Byron Thomas – 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!

This week, dogs are being kidnapped and a kid with a liver condition risks his life to see the Space Shuttle. Can Gordon Cooper save the day!?

Episode 6.15 “Journey To A Spacecraft”

(Dir by Richard Irving, originally aired on February 6th, 1983)

Someone is dognapping adorable and expensive dogs in Los Angeles! Wealthy Ms. Birdwing (Natalie Schafer) wants her tiny doggie back! Luckily, a kid named Kevin (Byron Thomas) was listening to his portable CB radio and he heard the dognappers talking to each other. Kevin’s clues lead the highway patrol to the dog groomer (Vito Scotti) who has been stealing and reselling the dogs. The dog groomer is arrested by Tina, Grossman, and Officer Webster. When one of the kidnapped dogs stands on the groomer’s chest, Grossman calls it “poetic justice.” I would have called it ultio canis but whatever.

Meanwhile, Kevin is in desperate need of a liver transplant. A donor has been found, but Kevin has snuck out of his house and is making his way to Edwards Air Force Base so he can watch the Space Shuttle land. Ponch and Bobby set off to find the young aerospace enthusiast but, unfortunately, a lot of people have shown up to watch the Space Shuttle. Ponch, however, runs into former Mercury Astronaut Gordon Cooper and he announces on the PA system, “Kevin, Gordon Cooper wants to meet with you at the press building!” Kevin, whose liver is really acting up, collapses as he makes his way to the press building. Luckily, Bobby finds him and carries him to the press building so that he can meet Gordon Cooper before finally getting a new liver.

This episode was a bit of a strange one. The dognapping storyline was deliberately silly with Vito Scotti giving a very broad performance as the duplicitous dog groomer. Meanwhile, the Kevin storyline tried really hard to generate some tears but I’ve seen enough episodes of CHiPs to know that Kevin was going to be fine. What I found strange was that his parents didn’t seem to be that upset about him sneaking out and hitching rides from his CB radio friends. I’m not really sure this episode had a good message. “Hey, kids, want to pursue your favorite hobby? Hitchhike!”

Gordon Cooper appeared as himself. I’ve always said that professional athletes are usually the least convincing members of any guest cast but, based on this episode, I may have to include astronauts in there. Cooper seemed uneasy whenever he was on screen. When Kevin was finally found and didn’t die, Cooper awkwardly patted Ponch on the back even though Bobby was the one who found him.

Speaking of Ponch, how did he go through this entire episode without once mentioning that, just a few months ago, he actually battled an alien? Seriously, Ponch, what the hell?

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire show is streaming on Tubi.

Agck! The monsters are going to get me for being so late in posting this review!

Episode 1.18 “The Match Game”

(Dir by Michael Brandon, originally aired on April 15th, 1989)

So, if you’ve ever wanted to see Tori Spelling’s head literally get squeezed into nothingness, this is the episode for you.

Spelling plays Beverly, a teenage girl who enjoys breaking into old houses and playing the match game. That’s the game where you and your friends sit in a circle and a match is passed from person to person. The person holding the match tells a story until their flame dies. Then the next person continues the story until their match dies. The whole idea is to see just how grotesque things can get by the time the story finally ends. I played a variation of the game when I was in high school. Admittedly, my friends and I did it in our creative writing teacher’s classroom and we used an hourglass instead of a match and our stories usually turned pretty perverse by the time the third person got their chance to contribute.

Tori Spelling is not the only familiar face to be found here. Her boyfriend is played by Sasha Jenson, who will forever be known as Dazed and Confused‘s Don Dawson. Spelling’s best friend is played by Ashley Laurence, who was the lead in the first Hellraiser. Spelling is not the only well-known actor here but she is the only one to give an amazingly bad performance. That’s not a surprise, of course. Spelling has never been a particularly good actress and she did this episode around the same time that she was playing Screech’s girlfriend on Saved By The Bell. Credit where credit is due, she is better here than she was on Saved By The Bell.

When Paul (Byron Thames), the newcomer to the group, gets his chance to hold the match, it doesn’t go out until he’s gone into great detail about Hubert Waverly, the horribly deformed man who once lived in the house where the group is playing their game. This brings Hubert to life. Jenson and Spelling are taken out quickly. Finally, it occurs to the two survivors that Paul can vanquish Hubert by finishing the story. That’s good and all but the episode never really explains why Paul’s match didn’t go out the first time. How did he know about Hubert? Did Hubert spring from Paul’s mind? These are important questions that the show just kind of pushes to the side.

Oh well! This is still an atmospheric episode and probably as close as this show has gotten to being scary since that episode about the makeup box. Even Tori Spelling’s bad performance felt oddly appropriate for what was essentially a 30-minute 80s slasher film. I enjoyed this episode so much that I might even go find that old box of matches that we keep out in the garage….