In the seventh grade I wrote a parody script of the television show The Love Boat. It was unsurprisingly called The Shove Boat and was heavily influenced by years of reading MAD Magazine. Since MAD is supposedly no longer going to publish issues filled with original content, I wanted to share the fledgling efforts that helped me become the writer I am today. Which maybe isn’t such a good thing. 

(PS: if you came here from Twitter looking for the PDF of the script, here it is.)

Look at the bad parody names. The all-star guest lineup! The note of explanation I wrote. 

For some reason, Erik Estrada has a wife named Margo – I don’t know if that was ever true. Brooke Shields spends the entire time wearing a paper bag over her head that has “Brooke Shields” written on it. And Richard Simmons is…Richard Simmons. I may not have been able to use “your” correctly here but I think I nailed his essence. 

Scene one starts with an interaction between Erik and Margo. They mention “Sister Theresa.” 

And for some reason, I inject my seventh-grade bias against television script writers here. Though it’s pretty spot on for Love Boat plots from week to week, as I recall.

There is also a running list of television scriptwriting rules. Here’s an example.

I don’t even know where this came from.

There is, of course, an iceberg. And Richard Simmons. And the Hustle.

A fitting end for this episode of “The Shove Boat”