Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.
I’m a little bit late with this review but so what? I mean, what’s Pacific Blue going to do? Chase me on their bicycles?
Episode 1.10 “Captive Audience”
(Dir by Terrence O’Hara, originally aired on May 4th, 1996)
The local bank is being robbed! The three robbers — desperate and murderous criminals all — have taken hostages, including TC and Cory. TC just wanted to check out his safe deposit box. Cory just wanted to withdraw some money so she could buy a motorcycle. (If she had been withdrawing the money to buy another bicycle, I would have thrown a shoe at my television.) TC is in uniform. The robbers know he’s a cop. Cory is not in uniform and she and TC are pretending not to know each other. There’s also a pregnant woman in the bank who goes into labor, which means that Cory is going to have to get over her loathing of babies to help deliver one!
*Sigh*
I think I’ve said before that I hate cop shows that feature people being held hostage. It’s always the same thing. The robbers threaten a lot of people. The hostages get beaten and abused. Outside the bank, the negotiator says, “You have to give me more time!” On Pacific Blue, the negotiator is Captain Palermo and there’s something just silly about him, in his shorts and crisp polo shirt, directing a bunch of rough-and-ready SWAT team members who are in protective gear. Hostage situations are serious and potentially deadly but Palermo chasing the robbers are on his bicycle just made me laugh and laugh. I also laughed when the SWAT team first arrived at the bank and spotted Cory and TC’s bicycles sitting outside the building. “There might be cops in there,” someone says. Apparently, they’re unsure about whether or not bike cops should be considered real police or not. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
It falls to Del Toro and Chris to track down Doc Mueller (Charley Lang), a paranoid electronics expert who lives in a tent on the beach. He agreed to help disable the bank’s alarm so that the SWAT team can sneak inside. He also taps into the head robber’s “cellular phone” so that the cops can see who he is working with on the outside. Shows from the 90s are always amusing because everyone’s always like, “He’s got a cellular phone!” In 1996, those were still unusual and only used by desperate bank robbers.
(On a positive note, one of the robbers is played by a handsome young actor named Walton Goggins. What ever happened to him? Seriously, there’s not much about his performance here that indicates the type of actor he would become but still …. WALTON GOGGINS!)
Everything works out, of course. The main bank robber tries to escape in a helicopter but Palermo chases him — on his bike! — and manages to jump into the helicopter. It would have been really impressive if not for the bicycle and the fact that the Pacific Blue uniforms — those shorts and those blindingly white shirts — make all of the characters look really silly. It’s hard to take a cop seriously when he’s dressed like an aging track coach. The important thing, though, is that Cory gets over her hatred of babies and Palermo shows that bike cops deserve as much respect as real cops.
Eh. Who cares?
Through the Shattered Lens 