Love, exciting and new. Love, its waiting for you!…
Love Boat soon will be making another run….
No it won’t. The MS Pacific Princess has been towed to the wreckers yard.
How much does the fading of this television flower of our youth fit into the metaphor of marriage? How many romances which looked so promising at the end of each episode of The Love Boat (1977-1986) end up in some lawyers office, like the ship now sold for scrap?
The Turkish firm Izmir Ship Recycling Co. paid $3.3 million for her. And we, like the wreckers, disassemble a community, drain out the bad oil with remedies like parenting classes, and leave the parties in a place where they can start over.
I doubt the cast ever forsaw this time; when the cruise ship would be taken from the seas. But I do recall media events where they were not in character always tried to be upbeat, if sort of awkward.
I recall in particular arising early one morning and flicking on the television, and seeing members of the cast, Ted Lance and the Love Boat Lady hopelessly pushed into a public service spot about dental hygiene.
Ted Lance,
our bartender, kept telling the host, a dentist, that it was hard to brush your teeth on the set. He was clearly uncomfortable. The Love Boat Lady smiled and said a lot but didn’t really say anything. Gavin MacLeod was no where to be seen.
Eventually the panel discussion mercifully came to an end and the dentist said something about flossing, picked up a piece of paper and pretended to read it as the credits rolled by.
The theme song ends – Love wont hurt any more, Its a open smile on a friendly shore, Its LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE!
I guess the lesson learned here is that life just isn’t a 70’s television show and marriage is best undertaken with a dose of reality, lest ye wind up like MS Pacific Princess in the wreckers yard of some lawyers office. Yeah we are in love, but not in the television way.
But be sure to floss every day.
Lawyers Road Review 