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 Freevee!
This week, we learn who is a good cop and who is a not-so good cop.
Episode 1.4 “Moving Violation”
(Dir by Edward M. Abroms, originally aired on October 13th, 1977)
Tonight’s episode of CHiPs doesn’t so much have a plot as much as it’s just a random collection of incidents that are designed to allow us to see the differences in personality between Officer Jon Baker and Officer Frank “Ponch” Poncharello.
Officer Baker is quiet, conscientious, and mild-mannered. He’s the officer who spots a stolen church bus but gives his partner the credit for discovering it because his partner is on probationary status with the department. On a more serious note, he’s also the guy who is sent to inform women that they are now widows because their husbands met misfortune on the California highways. Tonight’s episode sees Baker being sent to inform a woman that her husband has died and Baker handles the job with sensitivity and tact. He wipes away a tear of his own as the woman starts to cry. Larry Wilcox was not exactly the most expressive actor in the world but, in that scene, he did a wonderful job.
Officer Poncharello, on the other hand, is a screw-up who smiles frequently, lies to an almost pathological extent, and who often looks straight at the camera while delivering his lines. He’s the type of police officer who needs his fellow officers to lie to Sgt. Getraer about what a good police officer he is. If Officer Baker is the ideal highway patrolman, Ponch is the guy who really shouldn’t be out there. It’s not just that Erik Estrada looks notably less assured on that motorcycle than Larry Wilcox. It’s also that Ponch himself doesn’t ever really seem to be paying attention to …. well, anything!
This episode, Ponch lies to a woman and gets her to go out on a date with him under the assumption that he’s a sergeant. She’s not thrilled to discover that he’s just a police officer and that he drives (and live in) an RV. Ponch is not thrilled when he gets a ticket for not using his turn signal and he has to take a driver’s education class. Worried that he might run into someone who he has ticketed, Ponch wears a fake mustache and, eventually, a fake beard.
As I mentioned earlier, there’s not much of a story to this episode. Ponch and Baker just deal with whatever they come across, whether it’s a stolen church bus or a man trapped in a van with a bunch of rattlesnakes. The oddest moment of the show comes when they pull over a motorist played by football player Roosevelt Grier and Grier proceeds to start beating up his car. Ponch and Baker just watch in amazement. At one point, Grier puts his fist through a window and Ponch laughs. Uhmm …. how about checking to make sure the guy isn’t bleeding to death?
And, hey — guess who shows up in driver’s education class at the end of this episode!? And guess who rips off Ponch’s fake beard and mustache. The episode ends with a freeze frame of a nervous Ponch laughing but I don’t think he’s going to be laughing much longer.
This was a weird episode. It was basically a combination of broad comedy, lovely California scenery, and that one shockingly dramatic scene in which Baker told a woman that her husband was dead. The episode was obviously meant to introduce us to Baker and Ponch. I would definitely prefer to get pulled over by Baker because he’s obviously just trying to do his job quickly and efficiently. Ponch, on the other hand….
Anyway, assuming that Ponch wasn’t killed by Rosey Grier, he should be next week! We’ll see what happens!
Through the Shattered Lens 