History Series / TheLoveBoat

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* ThemeTuneCameo: "April's Return" has the titular immigrant sing the theme song in the lounge.

* OffToBoardingSchool: In "Return of the Ninny," a woman plans to have her fiancé's kids sent to boarding school and the nanny fired so she won't have to deal with them. Her plans call apart when the father hears the nanny discussing the future with the kids, causing him to call off the engagement.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Robert Tanner the jewel thief played by ’’Creator/JimNabors’’ does a very good job of acting like a clueless hick.

* UmbrellaDrink: Featured in almost every episode. Exaggerated in "Gopher's Bride," when Doc and Gopher both order fancy drinks for a woman they're competing over; the surface of Gopher's drink is completely covered in drinks and umbrellas, while Doc's contains a small pineapple with two sparklers stuck in it.

* UmbrellaDrink: Featured in every episode. Exaggerated in "Gopher's Bride," when Doc and Gopher both order fancy drinks for a woman they're competing over; the surface of Gopher's drink is completely covered in drinks and umbrellas, while Doc's contains a small pineapple with two sparklers stuck in it.

A short-lived {{revival}} series, ''The Love Boat: The Next Wave'', aired on Creator/{{UPN}} in 1998–99.

* ReunionShow: ''Love Boat: A Valentine Voyage'' a two-hour movie with most of the original cast, aired on Creator/{{CBS}} in 1990.

* ReunionShow: ''A Valentine Voyage'', in 1990.

Jeraldine Saunders, a real-life cruise director, wrote about her experiences in a book called ''The Love Boats''. A trilogy of {{Made for TV Movie}}s followed, and then it finally became an Creator/AaronSpelling-produced series airing on Creator/{{ABC}} from 1977 to 1986.

This show had a short-lived sequel, ''The Love Boat: The Next Wave''.

* ChekhovsGunman: In the cruise line inspector episode the man who shows up now and then speaking Russian is in fact trying to find the cruise inspector, who never made it onboard.

* DudeWheresMyRespect: Dwyer the teacher from Julie's school whose present during a reunion aboard the ship feels this way, but only because he keeps overhearing conversations and walking off right before someone compliments him.

* GlamorousSingleMother: A few, all the way back to the second episode, where the main character of one plot line (who's trying to get her exterminator boyfriend to propose) shares a cabin with a partier played by Suzanne Somers who provides her some relationship advice. When the exterminator's girlfriend says that she wants children, her roommate offers to let her borrow hers. That may feel like a joke at first, but at the end of the episode we find out that she does have two kids waiting for her at the pier who were staying with their grandmother.

* LaserGuidedKarma: A smarmy author advocating open marriage, is the first cheater in the show whose marriage does break up (all the previous ones made amends) and on top of that the other woman jilts him to.

* NotBloodSiblings: One episode has a woman looking for her biological mother find out it’s the mom of the guy helping her who she has a crush on. Fortunately it turns out she’s just his stepmother.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: Robert Tanner the jewel thief played by ’’Creator/JimNabors’’.

* SexyDiscretionShot: Of a story ended with a guest's room closing the door...

* TheStarscream: One episode has Julie assigned an assistant/trainee who's blatantly trying to discredit her and steal her job. The others have something to say about that and discredit her, and the woman learns humility when Julie steps in to tell Stubing she’d been tricked before he can throw the book at her, and Stubing says that, trickery or not, her behavior was inappropriate and the idea of her replacing Julie is absurd.
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Judy [=McCoy=], for Julie [=McCoy=].

* ThirdLineSomeWaiting: Every episode featured three interwoven plot lines. Usually they were independent of each other, but on occasion they would intersect.

* TheStarscream: One episode has Julie assigned an assistant/trainee whose blatantly trying to discredit her and steal her job. The others have something to say about that and discredit her, and the woman learns humility when Julie steps in to tell Stubing she’d been tricked before he can throw the book at her, and Stubing says that trickery or not her behavior was inappropriate and the idea of her replacing Julie is absurd.

* ThanksgivingEpisode: In "Tony's Family," the titular engineer's vacation get cancelled at the last minute, so the crew helps him smuggle his large family onto the ship for a Thanksgiving cruise.

* UnderstandingBoyfriend: Brad, the centerfolds politician fiancée from the second episode.

* GlamorousSingleMother: A few, all the way back to the second episode, where the main character of one plot line (who's trying to get her exterminator boyfriend to propose) shares a cabin with a partier played by Suzanne Somers who provides her some relationship advice. When the exterminators girlfriend says that she wants children, her roommate offers to let her borrow hers. That may feel like a joke at first, but at the end of the episode we find out that she does have two kids waiting for her at the pier who were staying with their grandmother.

* TheNoodleIncident: On leave, the gang complain over having to see Isaac's aunt in a horrible play. When Gopher calls it the worst experience ever on shore leave, Doc states he had a worse one with his second wife but "as per our divorce agreement, I'm legally forbidden from talking about it."

* PrenupBlowup: In one episode, this was part of a subplot: a man getting over a very economically taxing divorce tries to court several women on the boat who immediately shun him when he asks for them to sign a pre-nup (while ''dating''.) Eventually he decides not to do it for the woman he ends up falling in love with... who at the end of the episode asks ''him'' to sign one, having also been through a similar divorce.

* SocietyMarchesOn: Julie’s claim in the second episode -after that three people bought Playboy magazines with a compromising photo of a woman trying to hide them- that “at least we know they're all men” would feel less true in modern times with less stigma towards public displays of lesbianism.