Alan Beckwith | Through the Shattered Lens

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!

Baker and Ponch — but mostly Ponch — get a chance to shine this episode.

Episode 3.12 “Destruction Derby”

(Dir by Gordon Hessler, originally aired on November 24th, 1979)

Ponch and Baker are working undercover!

That’s …. odd. Aren’t they just members of the Highway Patrol? I mean, don’t get me wrong. I know that being a member of the Highway Patrol isn’t easy and I don’t mean to imply that they’re not doing an important job. But it just seems like undercover work would be something that you would give to a detective. It seems like you would need some sort of special training to do that. For a show that, in the past, has pretty much taken a day-in-the-life approach to its stories, a sudden undercover episode just feels weird.

Ponch and Baker are working at the local demolition derby, trying to uncover a drug ring that…. I don’t know. I guess people who sell drugs enjoy demolition derbys. To be honest, I get the feeling that someone in production said, “Let’s shoot a bunch of demolition derby footage and then we’ll just make up something stupid to justify it.” When it comes to the derby, Baker is working as a member of the pit crew and, of course, Ponch is the one driving the car. And, of course, Ponch turns out to be a natural because there’s nothing that Ponch can’t master. Ponch also falls for the only driver who can beat him, the mysterious Billy Wakefield (Angel Tompkins). This episode is from the 70s so, of course, there’s a scene where she takes off her helmet, her long blonde hair falls across her back, and I guess everyone at home is supposed to go, “A woman race car driver!? What is this madness!?”

Baker is not totally wasted in this episode. He gets to save Ponch’s life when the bad guys attempt to booby trap Ponch’s car. He also gets to play tennis with Getraer and Grossman. This episode may feature Ponch and Baker going undercover but it seems like the real plot is just Baker and Ponch doing fun California things. This episode basically is a commercial for the state. Look! the episode says, Tennis! Handball! Demolition Derbies! Erik Estrada! We’ve got it all!

Erik Estrada can be seen wearing a wrist brace in this episode, which I assume is a lingering result of the accident that he’s spent the last few episodes recovering from. I make a lot of jokes about Estrada but, from watching the last few accidents, it is obvious that he was pretty seriously injured in that stunt-gone-wrong. That, while recovering, he appeared on camera at all seems worthy of respect. A major theme of this episode seems to be that Ponch is back and Baker, after having the lead role for a few episodes, in once again back to being a supporting player. Thank you for your service, Larry Wilcox.

Anyway, this episode featured a lot of fast cars and a lot of crashes so I liked it.

Welcome to 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 Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week is all about justice for Zito!

Episode 3.13 “Down For The Count: Part Two”

(Dir by Richard Compton, originally aired on January 16th, 1987)

Picking up where last week’s episode ended, Down For The Count: Part Two finds almost the entire Vice Squad mourning the death of Larry Zito. I say “almost” because, as usual, Castillo refuses to show any emotion or even look anyone in the eye. When he first appeared, Castillo’s stoicism made him an interesting character but I have to admit that I’m starting to get a bored with the character and his refusal to speak in anything more than terse growls. ZITO’S DEAD! WAKE UP, CASTILLO!

Switek, needless to say, is heart-broken. Trudy tells Gina that she had a totally meaningless one night stand with some guy she met at a club because she was depressed. (“Did it make you feel better?” Gina asks. “No!” Trudy wails.) Crockett is determined to take down crooked boxing promoter Oswaldo Guzman (Pepe Serna) and prove that Zito was not a junkie but that he was instead murdered by Guzman’s goons. As for Tubbs, he makes a few jokes. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU, TUBBS!? ZITO’S DEAD!

Crockett and Tubbs go undercover as Burnett and Cooper and, once again, I find myself wondering how they can keep successfully doing that when their cover has gotten blown over a dozen times over the course of the series. Do criminals in Miami not talk to each other? This time, Crockett pretends to be involved with a cable sports network that wants to make a deal to air the fights that Guzman sponsors. When a Las Vegas gangster named Guilinni (former Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro) shows up looking to kill Guzman, Crockett and Tubbs effortlessly manipulate both sides. It turns out that criminals aren’t that smart.

Meanwhile, Trudy and Gina meet one of Crockett’s associates from the Vietnam War. His name is Danny Allred (Chris Elliott) and he’s a former CIA agent who now lives in an abandoned airplane. Danny is a codebreaker and he helps them to figure out the code that Guzman was using to keep track of all of his crooked fights. Danny is a fun character and I hope he shows up in more episodes. He added some moments of levity to what was otherwise a pretty grim episode.

This episode had plenty of good moments. The scene where Crockett and Tubbs visited Zito’s apartment was both poignant and nicely-acted by both Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. The final shoot-out was violent even by the standards of Miami Vice. That said, I’m a bit surprised that the episode didn’t revolve around Switek. Switek gets to express his anger and argue with Internal Affairs at the start of the episode and gets to repeatedly shoot Guzman at the end of the episode but he’s largely absent for the middle part of the story. As Switek was both Zito’s partner and his best friend, it really does seem like he should have been at the center of the entire episode.

Still, I was glad that Zito’s name was cleared and that Guzman ended up getting shot multiple times until he fell out a window. The show’s final credits featured still shots of John Diehl as Zito. I’m going to miss Larry.