Review of The Joker Is Mild/Take My Granddaughter, Please/First Time Out

I could stay home all day and watch The Love Boat. Then they won't pay me. Then I'll get evicted then. Then Little K wil have to beg for his formula on street corners. You know, The Love Boat is your number one destination for strange and interesting casts, as if they threw names into a hat and drew them at random. Patty Duke makes her first appearance. Ruth Gordon plays her grandmother. Who doesn't like Ruth Gordon? Robert Hegyes, concurrently with Welcome Back to Kotter, shows up. Then you've got Marcia Brady herself, Maureen McCormick herself. This is our second Brady family member but we'll see a bunch more. Arte Johnson shows up too. Tab Hunter too. He's gay, but here he romances Patty Duke. She wears the frumpiest swimsuit in history. Gordon scolds Duke for talking to a school teacher. (They don't make much money you know. 'He's probably a stowaway.') Phil Foster plays an old-time comedian. Once again you see the great attention paid to catching different age demographics. The boys ask Julie about women on the ship. She licks her lips seductively. We find out that Julie's dad was in show business. Heyges' character turns out to be a virgin. Will he solve this disease by the time the cruise is over? At one point, Isaac steps in to warn Marcia Brady about Horshack's intentions. Apparently, Isaac is doing surveillance of him! These scripts ask our crew members to do things that are totally unlikely. Meanwhile, Doc leads some exercises. To my surprise, Foster brings some genuine pathos to his character. Marcia Brady wears a black swimsuit bottom. Ruth Gordon is worth a ratings bump all by herself. I used to read Mark Evanier's column. (He's a whackjob Boomer.) We're here for the Love. On Kafka's Love Boat Scale, this gets 3 1/2 * out of a possible 4 *.