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 second season of The Love Boat comes to a close.

Episode 2.27 “Third Wheel/Grandmother’s Day/Second String Mom”

(Dir by Gordon Farr, originally aired on May 12th, 1979)

 It’s time for a special Mother’s Day cruise!

Gopher is excited because his mother, Roz (Ethel Merman), and his father, Eliot (an unwell-looking Robert Cummings), will be on the ship.  As quickly becomes clear, Gopher takes after his mother.  Like her son, Roz is impulsive, loves show business, and has issues with recognizing boundaries.  As soon as she boards the boat, she and Gopher are singing songs and imitating the Marx brothers.  Eliot, on the other hand, is quiet and reserved.  Interesting enough, Eliot has quite a bit in common with Captain Stubing.  Seeing Eliot and Stubing interact, the viewer suddenly understands why Gopher is always looking for the Captain’s approval.  Gopher and Eliot have a distant relationship and Gopher now sees Stubing as being more of a father figure to him than his own father.  Awwwww, how sad!

What’s even more sad is that it is easy to see that Eliot would like to be closer to his son.  He just doesn’t know how to go about it and he knows that he can’t compete with Roz’s carefree personality.  When Gopher and Roz agree to perform a number at a special Mother’s Day variety show, Eliot becomes jealous.  He claims that he’s worried that Roz is somehow going to embarrass Gopher in front of his co-workers but it’s obvious that Eliot is the one who is embarrassed by his lack of a relationship with his son.  It all works out in the end, of course and Gopher becomes closer to both of his parents.

Meanwhile, Mac O’Brian (Barry Nelson, best-known for being the first actor to play James Bond and for playing Mr. Ullman in Kubrick’s The Shining) is looking forward to a life of retirement.  Except, his wife, Maggie (Nanette Fabray), keeps having dizzy spells.  Doc examines her and announces that, despite the fact that she’s nearly 60, Maggie’s pregnant!  Maggie worries about how tell her husband, who has made it clear that he feels that he’s earned a rest from worrying about children.  At first, Mac doesn’t take the news well but never fear.  Things work out in the end because it’s The Love Boat!

Finally, Mary Noble (Michele Tobin) and her sister, Judy Noble (Shelly Juttner), are on their cruise with their father (Ken Berry) and his new wife (Beth Howland).  At first, they go out of their way to be rude to their new stepmother but eventually, they realize how happy she makes their father and they come to accept her.  Once again, everyone gets a happy ending on The Love Boat.

Despite the fact that it featured Gopher’s parents and offered up some insight into what made one of the show’s main characters tick, this episode of The Love Boat was pretty forgettable.  The success or failure of a show like this all comes down to chemistry and none of the guest stars on this particular episode seemed to have any.  Robert Cummings, in particular, looked absolutely miserable throughout the entire cruise while Barry Nelson and Nanette Fabray seemed more like strangers having a random hook-up than a longtime married couple.  I did like the storyline about the stepparent but that’s just because I could relate to the two sisters because I know me and my sisters had a tendency to get a bit bratty whenever we felt anyone was trying to take our mom away from us.  But, in the end, even this storyline felt like something The Love Boat had done better in the past.

Sadly, the second season of The Love Boat came to end with not a bang but a whimper.  Next week, we start season 3!