The Love Boat was famous for its curious pairings. Either due to brilliant programming, or drawing names out of a hat.
Here we have some really fancy footwork. Two old comedy pros (and infamous muggers) Soupy Sales and Jo Anne Worley play a couple who come aboard in drunken stupor and are mistaken for a honeymoon couple ( who missed the boat, though their luggage made it). Complication: they're not even a couple. They're a boss and a secretary who simply drank too much at a party and staggered accidentally onto a swanky cruise ship on the right day (in that condition I've never had more luck that sleeping it off in the rain on someone's doorstep). But Jo Anne secretly has the hots for her boss, though he tries to keep their relationship on a business footing, making her take dictation while she attempts to seduce him. A few years later, inquisitors being what they are, he'd be fired for harassment, if not jailed for abduction. The sexual revolution ended in the early 1990s but it's alive and kicking here in the late 1970s as Worley exercises her freedom. In this episode it's the pick of the litter.
Then there's Loretta Swit, marching aboard in full regalia (including medals) as a Soviet Kommisar (given the politics of MASH, not a surprise). But she's a Kommisar (don't turn around) of Soviet cruise ships! Who knew? State-run, no doubt, and only available to Party big-wigs. Since she considers candles floating in the pools as frivolous and decadent, we can only imagine her cruise line's austerity. And I doubt they sailed much beyond Iron Curtain countries or they'd return to home port half-empty. Though proud that the good ol' USSR commands their chattel . . . Sorry, citizens . . . To take jobs according to ability rather than inclination (believing Isaac, due to his pigmentation, is a bartender not because he loves it, as he professes, but because he can't aspire to anything higher). From my studies I suspect the Soviet government put people where their secret police could best keep tabs on them.
Falling for Doc, the Kommisar sheds her formidable uniform in an effort to attract him. Swit's never floated my boat (too bad the TV MASH didn't get Sally Kellerman fom the movie MASH) but Swit does look fetching in her slinky white number with all that decolletage.
She starts her quest for Doc by drinking him under the table with her home-grown USSR-style vodka. Too bad, she loves the USSR (why not? She's one of the bosses on the right side of the machine guns.) At least, to their credit, it's not one of those "our countries are really the same except for the show trials and the Gulags" sort of episodes--so many of those popped up on American TV just a few years before the people rose up demanding freedom, consigning the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (ha-ha) to the dustbin. But since neither Russia nor the USSR had a history of the ideals of freedom going back to Magna Carta in 1215 and the elected leaders were generally the same people opportunistically turning their caps around, Russia sadly wound up with KGB spook Czar Putin. But at least now the people can leave the country. Always remember, ruthless dictatorships build walls *to pen their people in.*
This episode has four storylines. In the third the Captain meets his love child (or, perhaps, lust child ) Vickie, opening the door for Jill Whelan to join the cast. The least said about this uber-sentimental segment with its vaseline-lensed flashbacks, the better.
The final segment of the quartet has Richard Dawson, the kissing bandit of "Family Feud" (before they invented AIDS) finding himself in a triangle with frequent traveler Juliet Mills and her hubby Robert Goulet (before he became a joke). Dawson and Goulet used to write songs together, but Mills married the better looking of the erstwhile partners and is beginning to wonder if she made a mistake, since Dawson's character is now a kind of glamorous Burt Bacharach. This feels like one of those pairings they drew from a hat and defies all logic. But what's logical about love?
The weird part is that Goulet, who in real life sang on Broadway in hit shows with the likes of megastar Julie Andrews, gets a duet with Dawson while the former "Hogan's Heroes" inmate has the sole spotlight to creakily warble one of his character's rotten tunes. Is this one of the Soviet-style jobs the Kommisar (again, don't turn around) was boasting about or did superb singer Goulet lose a bet? And why are songs written especially for TV shows never very good?
So there you are. East meets west. Captain meets daughter. Goulet meets Dawson. And Soupy Sales faces a tremendous harassment suit. Enjoy.
Here we have some really fancy footwork. Two old comedy pros (and infamous muggers) Soupy Sales and Jo Anne Worley play a couple who come aboard in drunken stupor and are mistaken for a honeymoon couple ( who missed the boat, though their luggage made it). Complication: they're not even a couple. They're a boss and a secretary who simply drank too much at a party and staggered accidentally onto a swanky cruise ship on the right day (in that condition I've never had more luck that sleeping it off in the rain on someone's doorstep). But Jo Anne secretly has the hots for her boss, though he tries to keep their relationship on a business footing, making her take dictation while she attempts to seduce him. A few years later, inquisitors being what they are, he'd be fired for harassment, if not jailed for abduction. The sexual revolution ended in the early 1990s but it's alive and kicking here in the late 1970s as Worley exercises her freedom. In this episode it's the pick of the litter.
Then there's Loretta Swit, marching aboard in full regalia (including medals) as a Soviet Kommisar (given the politics of MASH, not a surprise). But she's a Kommisar (don't turn around) of Soviet cruise ships! Who knew? State-run, no doubt, and only available to Party big-wigs. Since she considers candles floating in the pools as frivolous and decadent, we can only imagine her cruise line's austerity. And I doubt they sailed much beyond Iron Curtain countries or they'd return to home port half-empty. Though proud that the good ol' USSR commands their chattel . . . Sorry, citizens . . . To take jobs according to ability rather than inclination (believing Isaac, due to his pigmentation, is a bartender not because he loves it, as he professes, but because he can't aspire to anything higher). From my studies I suspect the Soviet government put people where their secret police could best keep tabs on them.
Falling for Doc, the Kommisar sheds her formidable uniform in an effort to attract him. Swit's never floated my boat (too bad the TV MASH didn't get Sally Kellerman fom the movie MASH) but Swit does look fetching in her slinky white number with all that decolletage.
She starts her quest for Doc by drinking him under the table with her home-grown USSR-style vodka. Too bad, she loves the USSR (why not? She's one of the bosses on the right side of the machine guns.) At least, to their credit, it's not one of those "our countries are really the same except for the show trials and the Gulags" sort of episodes--so many of those popped up on American TV just a few years before the people rose up demanding freedom, consigning the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (ha-ha) to the dustbin. But since neither Russia nor the USSR had a history of the ideals of freedom going back to Magna Carta in 1215 and the elected leaders were generally the same people opportunistically turning their caps around, Russia sadly wound up with KGB spook Czar Putin. But at least now the people can leave the country. Always remember, ruthless dictatorships build walls *to pen their people in.*
This episode has four storylines. In the third the Captain meets his love child (or, perhaps, lust child ) Vickie, opening the door for Jill Whelan to join the cast. The least said about this uber-sentimental segment with its vaseline-lensed flashbacks, the better.
The final segment of the quartet has Richard Dawson, the kissing bandit of "Family Feud" (before they invented AIDS) finding himself in a triangle with frequent traveler Juliet Mills and her hubby Robert Goulet (before he became a joke). Dawson and Goulet used to write songs together, but Mills married the better looking of the erstwhile partners and is beginning to wonder if she made a mistake, since Dawson's character is now a kind of glamorous Burt Bacharach. This feels like one of those pairings they drew from a hat and defies all logic. But what's logical about love?
The weird part is that Goulet, who in real life sang on Broadway in hit shows with the likes of megastar Julie Andrews, gets a duet with Dawson while the former "Hogan's Heroes" inmate has the sole spotlight to creakily warble one of his character's rotten tunes. Is this one of the Soviet-style jobs the Kommisar (again, don't turn around) was boasting about or did superb singer Goulet lose a bet? And why are songs written especially for TV shows never very good?
So there you are. East meets west. Captain meets daughter. Goulet meets Dawson. And Soupy Sales faces a tremendous harassment suit. Enjoy.
