Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 6.1 “Meet The New Guy”

Posted on July 27, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, we start the sixth and final season of CHiPs.

Episode 6.1 “Meet the New Guy”

(Dir by John Astin, originally aired on October 10th, 1982)

The sixth season of CHiPs opens up with some changes. Bonnie, Bear, and Turner are all gone. They’ve been replaced by Kathy (Tina Gayle) and Officer Webster (Clarence Gilyard, Jr.) Grossman (Paul Linke) is still providing comedic relief. Harlan (Lou Wagner) is still running the garage. Getraer (Robert Pine) is still the sarge. And Ponch (Erik Estrada) is still riding his motorcycle and flashing his grin.

However, this episode finds Ponch riding solo. Officer Baker is no longer his partner. This was because Larry Wilcox declined to return for another season, specifically because he felt that the producers only cared about keeping Estrada happy. On the show, it’s mentioned that Baker has relocated to Wyoming and he is now working on his father’s ranch. Ponch, however, is not without a partner for long. At the start of the episode, he meets Baker’s replacement. Bobby Nelson (Tom Reilly) is blonde and kind of spacey and he’s nicknamed “hot dog” because he likes to take risks. Ponch has been assigned to work as Nelson’s partner throughout Nelson’s probationary period. Getraer explains that Nelson reminds him of Ponch.

And really, that’s the problem. Ponch is a flamboyant motorcycle cop who smiles a lot and likes to take risks. Bobby is another flamboyant motorcycle cop who smiles a lot and likes to take risks. There’s not much difference between them. Even though Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada didn’t get along behind the scenes, Baker and Ponch worked as a team because Baker was the opposite of Ponch. Baker was serious and by-the-book and he didn’t take unnecessary risks. Bobby, on the other hand, is pretty much just a blonde version of Ponch.

There is another problem as far as Bobby Nelson is concerned. Judging from this episode, Tom Reilly doesn’t appear to have been much of an actor. Larry Wilcox may not have had the most expansive emotional range but he was totally believable as a cop. Reilly, meanwhile, spends the entire episode looking somewhat spaced out. He delivers his lines in a flat monotone. From the start, there’s very little chemistry between him and Estrada. When Ponch complains about getting a new partner, one gets the feeling that he was expressing Estrada’s own feelings.

That said, this episode isn’t all bad. It opens with one of the most spectacular crashes in the show’s history. The tragic Dominique Dunne gives a strong performance as a teenage mother who sells her baby to a couple but then decides that she wants him back. This episode even manages to work quicksand into its finale. How can you not appreciate a show that makes use of quicksand?

Finally, this episode has one extended sequence that is so ludicrous that you just can’t help but smile while watching it. Two thieves have been robbing health clubs. They just happen to rob the one where Ponch is a member. (Fitness guru Richard Simmons plays Ponch’s teacher.) Ponch, clad only in a pair of black shorts and a motorcycle helmet, jumps on his motorcycle and chases after the robbers. The site of a half-naked Erik Estrada riding his motorcycle down the streets of Los Angeles is the perfect combination of silly and stupid.

This episode had its moments but I’m not really sold on Tom Reilly as a replacement for Larry Wilcox. We’ll see what happens!

Ice Cream Man (1995, directed by Norman Apstein)

Posted on October 27, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

When he was a young boy, Gregory Tudor was traumatized when he witnessed the gangland-style execution of the neighborhood ice cream man. He was retraumatized when he was sent to an insane asylum. Now, Gregory (Clint Howard) has grown up and he’s the ice cream man! Everyone in the neighborhood loves his ice cream but the local kids suspect that he’s using human body parts to get the flavor just right. It turns out that the kids know what they’re talking about.

Ice Cream Man almost feels like a zero-budget precursor to Stranger Things, with the kids knowing what’s happening in their town while the majority of the adults are too self-absorbed to notice. One of the kids is a Macauley Culkin look-alike known as Small Paul (Mikey LeBeau). He comes to admire Gregory and his murderous devotion to ice cream. The movie’s really stupid but it’s clearly not meant to be taken seriously and Clint Howard really throws himself into his role. One thing that makes Ice Cream Man enjoyable is that you know Ron Howard had to sit through it because his brother’s in it.

The most interesting thing about Ice Cream Man is the number of recognizable actors who appear in tiny roles. David Warner is the town’s reverend. David Naughton is a clueless father who is married to Sandahl Bergman. Jan-Michael Vincent is a detective. Olivia Hussey is Gregory’s former nurse. Former baseball player and future senatorial candidate Steve Garvey plays another parent. With the exception of Vincent, it’s hard not to believe that the members of the cast didn’t have anything better to do. Never underestimate the appeal of a quick paycheck.

Clint Howard has said that a sequel is in pre-production. The Ice Cream Man will return.

Cleaning Out The DVR Yet Again #19: I Know Where Lizzie Is (dir by Darin Scott)

Posted on November 29, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR! It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet. So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR! She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by Wednesday, November 30th! Will she make it? Considering that she only has a day left, probably not. But keep checking the site to find out!)

I recorded I Know Where Lizzie Is off of the Lifetime Movie Network on July 31st. I also watched it while recording it and it’s a pretty good thing I did because, as the result of a glitch with the DVR, I only recorded the final hour! So, when you read this review, be aware that at least half of it is being done on the basis of my possibly faulty memory.

I Know Where Lizzie Is is a hybrid of two popular Lifetime genres. On the one hand, you have an abducted child storyline. Teenager Lizzie Holden (Madison Iseman) has a fight with her mom, sneaks out of the house, and never comes home. Her amicably divorced parents, Judith (Tracey Gold) and Martin (Richard Rucculo), desperately try to track down their daughter. What they don’t know is that Lizzie is being held prisoner by a man wearing what appears to be a Michael Myers mask.

I Know Where Lizzie Is is also an unwanted guest film. In an unwanted guest film, a seemingly friendly but secretly malicious stranger moves into an otherwise stable household and tries to destroy the family unit. In the case of I Know Where Lizzie Is, the stranger is a phony psychic named Tracy (Nadia Bjorlin). Tracy shows up and claims that she’s had visions of Lizzie. She knows where Lizzie is! Of course, the reason that Tracy knows all of this is because she’s in on the kidnapping.

(Before you start screaming at me about spoilers, this is all revealed early on in the film.)

On top of all that, I Know Where Lizzie Is is also an anti-media film. A somewhat smarmy reporter (Robert Scott Wilson) also movies into the Holden household and he is soon providing nearly 24 hour coverage of the Holdens, the kidnappers, and especially Tracy. I imagine that a lot of viewers will probably respond to the anti-media message. I mean, the media is pretty much everyone’s favorite scapegoat at the moment, right?

(It’s hard to believe that just 9 months ago, Spotlight was winning best picture and everyone was talking about how much they loved the media. It’s amazing how quickly things change.)

Anyway, I Know Where Lizzie Is was very much a typical Lifetime film and how much you enjoy it will depend on how much you enjoy Lifetime films in general. On the plus side, both Robert Scott Wilson and Nadia Bjorlin did well with their untrustworthy characters. Plus, the kidnapper in the mask was genuinely creepy!

If you like Lifetime movies, keep an eye out for it.