The Love Boat: Season 1, Vol. 2

Description

Each week, passengers looking for romance board the beautiful Pacific Princess and set sail for tropical and exotic lands. Ship’s Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin McLeod), cruise director Julie McCoy (Lauren Tewes), Yeoman “Gopher” Smith (Fred Grandy), Doctor Adam Bricker (Bernie Kopell), and bartender Isaac Washington (Ted Lange) help them to get the most out of their trips and do their best to help them fall in love. This 4-disc set contains the remaining 12 episodes of the first season (January to May 1978) and the 1976 ABC Movie of the Week that introduced The Love Boat, if not the crew: Eight Is Enough patriarch Dick Van Patten, for instance, serves as the ship’s staff physician.
The Love Boat is still “exciting and new” in these 12 star-studded episodes that completed its maiden season. The essence of comfort television, this decade-defining anthology series set aboard the Pacific Princess offered viewers a grand and glamorous escape as week after week Capt. Stubing, the Bligh with a heart of gold (Gavin McLeod), cute and capable cruise director Julie (Lauren Tewes), Yeoman-Purser “Gopher” (Fred Grandy), lecherous Adam “Doc” Bricker (Bernie Kopell), and bartender Isaac (Ted Lange) became entangled in their passengers’ romantic crises. Each episode deftly interweaves stories ranging from silly (Gopher smuggles a monkey onboard) to sweet (two inexperienced newlyweds fail to, um, connect) to the serious (an older man feels he must give up his much younger lover). Unlike envelope-pushing shows of the day like Saturday Night Live and Soap, The Love Boat did not make waves. Nudge-nudge and wink-wink jokes aside, viewers could sit back, relax, and bask in the certainty that in most episodes true love would win out by the time the ship docked, with rocky marriages saved, rutted relationships rekindled, and new romances launched. Of course, what keeps us booking return passage on The Love Boat is the eclectic roster of guest stars, familiar hands from movies and television. It’s always a joy to see Jim Backus at his blustery best, Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie crack wise, and Georgia Engel (McLeod’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show costar) be charming and childlike. It’s also fun to see stars cast against type, like Get Smart‘s Don Adams as a nightclub entertainer, Hee-Haw babe and former Playboy Playmate Barbie Benton as a French-speaking golddigger, and Sgt. Bilko‘s Phil Silvers as lonely man who gets a new lease on life. It’s more fun still to spot future stars like Shelley Long (Cheers), taking her bookworm persona for a spin around the deck before breaking through on Cheers. This four-disc set somewhat makes amends to collectors for splitting the season by including The New Love Boat, the feature-length pilot that launched the series and christened the iconic crew. –Donald Liebenson