The Love Boat (TV Series) First Voyage, Last Voyage/April, the Ninny/The Loan Arranger (1981) User Reviews

Lisa Hartman, Mob Target

[WalterKafka · 5 March 2024]

'Don't ask me what that means. I'm a lady.' Larry Kline is tasked with 'roughing up' someone who owes money. His target turns out to be gorgeous Lisa Hartman. Uh oh. He'll only figure that out at the halfway commercial break. Good timing. I think Charo's English is worse time she appears. She explains that she broke up with Tex. She's still having problems with show business. Now she's the nanny to a pair of bratty kids. She sings 'Butterfly in the Sky' after Larry Linville gifts her a guitar. Marcia Brady is back as, uh, 'Cindy.' Ok, that's confusing. She got her bag mixed up with the belonging to Jay Thomas. Dad wants Doc to look after Cindy. What exactly is wrong with her? I'm on record. I don't hate Charo. It's one of those trademark things to the show. On Kafka's Love Boat Scale, this episode gets 3 * out of a possible 4 *.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia never acted better

[aramis-112-804880 · 1 April 2023]

Maureen McCormick, who after graduating from "The Brady Bunch" just seemed to grow lovelier right up to her appearance in "Touched by an Angel," is a woman who looks great but is actually (unbeknownst to her) dying. How will the man she's fallen for (an unlikely Jay Thomas) react? She even gets a chance to emote. It doesn't get better than this. From adolescence I was a "Marcia" kind of guy.

Charo is back coochee-cocheeing around with her ambiguities about show biz and Larry Linville's monster children.

Richard Kline is a bruiser working for a shady loan company on the cruise to rough up a client. Then the client turns out to be the girl he's fallen for (Lisa Hartman).

A ship filled with 1970s celebs whose names have faded, without one old-time movie actor whose stars will never dim.

But even the cloyingly sad episode is watchable this time, rather than something to fast-forward through. IMHO one of the better episodes.