Love, Exciting and New
I am a connoisseur of bad tv. Our cabin on the crusieship categorized as a mini-suite at about 100 square feet still had two flat screen tvs, a good thing because the ship was showing season one episodes of The Love Boat and I was riveted to the television in the evenings when mom and I were getting ready for dinner.
For my Gen Y readers, part of what made “The Love Boat” so great was that it aired on Saturday evenings at 7:00pm, the beginning of Prime Time in the Midwest and was followed by another show called Fantasy Island. Both shows need to be naughty-d up and resurrected on HBO.
The Love Boat told the story of the Pacific Princess Ship and members of its crew: Captain Steubing, Cruise Director, Julie McCoy, your bartender, Isaac, Gopher , your purser and Doc, as well… Doc. Each episode featured guest star appearances by a “hot” or not-so-much-so actor in their own story line that typically involved falling in love in the 7 days it takes to gets from LA to Ensenada, Mexico.
I happen to know that it’s impossible to fall in love anywhere near Mexico. Still, I would have been 8 years old in 1977 and had none of the cynicism that courses through my veins today.
We were living in Lincoln at the time in a house I still dream about on Sheridan Boulevard. I still don’t know why my mom and the man I called Dad let me sit too close to our rabbit-eared tv to watch a show that they hated. But they did. Sometimes, my mom would come up behind me with a bowl of popcorn and I’d balance it atop my knees which were tucked inside my nightgown.
Loni Anderson! Jane Curtain! Charo! Florence Henderson! Marcia Brady, er, uh, Maureen McKormick! The Love Boat had hundreds of guest stars during it’s 246 episode run (www.imdb.com). In school, I daydreamed about the Love Boat and was completely captivated by the thought that RIGHT NOW the Pacific Princess had set course for adventure!
My mom and I have had 3 cruises on Princess and have another one, possibly two scheduled for 2009/ 2010 and I’d be lying if I said my loyalty to Princess in fact does go back to the inception of the show. I wanted to BE Julie McCoy who, FYI looked exactly like False Auntie.
I managed to watch a few episodes in our sitting area while mom watched something else in our sleeping cabin and I’m going to put the DVD’s on my Netflix queue.
You should do the same.
I think we had cable. We didn’t have rabbit ears.
Did we?
Hi Jennifer. Amanda from the Emerald here. Just saying hi, and I find this blog very fitting to describe Princess loyalty. I guess I was a shoe in to work here after watching and liking that show so much!