11/13 Flashback: Exciting and new

From November 13, 2013, “Dear Capt. Stubing: All TV theme songs are about Jesus”

Gavin MacLeod, fondly remembered as “Murray” from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then as “Capt. Merrill Stubing” on The Love Boat, has a new inspirational memoir out ( titled This Is Your Captain Speaking), so he’s making the Christian media rounds to promote it. Earlier this week, he plugged the book on the American Family Association’s “Today’s Issues” shows (because nothing says today’s issues like TV stars from the 1970s).

MacLeod told the AFA audience that it wasn’t until years after The Love Boat was off the air that he finally realized the show’s theme song wasn’t simply about finding romance on a cruise ship — it was about Jesus:

“If you listen to the lyrics [The Love Boat’s theme song is] all about Jesus,” MacLeod [said in] a clip of the show posted online Monday. “It’s a whole new approach to that song. I do that whenever I get to a group of believers… It’s really about, ‘Come aboard, Jesus will take care of you. There’s a new love waiting for you. A love that will never let you down.’”

The lyrics of “The Love Boat,” as written by Charles Fox and Paul Williams, are pretty generic, with their talk of “Love, life’s sweetest reward,” and assurances that “Love won’t hurt anymore/ It’s an open smile on a friendly shore.” However, add a bit of Jesus à la MacLeod, and they take on a whole new meaning.

MacLeod was surprised to realize the true meaning of this song, and the Huffington Post writer quoted above takes a skeptical view of this interpretation, but the truth is that all TV theme songs are actually about Jesus.

MacLeod, of all people, should have realized this a long time ago:

How will you make it on your own?
This world is awfully big, girl this time you’re all alone
But it’s time you started living
It’s time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to waste it  …

Just take a look at some other obvious examples:

• The Courtship of Eddie’s Father

People let me tell you ’bout my best friend,
He’s a warm hearted person who’ll love me till the end.
People let me tell you bout my best friend,
He’s a one boy cuddly toy, my up, my down, my pride and joy

• Friends

I’ll be there for you
(When the rain starts to pour)
I’ll be there for you
(Like I’ve been there before)
I’ll be there for you …

• Smallville

Somebody save me
Let your warm hands break right through
Somebody save me
I don’t care how you do it

• The Fresh Prince of Bel Air

I looked at my kingdom
I was finally there
To sit on my throne …

• Ally McBeal

I’ve been searching my soul tonight
I know there’s so much more to life
Now I know I can shine a light
to find my way back home.

• Laverne and Shirley

There is nothing we won’t try,
Never heard the word impossible (Philippians 4:13) …

• The Sopranos

Mama always said you’d be
The Chosen One.

• Growing Pains

Show me that smile again. (Show me that smile)
Don’t waste another minute on your cryin’.
We’re nowhere near the end (nowhere near)
The best is ready to begin.

• The Wire

When you walk through the garden, you gotta watch your back
Well, I beg your pardon, walk the straight and narrow track
When you walk with Jesus, he’s gonna save your soul
You got to keep the Devil, well you gotta keep him down in the hole

• The Greatest American Hero

Just like the light of a new day,
It hit me from out of the blue.
Breaking me out of the spell I was in,
Making all of my wishes come true.

Believe it or not,
I’m walking on air.
I never thought I could feel so free.
Flying away on a wing and a prayer. …

There are also a handful of TV theme songs not strictly about Jesus. Some are about the church: “where everybody knows your name” or “who’d have thought they’d lead ya / back here where we need ya” or “Set a spell, Take your shoes off / Y’all come back now, y’hear?”

Others are about the whole of the Trinity (“Come and knock on our door / We’ve been waiting for you”), or reimagine Jesus’ parables (“And if you threw a party / Invited everyone you ever knew”). Still others offer complex religious allegories: “Fish don’t fry in the kitchen / Beans don’t burn on the grill” or “Don’t wanna wear my glasses, have to wear my glasses” or, a classic, reconceptualizing the seven churches of Asia Minor in the book of Revelation as seven “castaways.”