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 …. it’s jet pack time!

Episode 5.21 “The Game of War”

(Dir by Gordon Hessler, originally aired on March 14th, 1982)

While the members of the Highway Patrol try and fail to beat Harlan at chess, Peter J. Stoler (Clu Gulager) plots a prison break.  Stoler is one of the leading members of a group of former soldiers.  On the weekends, they engage in war games.  During the week, they plot to spring their former leader, Rascoe (Johnny Seven), from prison.  Peter has just received a jet pack.  Unless the Highway Patrol can stop them, Rascoe is going to fly to freedom.

Meanwhile, a process server named Darla Mason (Sandra Kerns) goes to ludicrous lengths to serve her targets.  She pretends to have car trouble.  She wears old person makeup.  She does whatever she needs to do to get her target to lower their defenses so that she can hand them their court papers and say, “You’ve been served.”  Process servers are a necessary part of our legal system but I’ve never cared much for any of the ones that I’ve known.  It takes a certain amount of cruelty to get close to someone just so you can give them a summons.  Darla is a fairly annoying character and I certainly wasn’t upset when Rascoe’s militia abducted her.  And when the episode ended with her getting served, it felt like poetic justice.

This episode was nothing special but it held my attention.  I mean, how can you not enjoy a little jet pack action?  Clu Gulager was actually somewhat sympathetic as the main bad guy.  Personally, I think Ponch and Baker should have let him go.  Just give him his jet pack and let him fly away.  He didn’t mean any harm!

Seriously, they should have given Clu his own show.