"Fantasy Island" Lady of the House/Mrs. Brandell's Favorites (TV Episode 1984) Poster

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6/10
Interesting episode flawed by bad miscasting
BigWhiskers12 October 2015
Warning: Spoilers
This episode about a former madame reuniting with 3 girls who worked for her as prostitutes had an interesting premise ,Polly Bergen gave a very heartfelt and touching performance as the former Madame Esther Brandell who is getting married and wants her 3 favorite girls at her wedding. The reason behind it was that she loved these girls the most and wanted nothing more than to see them make it out there after they left her employ ,so she had encouraged them to be successful and 10 years later they are all doing well and she also doing well after leaving the business.

The various subplots of the girls relationships are the main things here, with one of them who has a control freak of a boyfriend ,another who has a TV producer as a husband and the 3rd girl who has a slime bag for a husband. All of them would rather not divulge what they used to do to their significant others. Of course this causes friction as secrets slowly come out and some nastiness.

Lauren Tewes plays a girl who ended up being a model and TV personality and is the one girl of the 3 who tries to tell her control freak boyfriend the truth ,he has been asking her incessantly to get married and she keeps telling him no ,at least not until she comes clean. I hated this particular plot because of the really bad miscasting of her boyfriend Gordon , the annoying Richard Gautier. he always overacts and is extremely annoying to watch.He's also more than 20 years older than Tewes and the obvious dye job to his hair is glaringly obvious. And the writers having him force his girlfriend to prove she used to be a hooker because he thinks shes just playing a joke on him for his antics as a way to get back at him was in such bad taste. Who the hell would want to be with this guy? , so when she agrees to call his bluff and go with the some random guy to have sex ,you figure well you got what you asked for ahole. But of course they have a happy ending after Mr Roarke does some off camera chat with Gordon and now they are engaged. B/S - There isn't a woman in her right mind who would have put up with this piece of crap , i mean the constant marriage proposals , his faking a heart attack , his forcing her to go with a stranger as a joke. I really hated that they ended up getting engaged.The writers should have been shot for that.

Shelley Smith plays Lynn who's husband is a creep and a schemer. She tries to keep her past a secret but eventually when it comes out ,he dumps her and calls her trash then blackmails Esther that he'll tell everyone about everything unless she pays him off. Ed Winter plays the scum bag husband perfectly , it's a shame he gets away with it as Esther does pay him off and he leaves the island ,one can only hope his scum bag character get his fictional comeuppance off camera. This plot was well acted and believable.

The 3rd girl played by former Chips' girl Randi Oakes has a TV producer for a husband played by Mark Shera. Colleen her character also tries to hide it but her husband unknowingly to her ,already knows about her past and had a plan to interview Ms Brandell for a TV show , during the interview he purposely insults Ms Brandell to force Colleen to admit her past on her own which she does and after fearing losing him , discovers that he knew about her past anyway and set it all up to get her to admit it to him and get it off her chest and finally be free. This was a bit heavy handed and somewhat unbelievable but not as bad as the plot with Tewes and Gautier.

Everything comes fill circle of course with all of the girls showing up for the wedding . Silly subplot of the former cop who used to bust them being the groom was really unnecessary . A really cheesy wedding scene with some random singer singing a corny love ballad seemed really out of place. Overall , an episode that could have been better if they had cast someone else besides Gautier and lightened up on the usual cheesiness of the show
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3/10
ASTONISHGLY INCREDIBLE LAUGH FEST
richardfuller-9297321 February 2022
Boy, talk about a message to put out there, whether it is based in truth about what young women did and do nowadays to make it in today's world.

What are Geoffrey Epstein and Carl Weinstein known for now? They did something bad?

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Polly Bergen portraying everyone's fave Ghislaine Maxwell. Deep down, she helped her girls understand who they are and what they could do.

That's right, listen to her sage wisdom and you could end up with a prince!

I gave up on Fantasy Island way back and decided to watch some episodes in reruns, now almost forty years old.

Lauren Tewes, Randi Oakes, Shelly Smith, Mark Shera, Ed Winter, Dick Gautier. It don't matter who they were; totally interchangeable. Dumb one, smart one, sad one.

But this couldn't have been some Stella Dallas or My Fair Lady sort where she gave everything up to make them into something?

I'm sure Fantasy Island did a similar storyline down the line somewhere.

She couldn't have been a reform counselor who helped them turn their lives around from street thuggery?

Without a doubt the biggest joke has to be some idea their previous life was "something to be ashamed of" yet it seemed like it helped their accomplish something in their lives.

But all that was missing was fundamentalist Bible-thumping church women showing up, or maybe that was supposed to be the estranged boyfriend's position.

It didn't matter. Everything was just totally off the wall in this episode. I'll give it three stars, one for each blonde.
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4/10
Only one story (and yes, season 7 so about love)
mikeholmes-4801218 March 2016
Warning: Spoilers
I tried to watch this one last week but got bored within 3 minutes and did something else. I only know cause my smart phones Note section has this episode listed to prepare me to take notes. I take notes when i watch i watch this show. Then i type reviews based on notes. I've told a handful of people this....any lucky you. but not my wife. She's still trying to wrap her mind around my 4 years of saving ripped out from the newspaper Word Jumble puzzles that i promised her i'd find a really hilarious use for, i never did, i recycled them all a few months back. I feel free now. anyhow this episode was a little odd and typically love based as is the quota for season 7.

So this "sorority leader" lady shows up from Philly hoping to meet up with her three favorite "sorority" girls. Then the camera shows the welcoming committee natives staring at a empty plane. Oh boy, only one story arc, no dark one, just the love one. So she is going to get married and wants her three favorite sorority girls to be bridesmaids. But heres the hook, they have no idea she paid for them to be there. but that really isn't a spoiler , as it is quickly revealed she is a madame and they are her old hookers. One looked like Vanna White, one looked like Donna's mom on "That 70's show" , they may have been the same woman, i mix blonds up. they needed one brunette to mix it up, its like Porn 101.

so they all have dud boyfriends, one is a investigative reporter, ones jealous and fakes heart attacks, one looks like Keith Hernandez, (like a previous episode i just reviewed must be a 1984 thing) and one is blackmailer and one is a wiener, they all kinda looked alike and i got confused . In fact i left the TV for ten minutes to go find a picture i drew of Pee Wee Herman for a friend to post online. thats how exciting this episode was.

So interesting things i noted, Keith Hernandez bribes madam to give him 100 grand so he doesn't ruin girls lives, his girlfriend still likes him , begs him to stay but hes like "i got to go" when he could have done it one last time and then left, one guy has his girlfriend prove she was a hooker and get her a gig with this Ed dude who is a total wiener and totally does it. all this crap happens , the woman accept their madam again, then some dude (robert goullette ?) is like singing in the bushes and you realize time elapsed and its a wedding and she is wedding old "led Head" the cop that always busted them. Mr Belevedere gives away the bride. Later he is surprised she was a madame. apparently he didn't know. Oh Mr Belevedere.
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