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, The Love Boat makes history.
Episode 4.20 “Quiet, My Wife’s Listening/Eye of the Beholder/The Nudist from Sunshine Gardens”
(Dir by Harry Mastrogeorge, originally aired on February 21st, 1981)
This episode contains a historical first. It features the first interracial romance to ever be featured on The Love Boat. It took them three and a half seasons to feature one but, at the same time, in 1981, it still probably took some courage for a primetime television show to feature white David Hedison falling in love with black Leslie Uggams. Today, of course, we tend to take it for granted that every movie, TV show, and advertisement is going to feature at least one interracial couple. It’s easy to forget that this is actually a rather recent development. Consider this: I’ve reviewed over a hundred episodes of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat and this is the first episode to feature an interracial romance.
It should be noted, of course, that Leslie Uggams plays a blind woman. At first, I thought the episode was trying to hedge its bets, by assuring any racists in the audience that Uggams didn’t know she was falling in love with a white guy. But then, David Hedison asked Leslie Uggams to marry him and come live with him on his ranch.
“I am a blind, black woman,” Uggams replies, before asking Hedison how he’s going to handle the reactions of the “people in that small town” to him marrying her.
This, of course, would have been a great chance for Hedison to declare that he didn’t care what anyone else had to say and that love is love. Unfortunately, he doesn’t say that.
Instead, Hedison jokes, “We’ll just tell people that you’re the new housekeeper.”
AGCK! Oh, Love Boat, you were so close! That truly unfortunately joke aside, it was a good story and David Hedison and Leslie Uggams had a likable chemistry together. It was nice to see them leave the ship together.
(Incidentally, Leslie Uggams herself married a white man in 1965, at a time when interracial marriage still illegal in many States. They’re still married today.)
As for the other two stories, they were pleasantly bland. Barbie Benton played a nudist who was determined to sunbathe on the ship. Though Doc Bricker volunteered to deal with the problem personally, Gopher instead declared that it was his duty — as purser — to convince her to cover up. Peter Haskell played the ACLU lawyer who threatened to sue Gopher for violating Benton’s first amendment rights. Haskell and Benton fell in love, despite the fact that Benton was 20-something while Haskell appeared to be close to 70.
Meanwhile, Dick Martin boarded the ship with his mistress (Judith Chapman) but he was so paranoid about the possibility of his wife bugging his cabin that his mistress got frustrated and left him. Martin then fell in love with Mary Ann Mobley, an electronic expert who offered to de-bug his cabin. Of course, Mobley was actually a detective sent to catch Martin with his mistress but she fell in love with Martin so I guess it just sucks for Martin’s wife.
The Barbie Benton storyline had some funny moments. The Dick Martin storyline reminded me how hard it is to have sympathy for someone who would cheat on his wife with two different women on one cruise. Overall, this was a pleasant — and historically significant — cruise.
Tonight’s televised horror is The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer. Peter Haskell stars as Clifford Swimmer, an angry jerk who is unhappy with his marriage. He’s come up with a plan, though. He’s going to have himself cloned and then, after leaving his clone with his family, he’ll be free to live his life. However, Swimmer discovers that things never work that simply when it comes to creating a clone. This is a clever story with a great twist at the end.
Through the Shattered Lens 