'Love Boat': A Fantastic Voyage

VII: THE LONG WAVE GOODBYE
As ratings began to sink in the mid-'80s, the producers tried to reinvigorate the show, tapping Ted McGinley as photographer Ace (''He was a junior Bob Redford in his day,'' recalls executive producer Doug Cramer) and introducing the singing, dancing Love Boat Mermaids (Look! Teri Hatcher!). But by season 9, Love Boat seemed to be nearing its final voyage.
BERNIE KOPELL: They even changed [the theme song]. All of a sudden it wasn't Jack Jones singing anymore, it was Dionne Warwick. It's like, ''We are coming into port for the last time.''
TED LANGE: One day I went back to craft service. No fruits, no vegetables, no dip — a can of Cheez Whiz and Ritz crackers. I said, ''Well, we're out of here. Let me pack my s--- up.''
GAVIN MACLEOD: I think we could've gone many more years.

The Love Boat series concluded in May 1986 after 217 telecasts. Three 2-hour specials aired the next season, though without Grandy; he'd departed to run for Congress.
KOPELL: Fred is a Harvard graduate magna cum laude — he was overqualified for playing Gopher.
FRED GRANDY: When you have that confrontation with mortality [that being the balloon accident], you begin to say, ''Why was it that I was saved? What do you want to do with your life?'' It wasn't that I was out of love with Love Boat. I just became much more passionate about politics and public service.

Surprisingly, Tewes returned for these specials, while Klous was let go.
CYNTHIA LAUREN TEWES: I did it for the money, and to try to get some closure on it. It had been two of the hardest years of my life. But I'm a much stronger person because of it, and a kinder person.

Another TV movie surfaced in 1990, and the cast reunited on a 1998 episode of Love Boat: The Next Wave, UPN's unsuccessful franchise relaunch. To this day, the series — which will be released on DVD next spring — endures as a touchstone of pure escapist fun.
TORI SPELLING: Love Boat was one of my dad's favorites. He loved romance. He would always say, ''People have hard lives, they have stressful jobs. On a Saturday night I want to give them pure entertainment so they don't have to think. They can just be with their families, veg out in front of the television, and just have fun for an hour.''
GRANDY: There was something about that show that America took to its bosom readily and eagerly. Was it because it began at the tail end of the Carter Administration and it was a kind of counterpoint to the quote unquote national malaise that we were all feeling? That seems to be a little bit too out there. But it was a very pleasant antidote to whatever was going wrong in our lives.
KOPELL: Our show was an out-and-out romantic fantasy with happy endings. Tom Bosley came aboard and he was paralyzed from the waist down, but we had our famous Page 58 Resolution. On page 58 [of the script], he gets up, it's a miracle. We were the lords of television. These miraculous cures — husbands and wives came aboard and they were fighting and going for a divorce, but page 58 comes along, and everything is peachy.
CRAMER: It was always sort of taken for granted or looked down upon as a popular success. But I feel that the better parts of the better shows could match the best of comedy ever done on television.
LANGE: It was a venue in which the comedy — as light as it was — provided a platform for emerging talent, and for talent that had been forgotten.
TEWES: I am grateful for all the travel and experience and getting to be in that big acting class with all those actors. And getting to wear beautiful clothes.
SPELLING: One of my dad's dreams that never got fulfilled [Aaron Spelling died in 2006] is he desperately wanted to do a Love Boat feature. He'd tell me about that every year. First he'd be like, ''I'm thinking about Jim Carrey.'' Then he'd be like, ''Wait, we're going to have a young captain and it's going to be Ben Stiller.'' It would've been awesome.
MACLEOD: I went to my cleaners. There was a new girl. And she said, ''Man, aren't you the captain?'' I said, ''Well, I used to be.'' She said, ''You've got to tell somebody to put that show back on.'' I said, ''Why?'' And she said, ''That show used to give me something to dream about. Nothing on television gives me anything to dream about.'' I think that's exactly what made the show successful.
KOPELL: I can get a good table in any restaurant in any country in the world.