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!

Set sail for adventure, your heart on a new romance….

Episode 7.17 “Aunt Emma, I Love You/Hoopla/The First Romance”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on January 21st, 1984)

This episode is just silly.

Sid Casear and Rose Marie play newlyweds who are on their honeymoon cruise.  The only problem is that Rose Marie has brought along a picture of her Aunt Emma, who never approved of Sid Caesar.  Aunt Emma always wanted to go on a cruise but having her picture around is seriously cramping Sid Caesar’s style.

Teenage Philip McKeon is expecting to meet his father (Bert Convy) on the boat.  Instead, he meets Convy’s secretary (Irena Ferris).  Son and secretary fall for each other.  The only problem is that the secretary has already fallen for the father!  And soon, the father is on the boat as well!

That said, neither one of those stories really matter.  This episode’s main focus is on the Harlem Globetrotters, who are taking the cruise to Mexico, where they’re supposed to play an exhibition game.  Isaac’s friend (Darrow Igus) is the manager of the Globetrotters and he’s already sold a lot of tickets to the game.  Unfortunately, when the stadium is flooded, the game is cancelled.  It looks like Igus is going to be broke and fired.  Wait a minute — what if the Globetrotters play a game on the boat?  And what if the other team is made up of the Love Boat crew!?

Uhmm …. would that really be a workable solution?  I mean, imagine that you spent a lot of money to see a basketball game in a stadium.  Now, imagine being told that the game will instead take place in a small dining room on a cruise ship and that one of the teams is going to be exclusively made up of middle-aged white people, with the exception of one unathletic teenage girl.  I might not demand all of my money back but I would probably ask for at least half of it.

Needless to say, the Globetrotters win the game.  The Love Boat band plays a really sad-sounding version of Sweet Georgia Brown.  The whole thing is just odd.

As I said, it was a very silly cruise.