Tag Archives: Sherman Hemsley

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 6.27 and 28 “Country Music Jamboree”

Posted on 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, the Love Boat goes a little bit country.

Episodes 6.27 and 6.28 “Country Music Jamboree”

(Dir by Richard Kinon, originally aired on April 30th, 1983)

It’s the special, two-hour country music cruise!

I have to admit that I lost interest in this episode as soon as I saw the banner in the Love Boat lobby that read “County Music Jamboree.”  Country music’s not my thing.  I lost even more interest when Florence Henderson showed up as country singer Annabelle Folker.  Florence Henderson was a frequent guest on both Fantasy Island and The Love Boat and I can’t think of a single time that I was ever happy to see her name in the credits.  Whenever she appeared, she almost always seemed like she was trying too hard.  Her performances always brought to mind dinner theater and holiday special guest spots.

Annabelle was traveling with her boyfriend (Bert Convy) and the three orphans (Michael Evans, Angela Lee Sloan, and Neil Billingsley) that she was planning on adopting.  The problem was that her boyfriend didn’t want to adopt the kids.  But then, he changed his mind because the show was nearly over and the storyline needed a happy ending.  Seriously, the kids were obnoxious as Hell.

While that went on, singer Holly Hartmann (Jessica Walter) was upset to discover that her husband (Mel Tillis) was secretly writing songs for an up-and-coming singer named C.G. Thomas (Tanya Tucker).  Holly was not happy when she found out but then she sang Stand By Your Man and that solved everything.

The Love Boat chef (Pat Buttram) was upset that his kitchen implements kept disappearing.  That’s because Isaac, Doc, Gopher, and Julie were stealing them so that they could form a country-western band.  Meanwhile, two fat people (Kenny Price and Lulu Roman)  boarded the boat and never stopped eating.

(Don’t give me that look, I didn’t write the script.)

Effie Skaggs (Minnie Pearl) sold homemade elixirs from her cabin while Doc attempted to romance her granddaughter (Misty Rowe).  When Effie got sick, she refused to accept any of Doc’s strange modern medicine.  No antibiotics for Effie Skaggs!

Jeannie Davis (Beth Howland) feared that her husband (Steve Kanaly) would learn that her latest piece of jewelry was given to her by a man with whom she had an affair.  A jewelry appraiser (Sherman Hemsley) insisted on finding out how much the jewelry was worth.  Jeannie feared that her husband would suspect something was amiss when he discovered how expensive it really was.  She begged the appraiser to lie about how much it was worth.  The appraiser said that he could not risk damaging his reputation but then he decided to lie anyway.

Gopher and Isaac tried to get a picture with Dottie West (a singer who played herself) but Dottie just wanted to rest.

Is that it?  Is that all of the storylines or is that just all my exhausted mind can remember?  Seriously, this was a busy two-hour episode.  It was an annoying episode too.  Maybe I’d feel differently if I was into country music.  Of the guest stars, Mel Tillis and Jessica Walter gave the best performances.  Of the Love Boat crew, no one came out of this episode with their dignity intact.

This was a cruise to miss.

This cruise?  This cruise was a perfect 10 out of 10 on the How Coked Up Was Julie Scale.

Horror Film Review: Love At First Bite (dir by Stan Dargoti)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Disco Dracula!

In 1979’s Love At First Bite, George Hamilton plays Dracula, who goes from living in Transylvania to trying to make it in New York City.  Even when you’re the King of the Vampires, it turns out that New York can be a difficult place to live.  No one has much respect for the tanned man in the cape, even after he shows off his powers.  He falls in love with a model, Cindy Sondheim (Susan Saint James), but she doesn’t buy into the idea that he’s a vampire.  She’s a New Yorker and she’s in therapy.  Her therapist, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenberg (Richard Benjamin), is a direct descendant of Prof. Van Helsing and he does believes that “Vladimir” is a vampire but he can’t get anyone to believe him.  When he takes his concerns to the NYPD, Lt. Ferguson (Dick Shawn) dismisses him as being insane.  Which, to an extent, he is but only because no one will believe him….

Meanwhile, Dracula’s faithful servant, Renfield (Arte Johnson), starts every morning by leaning out of his apartment window and pretending to be a rooster.  It’s his signal to let Dracula know that it’s time to come home.  Dracula is so in love with Cindy that he sometimes forgets to keep track of time.  It’s a New York love story….

Love At First Sight is a comedy that essentially gets a lot of mileage out of a handful of jokes.  The main joke is the idea of George Hamilton, with his perpetual tan, playing Dracula and speaking with a Bela Lugosi-style accent.  Hamilton plays Dracula as being very confident and very smooth but also rather befuddled by 1979.  He’s a gentleman of the “old world” after all.  The other big joke is that Dracula is in New York, a city where no one is impressed by anything.  This is very much a “New Yorkers Will Be Rude To Anyone” movie, a genre that was very popular in the 70s.  Some films, like Taxi Driver, used the rudeness of New York as a metaphor for paranoia and detachment.  Love At First Bite uses it for laughs.

(For the record, my favorite “New Yorkers Will Be Rude To Anyone” movie is the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.  Also, the last time I briefly visited New York, everyone was very nice and polite to me.  Only once did someone yell, “Look out, lady!” and I’m still not really sure what I was supposed to be looking out for.)

There’s a lot to like about Love At First Sight.  Susan Saint James and George Hamilton don’t exactly have a ton of chemistry but Hamilton himself is fun to watch.  “Children of the night — shut up!” he yells at the wolves and it’s hard not to smile.  It’s just so goofy.  Hamilton and Arte Johnson are a good comedic team and, for that matter, so are Richard Benjamin and Dick Shawn.  It’s a film of set pieces.  Dracula and Renfield rob a blood bank.  Jeffrey confronts Dracula at dinner.  Dracula pops out of his coffin at a church.  Some of the set pieces work better than others and this is very much a film of its time but overall, it’s a genial and amusing send-up of the vampire genre.

And it features Dracula at a disco!  It’s a 70s movie and it stars George Hamilton so it’s not really surprising that the action moves to a disco.  Still, if you can’t appreciate the sight of a caped Dracula showing off his best moves, I don’t know what to tell you.

Love At First Sight is a reminder that not every Halloween movie has to be terrifying.  Some of them can just make you laugh.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 6.8 “The Kleptomaniac/Thank God I’m A Country Girl”

Posted on 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’re reminded that Fantasy Island is apparently the country music capitol of the world.

Episode 6.8 “The Kleptomaniac/Thank God I’m A Country Girl”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on December 11th, 1982)

Fred Simpson (Sherman Hemsley) is a kleptomaniac.  Whenever he sees anything shiny, he hears a bong in his head, explosions occur behind his eyes, and he has to steal it.  He always returns what he steals and pays back his friends but it’s still ruining his life.  No one trusts him.  He comes to Fantasy Island looking to be cured.  Mr. Roarke assigns Tattoo to keep an eye on Fred on the Island.  Unfortunately, Fred is still driven to steal an expensive necklace from courier Emily Carlisle (Roxie Roker).  Fred and Tattoo end up in jail!  Poor Tattoo!

(Seriously, what did Roarke think would happen when he gave that assignment to Tattoo?)

Now, to be honest, I’m not sure that Fred actually got his fantasy.  He and Emily do fall in love and he leaves the Island with her but I’m not sure his kleptomania was cured.  Maybe Emily will provide whatever was missing from his life that caused him to steal.  This episode is somewhat progressive in that acknowledges that kleptomania is an uncontrollable impulse, one that is usually linked to trauma.  (After my parents got divorced, I went through a phase of regularly skipping school so I could shoplift makeup from Target.  It was probably a cry for help on my part, though it just seemed like an adrenaline rush at the time.)  Still, what happens if Fred and Emily break up?  Fred’s got a serious problem and I hate to think that he spent all that money to come to Fantasy Island just so he could go home and get tossed in prison.

Meanwhile, Loretta Wentworth (Loretta Lynn) works at the local Fantasy Island diner.  Lorraine Wentworth (Heather Locklear), the daughter that Loretta gave up for adoption years ago, is coming to the Island to meet her mother for the first time.  Loretta’s fantasy is to be rich for the weekend.  Roarke gives her a nice house and a bunch of servants.  Lorraine is impressed until her jerk of a fiancé (Ted McGinley) tries to put the moves on Loretta.  In the end, things work out, of course.  Lorraine and Loretta grow close.  Loretta and her friends board a bus and say they’re going to Nashville so that Loretta can pursue her country music career.  How is anyone going to drive from Fantasy Island to Nashville?  There’s a big old ocean in the way.

This episode really didn’t do much for me, despite the presence of Heather Locklear and Ted McGinley.  It was nice to see Tattoo get involved in someone’s fantasy and Roarke got to give a speech about the true meaning of love but neither fantasy really worked for me.  Loretta Lynn was a great singer but a very stiff actress.  This trip to the Island was not as memorable as it could have been.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 5.5 “Mr. Nobody/La Liberatora”

Posted on 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.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion, YouTube, Plex, and a host of other sites.

This week, Charo shows up but Tattoo doesn’t.

Episode 5.5 “Mr. Nobody/La Liberatora”

(Dir by Cliff Bole, originally aired on November 7th, 1981)

Once again, we have an episode the features only stock footage of Tattoo shouting, “The plane, the plane!”  Otherwise, Herve Villechaize is not in this episode.

What excuse does Mr. Roarke come up with this week to explain Tattoo’s absence?

He’s hung over.

Seriously, that’s what Mr. Roarke goes with!  He explains to Julie that Tattoo was up very late, helping another guest celebrate a drunken fantasy.  It must be said that Ricardo Montalban seems to be quite amused to be labeling his sidekick a drunk.  Apparently, Herve Villechaize was holding out for more money when this episode was shot and I’m guessing Tattoo being hung over was a “take that” on the part of the show’s producers.  To be honest, it feels a bit petty.

It falls to Julie to help Charles Atkins (Sherman Hemsley) fulfill his fantasy.  Charles is a short man who has been picked on by bullies all his life.  He wants to feel strong and confident.  Julie gives him a potion that she thinks will give him “inner strength” but — whoops! — instead it turns Charles into the world’s strongest man.  As Roarke admonishes Julie for not being specific when she ordered her potion, Charles embarks on a wrestling career.  Can Charles defeat Sampson Smith (H.B. Haggerty), the most savage wrestler in the world?  Or will he instead fall in love with Sampson’s publicist, Carrie Wilson (Vernee Watson) and realize that true strength comes from inside?  We all know the answer.  A more important question is whether Mr. Roarke will ever be foolish enough to let Julie handle a fantasy again?

This fantasy was nothing special.  The comedy was a bit too broad, though I did like the heartfelt performances of both Sherman Hemsley and Vernee Watson.  The main problem is that the whole thing hinged on Julie screwing up in a way that really didn’t make any sense.  Surely, she would have been smart enough to make sure she had the right potion before giving it to Charles.  I mean, not being careful with your potions sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.  Surely, Mr. Roarke would have kept a closer eye on his goddaughter as she handled her first fantasy ever.  Poor bumbling Julie doesn’t really work as a sidekick.  The show suffers without Villechaize’s snarky attitude.

Villechaize’s absence means that we also miss the chance to see him acting opposite Charo and that just seems like a crime against pop culture.  I have to admit that I was a little worried when I saw Charo’s name in the opening credits, largely because I thought she would be playing her silly Love Boat character.  Instead, Charo plays a world-famous guitarist named Dolores DeMurica, whose fantasy is to go back to the days of Spanish California and meet her ancestor, the famous El Lobo Rojo.  (El Lobo Rojo is basically Zorro but if Fantasy Island’s producers weren’t going to give Herve Villechaize a raise, they certainly weren’t going to pay for the rights to Zorro.)

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by Charo’s fantasy.  There was a lot of swashbuckling action, Cesare Danova and Alex Cord both gave good supporting performances, and Charo seemed to be energized by playing a character who, while comedic, was not quite as silly as The Love Boat‘s April.  Charo actually gave a pretty good performance here and the entire fantasy was fast-paced and fun to watch.  It would have been even more fun if Tattoo had shown up but it was not to be.

This episode was a mixed bag, with one forgettable fantasy and one entertaining fantasy.  In the end, both fantasies would have been better with Tattoo.

Retro Television Reviews: City Guys 3.3 “Alley Oops” and 3.4 “Face the Music”

Posted on 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing City Guys, which ran on NBC from 1997 to 2001.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Let’s get this over weight.  No, no …. I’m not at all second-guessing my decision to sit through every episode of City Guys.  Not at all …. this is definitely the best decision that I’ve ever made.

Episode 3.3 “Alley Oops”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on September 18th, 1999)

Oh God.  This episode not only features a lot of bowling but Ms. Nobel gets a storyline as well.

Even though it’s never been mentioned before, it turns out that Jamal, Chris, Al, and Dawn are all on the same bowling team.  What?  Like seriously, where did this come from?  Anyway, it turns out that the team would be great except for the fact that Dawn is a terrible bowler.  Okay, that makes sense.  There’s never been any indication that Dawn would be a good bowler.  And since Dawn has never been portrayed as being a member of the group’s “inner circle,” you have to kind of wonder how she ended up on the team in first place.

Anyway, there’s a big game coming up against a Puerto Rican team that is led by the flamboyant Lupe Guadalupe (Jose Urbina).  One of the interesting things about City Guys is that for all of its “Open up your eyes, we’re all the same” rhetoric and liberal posturing, it was a show that had absolutely no problem making fun of people of either Asian or Spanish descent.  Lupe and his team all speak with exaggerated accents and randomly drop Spanish words into their conversation, which the live studio audience finds to be hilarious.  On the one hand, Lupe is a stereotype.  On the other hand, he’s also the best character in this episode because he never stop taunting the City Guys.  Lupe is the better bowler and he knows it and he makes no apologies and it’s impossible not to enjoy the exaggerated rituals that he goes through before rolling the ball down the lane.  Considering that this show often acted as if Jamal and Chris were the center of the universe, it’s good to see a character who doesn’t have any respect for them and who is actually better than them at something.  Go Lupe!

Anyway, realizing that she sucks, Dawn fakes a wrist injury so that L-Train can take her place on the team.  L-Train is a great bowler and it looks like the City Guys might win the trophy!  But then Dawn cheers too hard and the cast on her wrist flies off.  Everyone really she wasn’t actually injured and an important lesson is learned about something.  I don’t know what the lesson was to be honest.  I don’t bowl.

While this was going on, Ms. Nobel developed a crush on the new substitute teacher, Mr. Washington.  But then she saw Mr. Washington with a younger woman and she assumed she was his girlfriend.  It turns out she was just his sister so yay!  Ms. Nobel’s getting it tonight.

Let’s move on….

Episode 3.4 “Face The Music”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on September 18th, 1999)

“Lionel,” Ms. Nobel tells L-Train towards the end of this episode, “I think you learned an important lesson tonight.  Before you show your songs to anyone, you should copyright them.”

Finally!  A lesson that all of City Guys‘s audience could take to heart!

Anyway, in this episode, it’s revealed that L-Train is a huge fan of the blues, a songwriter, and a follower of Slick Willie (Sherman Hemsley), a veteran bluesman.  Much as with the bowling league, all of this kind of came out of nowhere but, by this point, I’m kind of used to that as far as City Guys is concerned.  L-Train, Chris, and Jamal go to see Slick Willie perform at the local blues club.  L-Train lets Slick Willie see one of this songs.  Slick Willie steals the song and puts it on his next album.

Didn’t the same thing happen to Jake on California Dreams?

This felt like a bit of a throw-away episode, as if Peter Engel called the writers into his office and said, “We’ve got Sherman Hemsley for a day, find something for him to do!” and the writers panicked and just recycled an old California Dreams script.  It’s funny that a show about copyright law basically stole its plot from another show.  How much you want to bet that we’ll never hear another word about L-Train being an aspiring blues musician?

Eh.  You’re disappointing me, City Guys!

 

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 1.2 “A Tasteful Affair / Oh, Dale! / The Main Event”

Posted on 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 to set sail on adventure and set your mind on a new romance!

Episode 1.2 “A Tasteful Affair / Oh, Dale! / The Main Event”

(Directed by Richard Kinon, Adam Rafkin, and Stuart Margolin, originally aired on October 1st, 1977)

The second episode of The Love Boat was all about fighting lovers.

For instance, one storyline — I assume it’s the one that was called “The Main Event” — features Sherman Hemsley as Maurice Marshall and LaWanda Page as his wife, Stella.  From the minute that they get on the boat, Maurice and Stella are arguing but it soon becomes obvious that, like many couples who have been together for a while, arguing is just the way that they express their love for each other.  The insults may be frequent but they’re always affectionate, which is kind of sweet.  Anyway, while on their way to dinner in the ship’s lounge, they get stuck in an elevator.  After arguing about the best way to escape from the elevator, they end up making out.  Of course, when the doors to the elevator do finally open, Captain Stubing and Gopher see that the couple, rather than being dead, are instead making good use of the space.  Everyone laughs.  Seriously, that’s the entire story.  Two people get suck in an elevator and make out.  That’s it.  You know, you can fool around on a moving elevator as well.  You don’t have to fry the circuitry ahead of time.  Just listen for the ping before the elevator doors open.

In a rather more serious storyline, Jaclyn Smith plays Janette Bradford, the wife of a wealthy but heartless man named Lucas (David Knapp).  Lucas is convinced that Janette is only taking the cruise alone because she’s planning on cheating on him.  Lucas hires a private investigator named Dennis Kingsley (Dennis Cole) to watch her on the boat.  Dennis soon discovers that Janette is not cheating on her husband but instead, she took the cruise because she needed a break from his controlling and emotionally abusive ways.  Dennis ends up falling in love with Janette and Janette with him.  However, Dennis also knows that he’s going to have to tell her the truth about why he’s on the cruise.  It doesn’t quite lead to heartbreak but it’s still far more serious than anything you might expect to see on a show of The Love Boat‘s reputation.  Jaclyn Smith, it should be said, does a wonderful job in the role of Janette, capturing both the vulnerability of someone in an abusive relationship and also her growing determination to escape from Lucas’s control.

Unfortunately, while all of this is going on, you have to deal with John Ritter playing a guy whose lover actually is cheating on him.  Ritter plays Dale.  Dale wants to follow his girlfriend on the cruise for the same reason that Lucas hired Dennis to spy on Janette.  Dale suspects that he’s being cheated on.  However, the cruise is almost entirely sold out.  There’s only one ticket left but it’s to share a cabin that’s already occupied by a woman.  Since Dale is not a woman, he can’t buy the ticket.  So, of course, Dale steals a blonde wig and a suitcase full of the frumpiest dresses imaginable.  Can you guess where this is going?  Dale gets his cabin, falls in love with his cabinmate (played, in a likable performance, by Tovah Feldshuh), and spends a lot of time changing clothes in the ship’s linen closet.  Captain Stubing ends up getting a crush on the mysterious woman with the big blonde hair and the ugly dresses and yes, it’s as stupid as it sounds with a heavy dose of cringey 70s gay panic humor tossed in to boot.  It doesn’t help that John Ritter gives such a frantic performance in the role that I actually got nervous watching him.  “Calm down!” I wanted to say.

As you can guess, the tone is all over the place in this episode.  That’s to be expected when you’re telling three stories at one time but there’s such an imbalance between Jaclyn Smith acting depressed and fragile and John Ritter doing pratfalls that it ultimately takes away from both stories.  With the second episode of The Love Boat, it seems obvious that the show was still struggling to find the right balance between drama and comedy.  As well, this episode suffers because the crew isn’t given much to do.  The first episode was enjoyable because the main cast had a fun chemistry but, in this episode, everyone is a bystander except for Captain Stubing.  Unfortunately, this episode couldn’t even treat Stubing consistently as the elevator storyline requires Stubing to be significantly smarter than the Stubing who appears in the John Ritter storyline.

Would the show ever succeed in finding and striking the right balance?  We’ll see what happens next week!