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, the first season comes to a close!
Episode 1.22 “Flashback!”
(Dir by Michael Caffey, originally aired on April 1st, 1978)
When a recent graduate from te motor school joins the unit, he immediately rubs everyone the wrong way. Brent Delaney (Joe Penny) may have graduated at the top of his class but, as Baker points out, he flunked public relations and everyone quickly tires of his holier-than-thou approach to policing. Add to that, his father is a bigshot politician and everyone assumes that Delaney is just some rich kid who got the job through his connections. Delaney’s arrogant and cocky attitude doesn’t do much to change that impression.
Fortunately, Baker and Ponch are both willing to look past Delaney’s cockiness. In fact, they spend the majority of the episode remembering how, one day, a CHiP officer named Jon Baker met a cocky dirt bike rider named Ponch (Erik Estrada) and also how Baker talked Ponch into applying for a spot on the force. No one gave Ponch much of a chance, largely because of his background as a juvenile delinquent and his friendship with a gang leader named Henry (Edward James Olmos). But, soon, Ponch and Baker were patrolling the streets and rescuing two women who were trapped in a car that they accidentally drove into a swimming pool. Ponch proved himself. Will Delaney?
Yes, this a flashback episode but, interestingly enough, most of the flashbacks appear to have been shot specifically for this episode. (There were two clips that I recognized as coming from the show’s pilot but the rest of the flashbacks appeared to be original.) The flashbacks don’t play out in a chronological order, either. Instead, they are somewhat randomly triggered by Ponch or Baker hearing an engine backfiring or spotting some person on a bike. This episode comes as close as one can to answering the question of what a cop show directed by Nicolas Roeg would look like.
As for Delaney, he eventually proves his worth when he takes down a group of bikers who were stealing CHP motorcycles. (One of the bikers is played by John Furey, who is best-known for playing Paul in Friday the 13th Part II.) It’s a pretty good thing that Delaney caught those guys, seeing as how his motorcycle was one of those that was stolen. Having proven himself, Delaney is welcomed into the CHP. Even the formerly skeptical Grossman and Bear end up shaking his hand and telling him that he did a good job. Way to go, Delaney! I imagine we’ll never see him again.
And so ends the first season of CHiPs. It was a fun season. There was nothing particularly challenging about any of the first 22 episodes but the scenery was gorgeous and some of the chase scenes were exciting. That’s really all you can ask for with a show like this. Though I understand that Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada did not particularly like each other, that wasn’t obvious during the first season. In fact, even Estrada’s tendency to overact was nicely paired with Wilcox’s tendency to do the opposite. For the first season at least, they came across like legitimate partners and friends.
Next week, we start season 2!
Through the Shattered Lens 