Tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker depicts what happens with a greedy woman (Stephanie Zimbalist) attempts to force her Vietnam vet brother out of the house that has been his only sanctuary from all the troubles of the world. Needless to say, things do not go well.
This episode originally aired on September 16th, 1989.
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 episode of The Love Boat is one of historical value so let’s climb aboard and get to it!
Episodes 1.15 & 1.16 “The Eyes of Love / Masquerade / Hollywood Royalty / The Caper: Parts 1 & 2”
(Dir by Allen Baron, originally aired on January 21st, 1978)
This is an important episode for two reasons.
First off, this episode marked the first time that the opening credits featured video of the guest stars along with their names. This was the only time that this was done during the first season, though it would become a regular feature of the show from the second season forward.
Secondly, excluding the three pilot films that aired before the series was ordered, this was the first super-sized two hour episode of The Love Boat. This episode is split into two parts when it airs in syndication, which is why it’s listed as being the 15th and the 16th episode of The Love Boat.
Oddly enough, despite all of that, it’s pretty much a standard episode. Usually, whenever a TV shows airs an extra-long episode, it’s because some important event is occurring. Usually, either someone’s getting married or someone’s leaving the show or maybe an actor died and the show needs an extra hour to pay tribute to them. In this case, though, it’s just a typical cruise of the love boat, complete with three separate stories and a lot of time spent looking at the ocean.
For instance, Roz Rogers (Michele Lee) and Bill Teague (Fernado Lamas) are a famous and glamorous Hollywood couple who book a voyage and who are followed all the way to the dock by the paparazzi. As quickly becomes clear, Bill and Roz’s relationship is not as perfect as the world believes. Still, Bill is convinced that their relationship can be fixed by Roz co-starring in an old-fashioned adventure film that he wrote. Along with having written the script, Bill hopes to direct, produce, and star in it. Roz is a bit skeptical but fear not, everything works out in the end and she finally convinces Bill that she loves him for him and not because he’s a star.
Roz boards the boat with not just Bill’s script but also a large and valuable diamond. A group of jewelry thieves follow her onto the boat, hoping to steal the diamond for themselves. Vernon (Howard Gould) is the arrogant leader of the group. Taffy (Karen Valentine) distracts Gopher, Doc, and the Captain by flirting with them. Elwood (Larry Storch) is the group’s technician. And Ox (John Schuck) is the muscle who tends to take things literally. When the first attempt to steal the jewel fails, Vernon disguises himself as Captain Stubing and Gavin MacLeod gets a chance to do something more than just look slightly annoyed by the crew. To be honest, I actually enjoyed the jewelry theft subplot far more than I was expecting. Gould, Valentine, Storch, and Schuck all seemed to be having fun playing off of each other. Plus, the whole story ended with a nice little twist that James Cameron would later use in Titanic.
(No, the Love Boat does not sink.)
While this is going on, a blind girl named Jenny (Stephanie Zimbalist) is stunned to discover that one of her former classmates, Steve (Desi Arnaz, Jr.), is also on the boat. Jenny and Steve fall in love but Steve has recently gotten back his sight and Jenny worries that he won’t want to spend the rest of his life with someone who can’t see. Fortunately, it turns out that Jenny’s wrong.
Finally, Alan (Dan Rowan) is horrified to discover that not only are both his wife (Juliet Mills) and his mistress (Adrienne Barbeau) on the cruise together but that they’ve become friends. Alan was an adulterous jerk so it was pretty difficult to really care about this story.
Again, it was pretty much a typical episode of The Love Boat, despite the extra length and the inclusion of a masquerade ball during the episode’s 2nd hour. That said, the thieves were funnier than they had any right to be and the Jenny/Steve storyline was sweet. The ocean scenery was lovely. That’s really all I ask from The Love Boat. This episode delivered.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1978’s Long Journey Back. It can be viewed on YouTube!
I’m one of those drivers who always gets nervous around train tracks.
Perhaps it’s because I watched too many gory movies while I was learning to drive or maybe I’m just being overly cautious but I always have a fear that I’m going to be the driver whose car ends up getting stuck on the tracks while the train comes barreling down. The fact that it’s apparently impossible to just stop a train without it rolling forward for at least a mile or two adds to my fear. You get stuck on those tracks and, at the very least, you’re going to lose your car. At the worst, you’ll lose your life. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll only lose a limb. Or maybe …. well, you get the point. Most people make it a point to slow down whenever they hear the sound of a train coming or to stop and wait for those little barrier things to come down on other side of the tracks. Myself, I always speed up if I see tracks approaching. I figure that the quicker I drive over them, the quicker I don’t have to worry about getting hit by a train.
The 1978 film Long Journey Back did not do much to cure me of my fear of train tracks. Within the first ten minutes of the film, a school bus ended up getting stuck on a set of train tracks and, in a genuinely frightening sequence, smashed into by a train. Most of the students are killed. So is the driver. Celia Casella (Stephanie Zimbalist) survives being in the bus but most of her friends don’t. Celia loses a leg and, when she eventually awakes from her coma, she can neither speak nor remember the accident. Celia makes remarkable progress but it’s still difficult for her to adjust her post-accident life.
The film spends as much time with Celia’s parents as it does with Celia. Her mother, Laura (Cloris Leachman), keeps a journal about Celia’s progress and never gives up faith that her daughter will recover. However, Laura is sometimes so determined to only focus on moving forward that she overlooks the fact that Celia needs time to mourn not only her former life but also the friends that she lost in the crash. Meanwhile, Celia’s father, Vic (Mike Connors), is a grim realist who, in a moment of emotional exhaustion, admits that he sometimes wonders if Celia wouldn’t have been better off dying in the crash. Vic is someone who keeps everyone grounded in reality but who sometimes forget that Celia needs to have hope for the future. Celia is not the only member of the family who has to learn how to live a new life. From the minute that train hits that bus, everyone’s old life ends and a new one begins.
The film follows Celia’s recovery, her long journey back. It’s a well-done film, featuring excellent and emotional performances from Zimbalist, Connors, and especially Leachman. To its credit, the film avoids easy sentiment. The film celebrates Celia’s strength and her parent’s love while acknowledging that the journey back is not going to be an easy one and it’s possible that Celia might never make it all the way back. I cried more than a few times while watching Long Journey Back. It’s a film that earns its tears.
Charlton Heston is Matthew Cormbeck, a driven archaeologist. (Could an archaeologist played by Charlton Heston by anything other than driven?) In 1961, he discovers the long-lost tomb of an Egyptian queen named Kara. Ignoring both the birth of his daughter and the warning inscribed over the doorway, Matthew enters the tomb and discovers the mummified Kara. At the same time, his stillborn daughter, Margaret, comes back to life.
18 years later, Cormbeck is a teacher at a British university. He has since divorced Margaret’s mother and has married his longtime assistant, Jane (Susannah York). Matthew is still obsessed with whether or not the Egyptians are taking proper care of the mummy and wants to bring it to England. At the same time, Margaret (Stephanie Zimbalist) defies her mother and comes to England to meet her father.
Like Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb, The Awakening was based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars. Unfortunately, The Awakening is never as good as Blood from Mummy’s Tomb and gets bogged down in the lengthy Egyptian prologue. (Blood from The Mummy’s Tomb skipped over the first part of Stoker’s novel and started with Margaret already 18 and possessed.) The Awakening tries to take a more cerebral approach than the Hammer adaptation but both Heston and Zimbalist are fatally miscast. Especially in the Egyptian scenes, Heston grits his teeth and lets his ascot do most of the work.
When it comes to Heston in Egypt, stick with The Ten Commandments. When it comes to mummies in England, stick with Hammer.
Through the Shattered Lens 