Original Air Date: October 18, 1995
Donnie and Lula's wedding cruise goes awry when mercenaries take over the cruise ship and lead it out to sea to rendezvous with a Russian submarine. Very amusing episode, but not quite amusing enough to distract anyone from the total impossibility of taking a cruise ship from a lake near "a large city in the
midwest" *ahem* all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean. From the midwest, it would be shorter to take the damn cruise ship down the Mississippi River out to the Gulf of Mexico and meet the sub there! And that wouldn't be very short at all, would it? <LOL>
This Week's Aging Guest Star: Following a hallowed tradition of hiring people with big white false teeth that whistle, Doug McClure (star of TV and movies since 1952) plays Captain Foster. This was one of his last projects before his death from lung cancer in February, 1995.
Almost interesting facts: Colm Feore (Federal Marshal Jack Selinger) was also in "Blackout" as "art patron and philanthropist Alexander Greco," who sponsored an art exhibit, all the while arranging to replace the original artwork with forgeries. William Shatner's daughter Melanie portrays Amy Caufield, daughter of the toy designer. (William Shatner, you may recall, directed "Secret Place" in the first season.)
Episode Highlight: The entire scene where Donnie and Lula ask Caine to marry them because their own minister has been called away on a last-minute emergency.
Episode Lowlight: Toy-missile designer Matthew Caufield knows how to disarm real nuclear missiles because he gets to see all the actual blueprints in order to design his company's toy missiles as realistically as possible. They actually expect us to believe that the US Government allows toy designers to see top-secret missile warhead plans so they can make their toys accurate?! I picture many KGB agents standing patiently in the checkout line at Toys 'R Us!
Quote to remember: You talkin' to me; talkin' to me?
Green blooper alert: Kermit says "Let's check the ship's manifesto." And here I thought the ship was called 'The Aztec Princess,' not 'The Karl Marx'!
Cheryl alert: Although we do not see her coming aboard with all the rest of the cast members, suddenly the ever-annoying Cheryl Hines is on the boat, doing the polka with Lo Si. (He doesn't seem too impressed with her, though -- in the end, he goes off with his arm wrapped around Alfredo the Chef.)
Geography 101: The St. Lawrence Seaway System, 2,038 nautical miles in length, encompasses the St. Lawrence River and the five Great Lakes, and extends from the Gulf of St. Lawrence at the Atlantic Ocean to the western end of Lake Superior at the twin ports of Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin.
One picture is worth a thousand words: Have you ever looked at the St. Lawrence Seaway System? Obviously Michael Sloan never has! <ROTFLMSAO> For a map of the waterways that The Aztec Princess would have to navigate to get from a Great Lake in the midwest to the "high seas", please visit
http://www.greatlakes-seaway.com/en/seawaymap/index.html