TVSquad

Since we had so much fun examining the greatest mysteries of Cheers, I've decided to make this a quasi-regular feature. The next classic show to come under scrutiny is The Love Boat, the 1977 - 1986 Aaron Spelling series that involved water, Mexican paradises, and everyone from David Hasselhoff to George Burns getting busy on the Lido deck.

I used to watch the show just about every Saturday night, especially during its early years (it was a big event when Julie went from her bowl cut to the feathered look... I think it coincided with my very first months of pre-puberty). At the time, I just took the show at face value, but as the years have gone on, aspects of life on the Pacific Princess made me scratch my head, starting with a fact of life that just about everyone took for granted:

Where did the crew live when the ship was docked? I vaguely remember hearing something about one of the crew members' apartments, but if you took a look at how many personal items the crew members had in their quarters, you get the distinct impression that each of their primary residences is on the ship. But there has to be a period of time between cruises when the ship is in its home dock; it has to be cleaned, restocked and serviced, inside and out. So where did Capt. Stubing, Doc, Gopher, Julie, and Isaac live during that time? For some reason, I always imagined Gopher's mainland living situation as a sad little twin bed in a room above the Reseda YMCA...

How come none of the crew -- except for Doc -- ever got laid? Oh, sure, once every couple of seasons, the writers would throw the crew a romantic bone; our friends at AOL mentioned that Isaac romanced Diahann Carrol and Capt. Stubing found romance with Marion Ross. Heck, I remember a pivotal episode where Julie and Gopher hooked up. But, for the most part, the crew of the Pacific Princess remained chaste.

I don't get it: you'd think that being a crew member of a cruise ship would be a big-time aphrodisiac. Julie was pretty and outgoing; Stubing had the entire ship under his control; and Isaac dispensed alcohol. In fact, that last one stumps me the most, as any bartender of either sex can tell you that they have people hitting on them all the time. And Isaac had the great 'fro and that two-fingered pointing move, which I'm sure the ladies loved. Even ol' Goph should have gotten more tail, just by virtue of how much women like seeing a man in uniform, even if the uniform includes shorts. If it works for UPS guys, it should have worked in spades for Gopher.

Come to think of it, how did Doc get laid so much? He was a middle-aged, nebbishy, ship's doctor. Of all the positions on the ship, you'd think the doctor would get the least respect; instead of being a surgeon or curing disease on land, he spends most of his days seeing people who are either seasick or suffering some sort of shuffleboard-related injury. But, for some reason, Spelling and the writers decided that he was going to be the one who had a half-dozen or so ex-wives and seemed to have a woman on his arm just about every week. Hm. Maybe I should tell my friend who's an ER doc that he needs to change jobs...

Who thought it was a good idea to have Vicki Stubing live on the ship? This question has been asked before (I remember seeing it on ILove the '70s / '80s), but it's still worth asking here. I mean, the girl was twelve-years-old when she met her long-lost dad, Capt. Stubing, after her mother died. According to my fellow Squadder Jen Creer, Stubing didn't really want his daughter on the ship, but she wanted to be close to him and he didn't want her to be raised by distant relatives.

So, instead of being in a stable environment where she could go to school with people her age, Vicki lived on a ship where there was almost never anyone there who was her age. The captain was supposedly working most of the time (see below), so he didn't home school her, and everyone else on the ship was busy trying to hook up, usually with the help of free-flowing alcohol. Oh, and because they were in international waters, Stubing had no problem putting his teenage daughter to work as Julie's assistant. So, to everyone else, the Pacific Princess was paradise, but to Vicki, it must have felt like an Amistad-esque steerage voyage week after week.

Who was Captain Stubing's first officer? In every ship-based TV show we've ever seen, from McHale's Navy to Star Trek, there has always been a first officer, there to take over for the captain if he wasn't on the bridge. But on The Love Boat? If there was a first officer, we never saw him. Jeez, even the S.S. Minnow had a first officer, and it was one-one hundredth the size of the Pacific Princess. I mean, someone had to be there for Capt. Stubing to discuss command decisions, or at the very least give him a break on the bridge. For all we know, Assistant Purser Gopher was the next-most senior officer (or was it Doc?). Which leads me to my last question:

When did Captain Stubing have time to steer the ship? During a particular episode, we saw the captain in the lobby, at the pool, at dinner, and wandering the halls. Where we never saw him was on the bridge. I think we may have seen the bridge once in the entire nine-year run of the show. I know the captain doesn't have to be on the bridge at all times, but he at least has to be there at some point, right? For all we know, Stubing was more of a manager with no actual seafaring experience. If Isaiah Thomas can be the president of the Knicks, I guess anything's possible, right?

Any other mysteries I'm missing? Or any answers to what I asked above? Let me know in the comments.