Watching The Love Boat with Grits and Gravy: Marriage-A-Thon
Ralph Malph, Mary Ann, a smokin' Ann Jillian, and two straight hours of televised chaos
Midnight Miami, the first book in the Grits & Gravy Mysteries, is available now!
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere you like to buy books.
To better explain the world of Midnight Miami, which takes place during the completely unhinged summer of 1981, I decided to revisit an episode of The Love Boat that Grits McCoy and Gravy Watkins realistically might have watched.
In the world of Midnight Miami, there is one sacred rule:
Do not interrupt Grits and Gravy during The Love Boat.
You can read the first entry here.
For those unfamiliar with the greatest television show ever created by mankind, The Love Boat was one of the defining programs of the late 1970s and early 1980s, following the weekly adventures of passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship Pacific Princess. The show mixed romance, comedy, and melodrama while featuring an endless parade of celebrity guest stars.
What makes The Love Boat fascinating in retrospect is how aggressively optimistic it is. Everyone is emotionally damaged for exactly forty-three minutes, and then the Caribbean breeze fixes everything.
Each episode typically followed a three-storyline structure. One storyline, usually comedic, focused on the crew—Captain Stubing, Cruise Director Julie McCoy, bartender Isaac Washington, purser Gopher Smith, or my personal favorite, the four-times-divorced Dr. Adam “Doc” Bricker—while the remaining stories handled romance and melodrama. The plots would intersect just enough to remind you they were all on the same boat before resolving neatly by the time the ship returned to port.
For this review, I chose the second and third episodes from the 1980–1981 fourth season, a special two-hour extravaganza loaded with early 1980s star power.
Originally airing on November 1, 1980, the Pacific Princess hosts a “Marriage-A-Thon” cruise to the Virgin Islands. The ship is packed with engaged couples competing for a grand prize consisting of a house, a car, and $50,000, all while agreeing to participate in a mass wedding ceremony.
Because this is a two-hour special, the episode expands to five storylines instead of the usual three.
As they often did during these bigger episodes, the production actually filmed in the Virgin Islands, which gives the show a surprising amount of visual charm. You get real sunlight, real beaches, real harbor shots, and actors squinting under genuine Caribbean heat instead of standing in front of a green screen.
The setting also produces this exchange between Isaac and Doc:
Isaac: “St. Thomas. Did you know that is one of the Virgin Islands?”
Doc: “Well, what better place for a wedding cruise?”
The stage is set for laughter, drama, romance, and most importantly—Love.
The Family Plan
Peter Graves arrives on the ship intending to break up the impending marriage of his son, played by Brian Kerwin, to Erin Moran, best known as Joanie from Happy Days and sporting a tan that would make a modern dermatologist scream.
Graves soon runs into Kerwin’s mother, played by actress Patty McCormack, who I initially did not recognize because I mostly know her as the terrifying child from The Bad Seed.
Unfortunately for Peter Graves, I have watched Airplane! approximately 9,000 times, making it almost impossible for me to see him as anyone other than Captain Clarence Oveur.
Captain Oveur: You ever been in a cockpit before?
Joey: No sir, I’ve never been up in a plane before.
Captain Oveur: You ever seen a grown man naked?
The parents fall in love. Everybody gets married. Predictable and mostly forgettable.
More time filler than anything.
Forever Engaged
Ted Knight and Rue McClanahan play a couple who have been engaged for over ten years. Technically, they have been engaged ten times and disengaged nine.
As the episode proceeds, they bicker about absolutely everything.
Knight is mostly restrained here, but he briefly unleashes full Ted Baxter energy during a diaper-changing contest that ends with him accidentally tearing a baby doll in half.
"The average American couple has a child and a half.
(Throwing the doll head at Gopher), you can have my half."
After the contest, Knight’s character loses the ability to speak when attempting to say “I do.” When McClanahan threatens to leave him, he suddenly regains his voice—only for her to immediately lose hers.
This storyline somehow manages to balance sitcom absurdity with genuine chemistry. Ted Knight and Rue McClanahan are both pros, and they know exactly how seriously to take material that should absolutely not be taken seriously.
The Promoter
Darren McGavin and Debbie Reynolds play the married couple running the Marriage-A-Thon contest.
McGavin, forever immortalized as supernatural reporter Carl Kolchak and A Christmas Story’s Old Man Parker, plays a financially desperate promoter trying to salvage the event after a television deal collapses.
Debbie Reynolds, meanwhile, has completely run out of patience with his nonsense.
McGavin secretly arranges for one couple to win the competition in exchange for not claiming the full prize money. When Debbie discovers the scheme, she reaches her breaking point and begins gravitating toward Captain Stubing, largely because Stubing’s daughter Vicki starts viewing her as potential stepmother material.
The whole storyline feels strangely overcomplicated for a show built around people falling in love on a boat.
In the end, McGavin does the honorable thing and awards the prize to the rightful winners.
Debbie Reynolds tries hard, but the material feels beneath her.
May the Best Man Win
This is peak early-1980s melodrama.
Charlene Tilton from Dallas stars opposite Donny Most, better known to America as Ralph Malph from Happy Days. Most is clearly trying as hard as possible to escape the gravitational pull of Ralph Malph, sporting a thick ginger mustache and enough feathered hair to qualify as a weather event.
Most plays the best man for a groom who abandons Charlene Tilton for another woman right before the cruise. Most is forced to cover for the missing fiancé while gradually falling in love with Tilton himself.
Eventually the truth comes out, the original groom returns, and chaos ensues.
When the former fiancé mockingly asks if the wedding is “some kind of joke,” Donny Most responds:
“Yeah, and here’s the punchline.”
And then punches him directly in the face.
Donny Most honestly does a solid job here. Charlene Tilton is immediately likable, though the storyline occasionally struggles because she looks impossibly young. She was only twenty-two during filming and somehow appears even younger.
Still, the storyline works because you genuinely want her to end up happy.
And because punching the original groom feels completely justified.
The Judges
The best storyline by far belongs to the crew.
Doc Bricker worries that serving as a judge for the Marriage-A-Thon is going to interfere with his ability to chase women around the ship. He pushes the assignment onto Gopher, only to discover that the other judges are Ann Jillian and Dawn Wells, best known as Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island.
This turns out to be the worst mistake of Doc’s life.
The episode becomes substantially more risqué than normal, strongly implying that Gopher somehow ends up romantically involved with both women simultaneously.
Ann Jillian is operating at maximum early-1980s charisma here, but Dawn Wells absolutely holds her own. Wells was forty-two at the time—roughly seventy-five in Hollywood years—and still completely believable as an object of affection.
Doc attempts to win them over through a display of middle-aged athleticism involving a jump rope and an outfit that should probably qualify as a maritime violation.
When this fails, Doc resorts to sabotage.
At a port stop in Curaçao, he sends Gopher ashore to locate medical supplies. Unfortunately, Gopher’s attempt to communicate with locals goes poorly:
“I need drugs for my friends on the ship! See? I have money for drugs!”
Gopher ends up in a Curaçao jail that fortunately resembles The Andy Griffith Show significantly more than Midnight Express.
Believing Gopher gone for good, Doc immediately moves in on Ann Jillian and Dawn Wells, both of whom appear to have forgotten Gopher existed roughly fifteen minutes after his arrest.
But eventually Doc begins feeling guilty and leaves the ship to rescue his friend.
Naturally, this happens moments before Gopher reappears in a limousine alongside the daughter of a South American diplomat he met during his incarceration.
Ann Jillian and Dawn Wells promptly join him in the limo, which drives away into a scenario so implausible that even Penthouse probably would have rejected it as unrealistic.
In the end, episodes like this explain exactly why Grits and Gravy love The Love Boat.
The show exists in a strange alternate universe where every problem can be solved during a seven-day cruise through the Caribbean. Relationships heal themselves. Villains get punched in the face. Beautiful women inexplicably fall for Gopher. And no matter how chaotic things become, Captain Stubing always restores order before the credits roll.
Which, honestly, is not that different from the world of Midnight Miami.
Except with slightly more werewolves.