Clay Alexander | 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, someone dies! OH MY GOD!

Episode 3.5 “Death Watch”

(Dir by Barry Crane, originally aired on October 13th, 1979)

Dennis (Christopher Stone) is a veteran movie stunt driver who has never gotten over the tragic death of his child and the way he was treated by a heartless insurance company. He now drives up and down the freeway, looking for drivers who look like they have good insurance. Using his stunt skills, he causes accidents and then, under one of many assumed names, he files an insurance claim. Dennis’s wife (played by Dee Wallace, who was married to Stone at the time) thinks that Dennis is taking things too far but Dennis is convinced that he’s earned the right to commit insurance fraud. As he puts it, the companies have enough money that it’s not going to hurt them if he steals some of it.

Unfortunately, his latest attempt to cause an accident results in a delivery van swerving to the side of the road and striking two policemen who have pulled over a drunk driver. One of the policeman is series regular Bear (played by Brodie Greer). The other is a guy named Steve (Stephen Parr) who we’ve never seen before but who is quickly established as being everyone’s best friend. Or, I guess, he was everyone’s best friend as he dies shortly after being taken to the hospital. I have to admit that Steve dying was a bit jarring. It’s rare that anyone on CHiPs is seriously injured, much less killed.

The highway patrol officers are shaken by Steve’s death. Ponch and Baker go to the station’s gym and work off their frustration. Jon lifts weights. Ponch takes off his shirt and starts hitting a punching bag and, despite the tragedy of the situation, it was hard not to laugh at the show using it as an excuse for Erik Estrada to once again take off his shirt.

The members of the highway patrol attend Steve’s funeral. It’s pretty somber until Bear rolls into the church in his wheelchair and everyone breaks out into a huge smile. They’re happy that Bear survived but I do have to wonder how Steve’s family felt when they saw all those smiles and heard the officers joking amongst themselves. I guess they should have been happy that Ponch actually wore pants and a shirt to the funeral as opposed to showing up in a speedo. Seriously, if anyone would do that, it would be Ponch.

All of the bad drivers are brought to justice. The driver of the delivery van loses his job. Dennis goes to prison. By the end of the episode, everyone’s in a good mood again. Rest in peace, Steve!

This episode deserves some credit for trying to deal with a serious issue. Death is a big deal. Unfortunately, CHiPs really isn’t the best format for heart-rendering drama. Even after Steve was killed, the show still teased the audience with the promise of another crash. In the end, the main message seemed to be that it was better to lose Steve than Bear …. or, God forbid, Ponch!

This week, Ponch’s mom comes to visit! Will she get on a motorcycle? Uhmm …. no. She doesn’t. It probably would have been cool if she had. She could have helped chase down this week’s set of bad guys. This seems like a missed opportunity. It’s still a good episode, though.

Episode 2.18 “Rally ‘Round The Bank”

(Dir by Barry Crane, originally aired February 3rd, 1979)

Ponch is nervous because his mom, who is deathly afraid of flying, has boarded an airplane and flown from Chicago to Los Angeles to visit him. (In this episode, we discover that Ponch’s family apparently got rich and moved to Chicago sometime between the end of the first and the start of the second season.) Why is Ponch’s mother visiting? Ponch isn’t sure. He spends a lot of time worrying but, in the end, it turns out that his mother (well-played by Anna Navarro, no relation to that annoying woman on The View) came to town because Baker and Getraer called to tell her that Ponch would be receiving a special safety citation from Getraer.

Awwwww!

Apparently, Ponch has gone a whole year without crashing his motorcycle. I’m pretty sure I saw Ponch crash his motorcycle just a few episodes ago but whatever. The important thing is that this is actually a good Ponch episode. For once, Erik Estrada’s tendency to overact is not a distraction and his relationship with his mom is actually really sweet. When I watched this episode, my first thought was that Navarro looked way too young to be Estrada’s mother. If anything, she actually looked like she might be a few years younger than him. Then I checked with imdb and discovered that Navarro actually was sixteen years older than Estrada.

(I will admit that Anna Navarro — again, the actress and not that annoying woman who hosted a day of the Democratic National Convention — reminded me a lot of my own mom, which is maybe one reason why I liked this episode more than I thought I would.)

Ponch and Baker also find time to chase after two bank robbers, played by Frank Ashmore and Ron Hajak. Because the robbers are a part of a nation-wide rally race that is passing through Los Angeles, Ponch and Baker get to know some of the other racers. Two women invite Ponch and Baker to a square dance. Baker has to decline so Ponch brings Getraer instead. Getraer turns out to be a surprisingly good dancer. Ponch’s mom comes to the square dance as well and, for a few minutes, I thought maybe she and Getraer were going to announce to the world that they were in love. That would have been a great CHiPs moment but it didn’t happen. That’s another missed opportunity.

Missed opportunities aside, this was a good episode. It was fun and it was sweet and it made me smile.