Spelling productions did not make Love, American Style. They took the basic concept of it, added places for the love to happen (on a Princess Cruise ship & in ports of call), a regular crew, & mass produced 10 years of the Love Boat. Part of the reason it worked was the ship as you could dream of being on a cruise & never leave your living room.Each episode usually had 2 or three plot lines with different guests involved. Each one would involve the crew interacting with the guests. Each one would usually have a happy ending. Sometimes, episodes would even go 2 hours. Princess Cruises definitely got a lot of valuable promo from this series.Like Love American Style, the love aspect would get by with a wink, a grin, & some subtle hints of the feelings that were really going on. The crew was a pretty talented ensemble. Gavin McCloud as your Captain became more of less the star of the show. Bernie Kopell as the ships playboy Doctor became a key factor a lot of times. Lauren Tewes was the supposed hot cruise director. Then there was Gopher & the bartender always around either when you need them or not around when you need them.The guest stars would read like a whose who of 1960's & 70's actors & actresses. It was amazing how many folks would get drawn on board this ship. Realism, this show has little. Bubble gum for the brain, that is where this show comes from. "Come Aboard, We're Expecting you!"

"The Love Boat"is one of my top three favorite shows of all time. "The Love Boat" takes place on a luxury cruise ship,The Pacific Princess,and features new stars each week. These guest stars populate the passenger list of the ship. Their voyages, sometimes dramatic, sometimes comic, always romantic, make up the stories on the show. The crew members, the show's only regulars,often participate in the stories."The Love Boat" is the ultimate escapist fantasy with colorful locations and glossy love stories. And it is a whole lot of fun.You really can't do much better than this. Out of all the shows that feature many big name guest stars, this is truly the best. This show holds a treasured spot in my heart, and is excellent and uplifting entertainment. I wish TV Land showed every episode!

The original Love Boat was one my favorite TV shows. I remember watching on ABC Saturday nights, when it came first on television as couple TV movies mid 1970's deciding to making in a series. The Love Boat would set port in Los Angeles then set sail to Mexico. Once in a while the cast go to different locales around the world and set port on another ship. Seeing places in the world, that I would like to travel one day. The show does not have the greatest plots on television, but traveling to the places was magnificent.

I admit it, I loved the '70s. It was such a fun decade. The Love Boat is a time capsule of the late '70s. Not just the guest stars and the fashions, but the basic mood of the era.It's very easy and even very trendy to put down this lightweight show from ultraprolific producer Aaron Spelling, the same way people denigrate disco music. But once put into context, it really wasn't all that bad. The period, after all, was the late '70s -- only three years after The Brady Bunch had left the air. TV's fabled last gasp of innocence had yet to be breathed. TV shows could still be expected to be fun and frivolous, like the Me Decade this was a part of.Spelling was at the peak of his TV power, having already scored hits with The Mod Squad, The Rookies, Starsky & Hutch and Charlie's Angels, among other shows. His shows alone were taking up more than a quarter of ABC's prime time hours by the turn of the decade and it was said that he had produced more hours of television than anyone else. For several years, Love Boat was teamed with Spelling stable mate Fantasy Island, forming a two-hour escapist block on Saturday nights when viewers could escape on a tropical cruise then to a lush tropical island.With The Love Boat, viewers could experience some of the better aspects of a cruise, without the drawbacks. Every day was sun-drenched and every night clear and crisp, sunsets were always brilliant, it never rained and we could all be home within a single hour. And heck, it didn't cost a cent! The Aloha, Lido, Fiesta and Riviera decks (or at least their names) become ingrained in memory through sheer repetition. Not to mention the ship's lobby where all the guest stars made their grand entrances. (The lobby of the real Pacific Princess, by the way, looked nearly the same but was in the center of the ship and had no such entrance doors.) And, of course, the Crystal Pool, which made an appearance in every episode, except when the crew took to other ships for cruises in the Caribbean, Alaska and even Australia. And what a crew it was. From fatherly Gavin MacLeod to pert and perky Cindy "Lauren" Tewes and everyone in between, there was a nice family vibe to the original cast, even if some fans felt it was disrupted by the addition of Jill Whelan. Just don't mention the subsequent cast additions and changes, by which time the show had overstayed its welcome.The stories were simple and, for the most part, uplifting. Still, they were repetitive. But how many different plot variations can one expect about love? And then there was the oh-so-'70s theme song. Charles Fox wrote the music, having already made his TV mark in several hit sitcoms including Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Love, American Style. Pity poor Paul Williams, who, despite other successes, once reportedly said even if he found the cure for cancer, he'd still be remembered only for penning the lyrics to this insidious ditty. As sung by Jack Jones, it was frothier than ocean whitecaps and a perfect match for the show. Both Williams and Jones, by the way, actually guest-starred on the show.There's a story that Peter Graves was once asked about his appearance on The Love Boat. Graves jokingly demurred that everyone in Hollywood at the time guest-starred on the show. That's not far from the truth. The show featured a never ending parade of television stars, stars to be, stars that once were and would-be stars. Singers, dancers and once, the then-popular Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. All mingled with some rather distinguished company -- movie stars and Oscar winners past and future like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland, Debbie Reynolds, Tom Hanks and Don Ameche, among others, made appearances.The original Pacific Princess no longer plies her Pacific route on the Mexican Riviera, with ports of call at Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas and Acapulco. She long since surrendered the area to her larger, newer, more luxurious sisters, one of which (the Sun Princess) couldn't carry the "Next Wave" revival in 1998. In the autumn of 2002, she was retired from the Princess fleet after 27 years of service, and the one, true Love Boat was no more. There's a new Pacific Princess now, but it just isn't the same. Thus I raise my glass in one final toast, "To absent friends and those at sea."