An entire cruise ship can be run with a crew of 5 - a Captain, a cruise director, a gopher, a doctor, and, of course, a bartender.
Lots of aging former stars and D-list TV actors went on cruises very often in the late 70s and early 80s.
It’s extremely common for two people to meet, fall in love, have a falling out, reconcile (often with the assistance of the helpful 5 person crew, who always have a lot of free time on their hands), declare their eternal and undying love for each other, and propose marriage, all in the course of a week.
Oddly enough, that is pretty close to what the passengers experience. When I took a cruise, most of my interactions were with Gopher and Isaac. Waiters at the restaurants, bartenders at the bars, clerks at the shops. Occasionally a housekeeper or maintenance tech. We would occasionally see one of the bridge officers from a distance, but as far as I could tell, the sailors spent the entire time below decks.
It’s true that you don’t normally see the people who keep the ship sailing and the people who work in the laundry or in the kitchen. But I think the point of the "crew of five " is not just that there are people working on the ship who the passengers don’t see - but also that a ship the size of the one on the Love Boat ( about 800 passengers) is not going to have just a single bartender or a cruise director who does everything herself.
I remember reading an article saying that the formula for Love Boat episodes (as well as those of Fantasy Island) was that there were three plotlines; one romantic, one dramatic and one comedic.
The same three-plotline thing was also applied to “Hotel,” which was once described as “Love Boat on dry land.” Although, the storylines in “Hotel” tended to be a little grittier; not quite as lighthearted as the ones on Love Boat.
One thing I always wondered was, when did the crew sleep? Okay, I’ll grant that Captain Stubing could get a good night’s sleep, but Doc, Julie, Gopher, and Isaac always seemed to have an early morning, a full and busy day, and would finish it all off by closing the ship’s nightclub. They could only have had six hours of sleep tops, and I’m sure it was often less that that.
Interesting that someone would want to watch a LB marathon, but how do you technically manage to? Do they stream the series somewhere? Did you buy the DVDs on a garage sale? You Tube?
As to what I learned: If you chart the right course you can avoid rain forever. And it is not true that all music has gotten worse.
I was in high school, forced to go to the same damn drudgery, day after day after day. How did Vicki get to work (at what, age 13?) on a cruise ship? Did she get any kind of education? Did she pass high school? Did she go to college or university? The series never said.
Yeah. Vicki, who is younger than me, is an Assistant Cruise Director on a glamourous cruise line, with no education in sight, and I’m a schlub in Grade 12. For me, that’s where Love Boat started to veer from “a fun evening’s entertainment” to “you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Hey, Vicki, could your pass one of Mr. Arthur’s chemistry tests? (@themapleleaf will know what I mean)
One of the on-air retro channels we receive called ‘Catchy’ shows old comedy TV shows. It had a LB marathon this weekend.
As for why i would want to watch, I sometimes enjoy ironically watching bad old TV shows from the 70s and 80s. It’s a combo of nostalgia watch and amusement at the overpowering cheesiness of it all. There’s also, I admit, kind of a comfort factor to the formulaic happy endings- it’s a psychologiclal tranquilizer.
It started reasonably enough on Saturday evening-- I watched one while making dinner, then Mrs. solost watched one with me before we switched to a movie. Then the next day Mrs. solost was away visiting a sick friend, and I was feeling lazy, switching channels, and “oh yeah, there’s a LB marathon still going!”
Vicki was homeschooled (ship-schooled) by the crew. There is an episode in which a social worker comes to evaluate her living situation and the crew all explain their individual expertise and the subjects that they will teach her. Toward the end of the series, when she is 18, she does talk generally about plans for college.
What I learned from a Love Boat marathon is that transgender individuals deserve respect and support. A pretty advanced message for the time. The transgender woman is played by MacKenzie Phillips, and while there are a few uncomfortable jokes, the theme of the episode is that she should be treated like anyone else. The speech that the Captain gives to Gopher is a highlight of the series for me.