The Love Boat (TV Series) Marooned/The Search/Isaac's Holiday: Part 1 (1978) User Reviews

Interesting Marooned Adventure

[bogglesid · 8/10 · 31 October 2022]

This is an interesting diversion from the usual ship board love stories. Most members of the starring crew Captain Stubing, the Doc, Gopher, and Julie take some passengers on an excursion ashore only to run into a crazed kidnapper, John Astin. Only Isaac stays on board.

Having a silly but nice adventure, especially with the zany Astin is a nice change of pace from the normal seafaring romances.

On the serious side, there is a story involving a woman in search of her birth mother with the wonderful actress from the 1940s, Laraine Day.

And having the beautiful Donna Mills, Barbie Benton, and Lola Falana in the episode is a bonus!

Oh, the agony of suspense

[aramis-112-804880 · 6/10 · 12 January 2022]

1970s sexpot Barbi Benton sailed 6 times on the Love Boat. Not all the episodes were worth watching, but this former "good pal" of Hef's always was.

Benton appears in a disappointing little storyline about a hostage situation where the Captain, Doc, Gopher, Julie and a handful of passengers are held on an island at gunpoint by a nutso coot.

Note: Julie needs a nickname.

"Marooned" disappoints because two very funny men, John Astin and Avery Schreiber, are involved, and they have few funny lines. It just goes to prove the importance of the material. And Eddie Adams, widow of comic genius Ernie Kovak and prominent in the cast of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" is also stranded in "Marooned" and is totally hateful. LB has a laugh-track, for crying out loud. Why not let funny people be funny? Give them good material!

Still, "Marooned" has suspense (who will die? Will the hostages resort to nibbling on each other to stay alive? Is Gopher the new Gilligan?). And it has Benton running around in as little as the law allowed.

The second yarn stretching through this episode has Isaac on vacation, taking a cruise. A hurricane is blowing up and while Stubing is in the hands of a mad hermit the acting captain (Dick Martin) is out of his depth. Can a vacationing bartender with little to no nautical training save the ship? Or will survivors of the hostage situation find nothing left of the ship except a hole in the ocean?

The final story of this two-parter (or long one-parter if you're watching on the wonders of dvd) has Donna Mills searching for her birth-mother. David Birney (was Meredith Baxter really married to this guy for fifteen years?) is a Soap actor who tries to help in her quest (truthfully, what else is there to do on a cruise?). And, of course, they fall for each other lika a ton of dominoes and wind up in the throes of passion.

Then they learn Birney is the son of Mills' birth-mother. Oops. Talk about Die Valkyrie. Back then the now-defunct--that's deFUNCT--sexual revolution was still alive and kicking, but this was going a bridge too far. How do the LB writers, never brilliant at the best of times, squirm out of this one?

All three storylines are worth a peek, which ain't always the case. But they apparently wanted a suspense-filled, cliff-hanging two-parter to open season 2. Incest, natural disasters and a violent version of "Gilligan's Island" seemed to fill their bill. Enjoy, even if you're only slobbering to see if Barbi Benton can keep on her halter top or if she'll need to peel it off for a tourniquet (spoiler: wishful thinking; 40 years on you'll find plenty of web sites that'll assuage your curiosity).

Isaac is The Man

[sfoshee-1 · 5/10 · 9 October 2018]

We're working our way through vintage Love Boats in a quest to find the best of 70's and 80's TV (ahem). Last night's classic was the 2 part second season opener Marooned/The Search/Isaac's Holiday. What a dumpster fire this is.

Captain Stubing decides to take a group of passengers (Barbi Benton, Avery Schreiber and his hair, Edie Adams (widow of Ernie Kovacs), and Audra Lindley (Mrs. Roper)) to a deserted island off of Cabo, leaving the ship in the (in)capable hands of Dick Martin, fresh off of Laugh-In. Once on the island they are kidnapped by hermit John Astin (Gomez Addams) and imprisoned in his apparently impregnable bamboo hut. Meanwhile back on the ship, Deputy Captain Dick Martin repeated ignores hurricane warnings and is confronted by Isaac, who is vacationing by taking a cruise on the ship (where he works?) and pretending to be a big shot while romancing Lola Falana.

SPOILER ALERT - the storm hits and the inept Captain Stubing and his crew, who are responsible for over 600 lives on the ship, still cannot seem to escape from Gomez's palm leaf prison. Whatever. Anyway, the storm rips the roof off, Gopher goes outside during the storm (?) to check it out and gets hit with a coconut tree, knocking him cold and causing him to hallucinate about Farrah Fawcett. Cue dramatic moment from Julie McCoy your Cruise Director. Back on the ship Isaac tells everyone to ignore the deputy captain (mutiny?) and saves all the passengers singlehandedly. Captain Stubing and crew finally escape the island but Mrs. Roper falls for Gomez and decides to stay. The Captain eventually thanks Isaac for saving the ship and says he's getting a promotion "and an extra stripe in your next pay envelope," but we all know that Isaac is still a bartender on the same ship 8 years later. We feel for you, Isaac. The most impressive thing about these episodes is that somebody actually got paid to write them.

Bottom of the Barrel

[hayridehottie · 1/10 · 4 June 2014]

Granted, the Love Boat is hardly the place to look for brilliance, but this two-parter is truly abysmal, IMO. The Dick Martin character/storyline is just poorly written & poorly performed. The premise of the ship being threatened by a hurricane while an incompetent boob (Martin) is in charge while Stubing takes some passengers on a small boat excursion is just not funny. The Gilligan's Islandesque sequence is actually worse. John Astin has a few funny lines, but the rest...I thought the beach shack the group was "imprisoned" in was going to fall down when the characters tried to "escape." The Luke/Leia sequence with Donna Mills & David Birney is downright creepy. Those swinging 70s!

Hurricane Part Uno

[WalterKafka · 13 February 2024]

Season 2! This is our second double-length episode. It's not really a travel episode, unless you consider it a trip to Gilligan's Island. Isaac is on vacation. He's got a thing for Lola Falana. (Who doesn't?) Bad news for the Pacific Princess - there's a hurricane coming straight at you. Substitute Captain Dick Martin is absolutely no help at all. (We had his Laugh-In cohost Dan Rowan in Season 1.) Let's see, we've also got Barbi Benton, who's having none of these dirty, dirty men. (Put your eyes out, man.) Edie Adams and Avery Schriber are this week's bickering couple. Donna Mills is back and looking for her birth mother. David Birney is chatting her up. Oh yeah and Mrs. Roper is here too. They're all going out to the island. Waiting for them? Mad John Astin. He's got them trapped. Barbi calls Julie 'Farah Fawcett Minor.' She ties up her shirt and tries to be seductive. 'Call me baby cakes,' says John Astin. He wants a Birthday Party. 'Ok, forget the funny hats.' See you for Part 2.