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 is back!

Episode 5.10 “Fast Money”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on December 5th, 1981)

This is getting weird.

After being either absent or only appearing in one or two scenes over the past few episodes, Ponch returns this week.  He’s once again on active duty, patrolling the California highways with Baker.  As much as I notice and joke about the obvious disdain that Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox held for each other, they do make a surprisingly good team.  They just seem to belong together.  If I’ve learned anything over the past few weeks, it’s that Larry Wilcox needed Estrada’s flamboyance and that Erik Estrada needed Wilcox’s cool professionalism.  They balanced each other out.

With Ponch (and Estrada) back, there’s really no reason for Steve McLeish to stick around.  And yet, during this episode — there he was!

He didn’t really have anything to do.  Ponch and Baker were after some van-driving engineers who were using a hydraulic lift to hijack other cars.  When they figured out which company had developed the hydraulics being used in the crime wave, Steve called the company’s chairman.  (Steve says the chairman of the board is an old friend and no one acts surprise.  I’m guessing maybe that was an inside joke or some sort of reference to the Olympics.)  Later, Steve showed them a mansion that was fixing up so he could flip it.  The scenes felt awkward and not just because of the Caitlyn Jenner’s total lack of acting ability.  There really wasn’t any reason for them to be in the episode.  There was no reason for Steve to be around.  Ponch and Baker should have been out there, taking down those nerdy engineers and warning people about the dangers of technology.  Instead, they were having to make time to hang out with Steve.

As I watched this episode, it occurred to me that maybe Caitlyn Jenner just refused to go home.  Maybe Jenner showed up on set and wouldn’t leave until the writers wrote Steve a few scenes.  That theory is really the only one that makes sense.

Anyway, this episode had a few good car crashes.  The hydraulic lift was incredibly silly and so was Harlan’s suggestion that they could catch the thieves by tricking them into trying to lift a car that was weighted down with rocks.  There was also a big subplot that was centered around Ponch trying to get the shower fixed in his apartment.  I always like it whenever the show finds an excuse to show us either Ponch or Jon’s apartment.  The wood paneling and the shag carpeting amuses me.  They should have called this show Disco Cops.

According to the imdb, next week will be Jenner’s final episode.  So, we’ll see how the saga of Steve McLeish comes to an end.  I think he’s going to get arrested for taking payoffs from the mob.  We’ll see if I’m right!