacy Keach is 81 years old and still working. Someone needs to write a great Stacy Keach role and they need to do it now.

Lifetime Movie Review: Doomsday Mom: The Lori Vallow Story (dir by Bradley Walsh)

Posted on August 28, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Doomsday Mom is a Lifetime true crime film, based on the disappearance of 16 year-old Tylee Ryan and 7 year-old J.J. Vallow and the subsequent arrest of their mother, Lori Vallow, and her new husband, Chad Daybell. Both Lori and Chad were heavily involved in the Doomsday movement, the belief that the end times were quickly approaching and that only the righteous would be saved. (Hence the title, Doomsday Mom.) Apparently, before the children disappeared, Lori and Chad had said that they had become demonically-possessed zombies. While the police were investigating the disappearances of Tylee and J.J., they also uncovered evidence that suggested that Lori and Chad may have been involved in several more deaths and attempted murders, including those of Lori’s ex-husband and her brother and Chad’s first wife.

It’s a disturbing story but it’s also one that hasn’t been resolved yet. Both Lori and Chad are currently in prison, awaiting trial. While the state of Idaho has ruled the Lori is not mentally competent enough to stand trial for murdering her children, the state of Arizona has still indicted her for attempting to kill one of her ex-husbands. Meanwhile, Chad will be facing the death penalty when his trial finally begins. Because neither has been convicted of any crime, they are still considered to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. If they are found guilty, there’s still the question of how many of the mysterious deaths that occurred within their orbit were the result of foul playe and how many were just coincidences. (Lori’s brother, for instance, died at a rather convenient time for Lori but everyone still seems to agree that he had been in poor health long before Lori even met Chad.) There’s also the question of whether or not Lori is actually legally insane or if she’s just faking it to get out of being sent to death row.

That proves to be a bit of a problem for Doomsday Mom, which is a film that suggests a lot of things but can’t actually come out and take a definite stand on anything, beyond the fact that Lori and Chad were a creepy couple who believed in some strange things. Though the film clearly believes that both Lori and Chad are guilty, it still has to try to maintain some sort of ambiguity. Hence, we learn that people have died but we never learn much about the circumstances of their death. We learn that Tylee was rebelling against her mother’s strict rules but we don’t learn much details about those rules, beyond Lori insisting that Tylee stay home to babysit so that Lori could go to church whenever she felt like it. We don’t see much of Chad’s first wife, nor do we learn much about his family.

Perhaps most importantly, we don’t really learn much about Lori and Chad’s doomsday beliefs, beyond the fact that they were convinced the world was ending and that the people around them were being possessed by demons. The film suggests that both of them were motivated by their own ego. Lori and Chad enjoyed being mini-celebs in the Doomsday movement. But, by not exploring how they came to have such beliefs in the first place, it’s hard not to feel that the film is refusing to give us some very important clues to understanding how all of these murders could have occurred in the first place. Presumably because the question of Lori’s mental competence is still in the air, the film cannot take a clear stand on whether Lori really believes all of the things that she says or if she’s just using all of the doomsday talk as a cover for her own selfishness. As often when happens when a film about a true crime case is rushed into production, Doomsday Mom often leaves the viewer with a number of unanswered questions.

On a positive note, both Lauren Lee Smith and Marc Blucas are chilling in the roles of Lori and Chad. Smith, in particular, is frightening as she switches from being a normal, overprotective mother to a wild-eyed religious fanatic, seemingly at random. Playing the role of the concerned grandparents of the missing children, Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl do a great job of capturing their desperation as they start to realize that, despite all of their hopes and efforts, they will probably never see their grandchildren again. The scene were they learn the fate of Tylee and J.J. is poignantly portrayed by both Duffy and Purl.

I always have a slightly problem with films like Doomsday Mom. I’m not a fan of rushing films into production to take advantage of a tragedy still being in the news. But Doomsday Mom is a well-acted and well-directed film, even if it can’t provide us with the answers that we may be looking for.

Hurricane (1974, directed by Jerry Jameson)

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Hurricane Hilda is crashing down on the Gulf Coast and everyone in its path is about to get all wet. While Will Geer and Michael Learned try to warn everyone about the approaching hurricane, coast guard pilot Martin Milner observes the storm from the air and tires to rescue everyone in its path. Some people listen and some people don’t. Milner’s own father, played by Barry Sullivan, ends up getting stranded in a cabin while Larry Hagman and Jessica Walter play a married couple on a boat who find themselves sailing straight into the storm. On temporarily dry land, Frank Sutton (a.k.a. Gomer Pyle’s Sgt. Carter) plays a homeowner who refuses to evacuate because he’s convinced that he knows everything there is to know about hurricanes. He and the neighbors have a drunken party while waiting for the storm. When Patrick Duffy and his wife announce that they’re heading for safety, Sutton demands that they come in and have a beer with him. When Hilda finally makes landfall, some survive and some don’t.

Hurricane is a by-the-numbers disaster movie. It was made after The Poseidon Adventure and during the same year as The Towering Inferno and it hits all the usual disaster movie beats. Survival is determined by karma, with Hilda going after anyone who was too big of a jerk during the first half of the movie. It’s predictable stuff but it does feature footage from an actual hurricane so it’s at least not too dragged down by any of the bad special effects that always show up in made-for-TV disaster films.

This is one of those films where the cast was probably described as being all-star, even though most of them were just TV actors who needed a quick paycheck. Seen today, the film feels like a MeTV reunion special. Years before they played brothers in Dallas, both Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy appeared in Hurricane, though neither of them shares any scenes. Will Geer and Michael Learned were starring on The Waltons when they appeared in this movie and they’re in so few scenes that they probably shot their scenes over a weekend before returning to Walton’s Mountain. The best performance is from Frank Sutton, who died of a heart attack just a few weeks after this movie aired. He’s a convincing hothead, even if he doesn’t have Gomer around to yell at.

Hurricane may be bad but it’s still not as terrible as most made-for-TV disaster movies. People who enjoy watching TV actors pretending to stare at a tidal wave of water about to crash down on them will find this film to be an adequate time waster.