Colin Campbell – 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, it’s Balboa Day!

Episode 6.7 “This Year’s Riot”

(Dir by Richard A. Colla, originally aired on November 28th, 1982)

It’s Balboa Day weekend, and that means the beach is going to be full of drama and bikinis. (Full disclosure: Before this episode, I had never heard of Balboa Day before. I guess it’s a California thing.) Ponch and Bobby are assigned to keep an eye on things on a small island off the California coast. When an irate homeowner pulls a shotgun on teenagers who keep trespassing on his property, it’s up to Ponch and Bobby to talk him down before someone gets hurt. When a wealthy woman (Julie Newmar) tries to establish a nude beach, it’s up to the Highway Patrol to tell everyone to put some clothes on.

Meanwhile, Doc (Gary Morgan) is selling drugs on the beach and causing trouble. He even sells some to Grossman’s socially awkward nephew, Russell (Robbie Rist). Luckily, Ponch is there to chase Doc down. When Doc makes it onto a barge, he thinks he’s escaped. He grins and mockingly waves goodbye. Ponch rides his motorcycle off the dock, glides through the air, and lands on the barge.

“And he calls me a hot dog!” Bobby says, watching.

And really, that’s all Bobby can do. It’s certainly not as if Bobby or any other member of the Highway Patrol would have been allowed to take down the episode’s main villain. That’s not how things work when Ponch is around. When Larry Wilcox said that he was tired of the producers always favoring Erik Estrada and left after season 5, the producers could have taken that as a sign that the show didn’t always have to be exclusively the Ponch Show. Instead, they appear to have learned the opposite lesson. During the sixth and final season, the series is more about Ponch than ever. Of course, in the role of Bobby, Tom Reilly isn’t exactly the most convincing cop in the world. He comes across as a bit spacey, like a California beach bum who somehow got through the Police Academy. Larry Wilcox was always believable as a cop. When it came to riding a motorcycle and looking manly while writing tickets, Wilcox could easily keep up with Estrada. Reilly, on the other hand, always seems like he’d rather be surfing.

Ponch gets the bad guy in this one and makes the beach safe for people of all ages. Seriously, is there anything Ponch can’t do? As for the episode itself, it was bland but likable, largely because of the beach scenery. Robbie Rist is best remembered for playing Cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch. He’s even more annoying as Russell here. Not only is he rude to his uncle, he’s also dumb enough to take drugs before trying to go sailing. What a dummy. It’s a good thing this is the Ponch Show and Ponch can do no wrong. Otherwise, Russell would have been in a lot of trouble.

Next week, Ponch falls in love.

Girlfriend In A Coma is another happy song from The Smiths.

The song is straight forward. It is literally about a girlfriend in a coma. The only question is whether her boyfriend is being sincere when he sings that he hopes that everything will be okay or is he instead telling the truth when he says that he doesn’t want to see her.

Some clue as to how the singer feels about his girl comatose girlfriend might be found in video’s use of clips from The Leather Boys, a British film from 1964. An example of British kitchen sink realism, The Leather Boys is about a biker named Reggie (Colin Campbell) who marries his girlfriend, Dot (Rita Tushingham), but would still rather spend most of his time with his fellow biker, Pete (Dudley Sutton). At the time of its release, the film was considered to be shocking because it openly dealt with gay themes at a time when homosexual activity was still illegal in the UK. Just as the film ends with Reggie still unsure about his sexuality, Girlfriend In A Coma ends with Morrissey still sounding unsure about whether or not he wants his girlfriend to wake up.

Girlfriend In A Coma was the first single to be released from The Smiths’s final studio album, Strangeways, Here We Come. The album was named after Strangeways, an infamous prison in Manchester. Before the UK absolished the death penalty, Strangeways was famous for its gallows. A total of 100 prisoners were hanged at Strangeways between 1869 and 1964.