Doc’s Nephew”

Posted on July 9, 2025 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, Doc starts to feel his age.

Episode 6.6 “The Groupies/The Audition/Doc’s Nephew”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on November 6th, 1982)

When it comes to The Love Boat, there’s one question that always has to be asked.

In this episode, Julie appears to be moderately coked up. She’s definitely not as coked up as she was in some of the earlier episodes of this season but there’s still that glint in her eye and the rapidness of his speech that leaves little doubt that there was probably some sniffing going on in the cruise director’s office. On the How Coked Up With Julie Scale, I would give this one a solid 7 out of 10.

Of course, Julie had some competition on this cruise. A pre-born again Willie Aames was on the cruise, playing Doc’s nephew Danny, and sporting the puffy eyes of someone who had been up all night on a date with the Devil’s Dandruff. Danny and Doc both develop a crush on the same woman and Linda (Michelle Phillips) decides that she would prefer to spend her romantic time with a teenage Danny than with Doc, who has a medical degree and probably a lot more money than Danny. This leads to Doc have yet another midlife crisis. Danny, meanwhile, falls hard for Linda but, at the end of the cruise, Linda explains that she’s not looking to get tied down with a relationship. She just wanted to bang someone who was ten years younger than her. Okay, that’s not quite what she said but that was the general idea. Doc learned that it was okay to be middle-aged and Danny was too high to learn much of anything.

Soap opera writer Paula Hastings (Susan Lucci!) boarded the cruise and was shocked to discover that one of the passengers was Barry Weldon (Tristan Rogers!), an actor who she turned down for a role on her soap. Barry romanced Paula and convinced her that he was falling in love with her and then announced it was all just an act to prove that he deserved the role on her show. Damn, Barry, that’s not nice at all! But then it turned out that Barry actually had fallen in love with her so they decided to get married. “Congratulations!” Julie said, her eyes shining with a manic edge.

Finally, a therapist (Richard Deacon) boarded the ship, just to discover that his patients (Jerry Van Dyke, Elaine Joyce, Morey Amsterdam, and Rose Marie) had all decided to take the cruise with him. Why, that’s enough stress to make the idea of a little flakey relief seem appealing! That said, the therapist and his patients were played by some old school sitcom mainstays and none of them seemed to be coked up. They were definitely a whiskey and cigarettes crowd.

This was a pleasant cruise. Bernie Kopell is always likable as Doc Bricker and I always enjoy his midlife crisis episodes. The therapist storyline was pretty hokey but, on the other hand, Susan Lucci and Tristan Rogers! That’s daytime drama royalty, babe! I enjoyed this episode.

Zapped! (1982, directed by Robert J. Rosenthal)

Posted on August 2, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

In this painfully dumb high school comedy, Scott Baio is Barney, a teen scientist who experiments on lab mice and grows specially modified orchids for his high school’s principal, Walter Coolidge (Robert Mandan, who played a lot of high school principals back in the day). When there’s an accident in the lab, Barney develops telekinetic powers. Barney then falls in love with the class president, Bernadette (Felice Schachter), while his best friend Peyton (Willie Aames) pursues the beautiful but vain Jane (Heather Thomas). Barney uses his powers to make a ventriloquist act as if it’s possessed and to help Peyton rig a casino-themed frat party. Meanwhile, Scatman Crothers plays the school’s baseball coach and has a long scene where he gets high and imagines that he’s riding a bicycle with Albert Einstein. That’s actually kind of cool.

Zapped! is a movie where Scott Baio magically gains the power to move things with his mind and yet the most implausible part of the movie is the idea of Willie Aames being the most popular student at the high school. Heather Thomas is believable as a cheerleader and Felice Schachter is perfectly cast as the brainy class president. Even Scott Baio is not terrible as Barney. But then Willie Aames shows up and we find out that he’s supposed to be a chick magnet and it becomes impossible for those watching to continue to suspend their disbelief.

Not much really happens in Zapped! Even after he gets his powers, Barney is frustratingly passive character who just does whatever Peyton tells him to do. Barney uses his powers to help Peyton show up Jane’s college boyfriend and he uses his powers to help Peyton win games at the school carnival and then Barney uses his powers to help out Peyton when Jane’s boyfriend tries to beat him up. Maybe Barney needs to get new friends. The only time Barney uses his powers for himself is when he’s playing baseball and he makes the ball stop in mid-air so that he can hit it. Somehow, no one watching the game seems to find it strange that the baseball stops in mid-air. The movie ends with a take on Carrie. Barney uses his powers to blow off everyone’s clothes at prom. It’s all to help Peyton, of course.

Zapped! supposedly has a cult following, probably composed of people who were 13 when they first saw it and who only remember the sweater scene with Heather Thomas and the final prom scene. (Or they’re remembering the famous poster, which is a lot more fun than anything that actually happens in the movie.) Other than that, this is one of the most boring films ever made. Perhaps the only interesting thing about the movie is that Heather Thomas sued the production when they failed to acknowledge that a body double was used for Jane’s nude scenes.

On a positive note, Zapped! did give us this classic Onion headline:

Cleaning Out The DVR: One Small Indiscretion (dir by Lauro Chartrand)

Posted on October 25, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is not just watching horror movies! She is also trying to clean out her DVR! She has got over 200 movies that she needs to watch before January 1st! Will she make it? Keep checking here to find out! She recorded One Small Indiscretion off of Lifetime Movie Network on September 2nd!)

I learned a few things from watching One Small Indiscretion.

First off, and most importantly, I learned that there is no such thing as a “small” indiscretion. In this film, Caroline (Ashley Winters) has a brief affair while separated from her husband, Sam (Cru Ennis). When Caroline and Sam get back together, she tries to forget that the whole thing even happened. Six years later, Caroline tells her best friend that she isn’t even sure what eventually became of her former lover. However, we know that he ended up killing both himself and his alcoholic wife. For Caroline, it was a small indiscretion but, for a little girl named Elle, it was a tragedy that took away her parents.

Secondly, if you work hard and marry well, you can eventually live in a really big house that has a pool, a jacuzzi, and a guest house. However, if you work too hard, all of the romance will go out of your marriage and soon, you won’t even be using the pool after a couple of years.

Third, if you own a guest house, you are required by the laws of plot contrivance to rent it out.

Fourth, if you do rent out your guest house, there’s a good chance that it will lead to someone from the past tracking you down. In this case, it’s Elle (Tiera Skovbye). Elle is now 21 years old and eager to avenge the death of her parents but destroying Caroline’s life. Though she may be young, Elle is already an evil genius.

Actually, I guess it’s debatable as to whether or not Elle is that smart. It’s entirely possible that Elle only seems smart because everyone else in the movie is incredibly stupid. From the minute Elle moves into that guest house, she’s manipulating and seducing. She’s taking naked midnight swims. She’s encouraging Caroline and Sam’s son, Logan (Johnny Visotcky), to skip college. She doesn’t make much of an effort to hide what she’s trying to do and yet, Caroline soon decides that Elle is going to be her new BFF. It’s actually kind of hard not to be on Elle’s side. Elle’s methods may be extreme and she does get more and more psycho as the movie unfolds but Caroline and Sam are so bourgeois that it’s difficult to have much sympathy for them. Add to that, Elle’s an artist. She draws. If you side with the non-artists over the the artist, that means you’re doing life wrong.

But back to what I learned from One Small Indiscretion:

Fifth, it’s not that difficult to bug a house.

Sixth, search engines are like magic.

Seventh, it’s easy to knock people out.

Eighth, Canada is a beautiful country.

Anyway, One Small Indiscretion is a thoroughly predictable Lifetime film. The best role in these films is always the psycho and Tiera Skovbye plays Elle as if even she can’t believe how stupid everyone else in the film is. Elle is having so much fun being evil that you can’t help but be happy that she received the opportunity. She may be the villain but you’ll totally be Team Elle when you watch One Small Indiscretion.

A Movie A Day #114: Scavenger Hunt (1979, directed by Michael Schultz)

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

When game designer Milton Parker (Vincent Price) dies, all of his greedy relatives and his servants gather for the reading of his will. Parker’s lawyer, Benstein (Robert Morley), explains that Parker is leaving behind a $200 million dollar estate to whoever can win an elaborate scavenger hunt. Dividing into five teams, the beneficiaries head out to track down as many items as they can by five o’clock that evening. Among the items that they have to find: a toilet, a cash register, an ostrich, a microscope, and an obese person. Hardy har har.

The five teams are made up of a who’s who of sitcom and television actors who had time to kill in 1979. The Odd Couple‘s Tony Randall is Henry Motely, who is Parker’s son-in-law and who works with his four children. Soap‘s Richard Mulligan plays a blue-collar taxi driver named Marvin Dummitz (because funny names are funny) who teams up with his friend, Merle (Stephen Furst). The Mary Tyler Moore Show‘s Cloris Leachman (an Oscar winner, no less) gets stuck with the role of Milton’s greedy sister, Mildred. She works with her conniving lawyer (Richard Benjamin) and her stupid son (Richard Masur). Maureen Teefy plays Milton’s niece while his nephews are played by Willie Aames and Dirk Benedict. Cleavon Little, James Coco, Roddy McDowall, and Stephanie Faracy play the servants.

It doesn’t stop there, though. Avery Schreiber plays a zookeeper. Meat Loaf plays a biker who beats up Richard Benjamin. Ruth Gordon, Stuart Pankin, Pat McCormick, and Scatman Crothers all have cameos. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger makes an appearance as a gym instructor who knocks Tony Randall out of a second story window.

There are a lot of famous people in Scavenger Hunt. It’s just too bad that the movie itself is barely watchable and not at all funny. It tries to go for the zaniness of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but, unless watching Willie Aames steal a clown head from Jack in the Box is your idea of hilarity, the film never comes close to succeeding. Michael Schultz directed some classic films (like Car Wash) during the 1970s but, unfortunately, he also directed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and this.

Scavenger Hunt used to show up on a late night television, where it was always advertised as starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. (He barely has five minutes of screentime.) It was released on DVD/Blu-ray earlier this year but watching for the cameos is the only reason to take part in this Scavenger Hunt.

Hallmark Review: Harvest Moon (2015, dir. Peter DeLuise)

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

That’s our girl Jennifer Stone (Jessy Schram) doing Alicia Silverstone from Clueless (1995). In short order she gets a call from daddy who has the sad news that the family is basically bankrupt. Her father is played by Willie Aames who most people will probably remember as Bibleman or one of those short lived sitcoms he was on. I said basically because Hallmark does like to recycle things from earlier movies so…

she inherits a pumpkin farm like in Growing The Big One. Let’s introduce the boy since you know it’s a given that she falls in mud wearing expensive clothes.

That’s Brett Jarrett (Jesse Hutch). The pumpkin farm has been in his family for a long time. I honestly don’t remember how they own the farm, but don’t. Doesn’t matter anyways. The film is about her adapting to living in the country while finding a way to make it a successful business.

There are some side characters, and those actors do a decent job. The problem is that this film would have been fine if it had just been about her turning this otherwise unknown pumpkin farm into a profit center for her and his family. But of course it also has to be about them falling in love. That part never really comes together. I think the one user review on IMDb is reading too much into it seeing it as greed conquers all. It’s more like yet another Hallmark movie where the love story part is unnecessary and forced. It just doesn’t need to be there. I was fine watching her discover the old Jarrett family recipe and turn it into a big success. That part was fine. They just wasted their time with the romance part. And it can even send what I believe is an unintended message that the IMDb user picked up on.

This is one that isn’t terrible, but subpar enough that I really wouldn’t waste your time watching it. Watch Clueless, Funny Farm (1988), and Baby Boom (1987) instead. They do the rich girl comes down to earth, adjusting to quirky country life, and making the most of a sudden shift from city life to country life much better.

At least the computer screen was done well in this.