Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, CHiPs makes me cry!

Episode 1.14 “Rustling”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on January 12th, 1978)

This week’s episode of CHiPs featured a scene that brought tears to my mismatched eyes.

A drunk driver (played by G.W. Bailey) swerves across the highway and causes another car to flip over.  While Ponch chases after the driver, Baker goes to investigate the crash.  He discovers that the car’s driver is a 17 year-old girl named Susie (Pamelyn Ferdin) and she has been pinned under the wreckage.  He manages to free her and carry her away from the car before it explodes.  YAY!  Another life saved by Jon Baker, right?

That’s when Susie says that she can’t feel her legs.

That scene got to me.  It was far more well-acted than anything that I think one would normally expect to find on a episode of CHiPs, with both Ferdin and Larry Wilcox bringing a lot of emotional sincerity to their roles.  Susie realizes that she may never walk again.  Baker realizes that, just because he saved her from the car, he can’t save Susie from the other consequences of the accident.  I wanted to cry.  Actually, I did cry.

Now, I should admit that I’m recovering from a sprained ankle and I was doing my ankle exercises while watching this scene.  So, not only did I already have tears in my eyes (seriously, some of those exercises hurt!) but I was also feeling pretty emotional.  But still, even if I was just watching this scene while sitting on a couch, I think it would have had the same effect on me.

Of course, for the record, Ponch does capture the drunk driver (and the driver starts to sob when he realizes what he has done).  And, by the end of the episode, Baker is informed that Susie is going to be okay.  I was happy about that.

Excuse me, I’m starting to cry again….

Okay, believe it or not, that was only a small part of the episode.  The main storyline featured the great L.Q. Jones as a cattle rustler who, when he’s not driving his truck full of stolen cattle, rides a motorcycle.  Fortunately, after a lengthy chase, Baker and Ponch are able to capture him and his accomplice (Paul Tuerpe).  It was a pretty simple story but, at the same time, L.Q. Jones was one of those brilliant character actors who make even the most mundane of characters interesting.

Also, over the course of the episode, Ponch and Baker deal with an irate driver (Mill Watson) who claims that he was only speeding because his gear shift failed.  In court, Ponch is able to prove that the gear shift didn’t break by pointing out that the brake lights would have come on in that case.  (“Your honor,” the defense attorney says, “my client would like to change his plea to guilty.”)  Ponch and Baker also stop a magician and his assistant and are so fascinated by the magician’s tricks that they nearly forget to write his assistant a ticket.

Finally, Ponch arranges for everyone to meet at Baker’s apartment to throw him a surprise birthday party.  Whoops!  Baker’s birthday isn’t for another three months.  Ponch looked at Baker’s personnel file and misread his employment number as being his birthdate.  Oh, Ponch!  Still, the party is a success.  Getraer shows up with zucchini.  The magician shows up and performs a trick that involves tossing milk on Ponch and Baker.  What?  Well, whatever.

What’s important is that one scene that brought tears my eyes.  The rest of the episode may have been generic but that one scene was beautifully done and I’ll never forget it.