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 Prime!

This week, Ponch and Jon go to the beach!

Episode 3.3 “Valley Go Home!”

(Dir by Barry Crane, originally aired September 29th, 1979)

There’s been a string of thefts at the beach.  Someone is stealing radios out of cars and then making a fast getaway.  Somehow, this thief is able to blend in so well with everyone else that no one even notices him breaking into the cars until it’s too late.  Jon and Ponch have been assigned to patrol the beach and keep the radios safe.

Of course, Jon and Ponch don’t just worry about radio thieves.  When two women lose control of their car while towing a sailboat, Jon and Ponch are there to not only help them stop the car but also to ask them out on a windsurfing date.  (Every episodes of CHiPs found a way to promote the so-called “California lifestyle.”  It was probably one of the most effective tourism commercials ever filmed.  I don’t even swim and this episode still made me want to go wind surfing.)  They also get involved in the rivalry between three local white surfers and a group of Latino teenagers from the Valley.  Both groups drive Chevy vans with ornate decals.  One gets the feeling that the blonde surfers call their van the “Second Base Mobile.”

This is an episode of CHiPs that takes place at the beach so you’ve probably already guessed that it doesn’t take long for Ponch to find an excuse to put on a speedo.  Baker and Ponch not only work together but they also hang out together.  On the show, they’re best friends.  (Behind-the-scene, Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada were not quite so close.)  They spend a lot of time at the beach, eating ice cream.  Baker wears modest swim trunks.  Ponch walks around in his speedo and shows off his dazzling smile.  One gets the feeling that, if this episode had been made in 1999 instead of 1979, Ponch would have been handing out AOL CDs to everyone he met and saying, “When you sign up, I get fifteen free minutes to talk to you.”

Ponch has a theory that the radio thief is disguising himself as someone who works at the beach.  (Needless to say, Ponch comes up with the theory while Baker agrees because, on CHiPs, everything was much pretty much about Ponch.)  Ponch suspects that the thief might be the local ice cream man.  Ponch and Baker eat a lot of ice cream in this episode.  Eventually, it turns out to be the local trash collector.  The ice cream man is off the hook!

As far as the surfers and the Valley kids are concerned, it all works out.  Of course, it works out in the most dangerous way possible, with the surfers and the Valley kids chasing each other in their vans and both crashing their vehicles.  After 48 hours in jail, all of them are back on the beach.  The surfers agree to teach the Valley kids how to handle a board.  The Valley kids agree to take the surfers to Mexico.  Ponch and Jon have a good laugh before going windsurfing.  How can you not love California?

This was a pretty silly episode but the beach scenery was nice.  It’s hard for me to not enjoy a show that features not one but two vans.  All hail the 70s!