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, the fifth season begins.

Episode 5.1 “Suicide Stunt”

(Dir by Michael Caffey, originally aired on October 4th, 1981)

The fifth season opens with the Highway Patrol pursuing a gang of thieves and also keeping an eye on Janos Szabo (Les Lannom), a motorcycle daredevil from Hungary who has come to Los Angeles to take part in charity show for “Highway Patrol Widows and Orphans.”

Since Hungary was controlled by the evil communists (hisssss!) when this episode originally aired, I assumed the episode would be about Janos trying to defect so that he could start a new life in the greatest country on Earth, the USA (yay!).  Instead, it turned out that Janos was more concerned with spending time with an ex-girlfriend named Maria (Anita Jodelsohn) who had defected (Good for you, Maria!) and was now working for the Highway Patrol.  The entire episode was pretty much scene after scene of Janos sneaking away from his handlers, stealing a vehicle, and then trying to kidnap Maria.  Maria found it to be amusing.  The members of the Highway Patrol were amused.  Even Janos’s handlers seemed to be secretly amused.  Still, when Janos set a fire outside of the CHP headquarters to distract everyone so that he could steal another car (this one with Maria in it), Ponch had no choice other than to arrest him.

“I am glad it is you who arrest me,” Janos says to Ponch, smiling like an idiot.

With Janos arrested, it falls on Jon Baker to perfect the stunts while riding Janos’s motorcycle.  And Baker is able to do it easily, even the one that involves bursting through a ring of fire.  So, I guess they didn’t need Janos to begin with.  They should have just had Baker do it and they could have saved a lot of money.  Way to waste the taxpayer’s cash, Jerry Brown!

(He was governor at the time.  Then, like 30 years later, he was governor again.)

Odd episode, this one.  Most season premieres try to go big but this was pretty much just another episode of CHiPs.  The California scenery was nice.  I always appreciate that this show was largely shot on location and, as a result, even the worst episodes have some value as a time capsule.  That said, Janos was an incredibly annoying character.  The fact that the show meant for us to laugh at his antics made him even more annoying.  There’s only so many times you can watch one jackass try to abduct one woman before you say, “Enough already!”