Do you have an episode that haunts you? I used to watch these shows when I was a kid and even then knew they were corny. The only episode I remember from Fantasy Island is where Lisa Hartman was deaf and her fantasy was to be able to hear again and she was on a dance floor when her hearing came back and it was too much for her. For Love Boat …nope not a single episode comes to mind but could probably name each character.
(Born 1970) I just remember LB was something I suffered until FI came on.
Slight digression - the 2nd ‘Gilligan’s Island Rescue’ movie was pitched as a pilot for a similar type of show as Love Boat and Fantasy Island. In the ‘GI Rescue’ movie, after the castaways were rescued, they returned to the island and set it up as a tropical resort (via Mr Howell’s money). The idea was that each week, 3 guest stars would arrive and have their personal problems solved in 60 minutes (minus ads) of self-esteem raising. Tom Bosley (Dad from Happy Days) was on the first show.
Anyway, for various reasons it didn’t get picked up - probably because it was too obviously a copy of Fantasy Island.
Speaking of Fantasy Island, I always thought Haunts of the Very Rich was a sort-of pilot of FI, but it was much too dark. instead of making the Roarke character the devil, they went and made him God instead.
The only LB that sticks in my mind is when Doc is operating on someone, and the dialog is set up that the viewer thinks that patient died, but SURPRISE it was a fake out. All I could think is, why would Doc want to fake anyone out?
All those years watching every episode of both shows and that’s the only thing that sticks with me. Don’t know what that means…
There was a LB episode where a passenger was hooked on pills and Doc had to help her detox.
The only reason that episode stayed with me was because the passenger was played by the ineffable Diana Muldaur, who I would gladly watch making a grilled cheese sandwich.
I always remember that episode of Love Boat that had several has-beens come aboard and hilarity would ensue.
I was not allowed to formally go out on a date until I was 16. When I was 15, I could have a boy over to the house, but we were not allowed to be out of my parents’ sight.
So, one Saturday night a boy I really liked came over, I was almost 16, he had just turned 17, and we were forced to awkwardly sit in the den with my parents’ disproving eyes all over us and watch Love Boat and Fantasy Island.
When it was over he made clumsy excuses and a hasty exit, and never spoke to me again.
Any mention of Love Boat and Fantasy Island takes me right back to that night.
Wow, that’s brutal. Did your father sit there and clean his shotgun too? It was like they were begging you to rebel.
My father might as well have aimed a shotgun at the poor boy’s head, right? Instead, he used Love Boat and Fantasy Island to send the message that I was a total loser square with overprotective parents.
I was too Chicken Shit to rebel, but my younger sister came along and blew the doors off. After her antics, I realized too late my parents were all bark and no bite.
Hopefully not one of the episodes of LB all about a 17-year-old boy desperate to lose his virginity.
Anyone remember the knockoff of “The Love Boat” about a “honeymoon resort” (with Andy Griffith as the host)? Passing muster
I don’t remember any specific episodes of either show, and if I may indulge in a bit of snobbery, I think watching either one was a stupid waste of time…BUT, and here the truth will come out, I was so stressed in graduate school by the incredibly difficult course load I had to take (microeconomics with calculus, econometrics, operations research, statistics) that I watched both shows fairly regularly. I just needed a break that didn’t require any thinking at all on my part, and those two shows fit the bill perfectly.
Even more shamefully, I recall saying to my boyfriend at the time, in a haze of intellectual exhaustion, “I like watching the Love Boat because, oh, I dunno…the characters are all just so nice.”
To this day I cannot believe such an inane utterance passed my lips (and not only that, I was completely sincere). The other thing I can’t believe is that said boyfriend married me anyway.
Funny thing is, I was just chatting with a new friend and we were talking about writers - he mentioned that one of his friends used to write for LB. He said it very disdainfully, so I did not have the courage to admit to my sin of watching it regularly for a while.
For Love Boat I remember the episode where the cruise director got the hots for a guy from high school that she hadn’t seen since then, that was on the cruise ship. He had a room he was sharing with an older guy who thought he was to square and should enjoy himself with the ladies.
Cruise director corners her target in his room and is trying to put moves on him when the roomie comes back, obviously in great pain, asking for a doctor and a priest. He’s having a heart attack. Doctor is called but the younger man strides over to a drawer and takes out a small box, and it’s a kit for last rites. He’s a priest. Cruise director is much embarassed.
For Fantasy Island there was an episode where some kind of real terrorists strike at the island. They sieze hostages. One visitor, and older man now, is a former member of a special forces team, and leads some others in successfully taking down the bad guys. He’s killed in the process. As Mr. Roarke tells it,he’d had a fantasy that even he couldn’t work out, to die doing something really worthwhile.
Born in 1971. I remember watching both shows religiously, but I can’t really recall more than vague snippets of either.
When I think of The Love Boat, this is the first thing that comes to mind.
Watched both shows, don’t remember any episodes specifically. But having seen reruns of Love Boat on MeTV, I can appreciate The Mermaids a bit more than I did when I was a child…
Another regular watcher here who cannot remember any specific episodes. I was 11 when they premiered and watched every week. Hell, I looked forward to it:o At least for the first couple of seasons. How in the heck can I not remember a single episode 
I remember a lot of Charo and I can sort of picture the one with Jacklyn Smith and (then) real life husband Dennis Cole. After that, I got nothing.
I didn’t socialize much in those early teen years. :rolleyes: I actually remember when The Love Boat debuted as an ABC Saturday Night Movie. Based on the non-fiction book written by former cruise director Jeraldine Saunders entitled “The Love Boats”. I watched the show once it was on.
Not so much with “Fantasy Island”, which even for me stretched the bounds of credulity beyond their tensile point.
You’re sure it was a passenger, not the cruise director? 
I don’t know about “haunts me,” but I can think of a few I would like to forget:
The Love Boat:
Dick van Patten plays a wifebeater (it wouldn’t have been so bad had they not telegraphed pretty much every plot move)
Julie’s non-wedding (“let’s all go to Australia for the big wedding - where’s the groom? - oh, wait, it turns out he just found out he has a terminal illness and doesn’t want to put Julie through this”)
Fantasy Island:
pretty much any of the “Sunday Specials” (episodes that aired on Sundays at 7 Eastern and featured kids as the stars; they arrived by balloon rather than plane)
I remember one episode of the Love Boat (it may have been a two hour movie) where a scientist was onboard with his newest find – the Missing Link. People were fawning all over this connection between primate and man and then in a private moment, the Missing Link stood up and started talking to the scientist and asked him “How long do I have to keep this up?” At some point he escapes, runs over to the side of the ship and jumps off. I thought it was pretty dark for the Love Boat.
Yeah I watched them both as a kid, pretty regularly. LB was truly corny, but FI had some redeeming value, in granting people their wishes. But yeah it was corny too. I watched them but nothing else really stands out.
Too funny. T and A always sells, right? I don’t remember that episode.
LB and FI were dorky and corny. Not really very funny. But LAS, that was funny! Love, American Style, I enjoyed that. But it probably doesn’t show well today, though.