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!

CHiPs got preempted this week, due to our Monday celebration of St. Patrick’s Day and Kurt Russell.  Here’s the late review of this week’s episode!

Episode 3.13 “Second Chance”

(Dir by John Florea, originally aired on December 1st, 1979)

Someone is breaking into the homes of rich people, stealing their jewelry, and then making a fast escape on a motorcycle.  I say “someone” but, actually, we know who it is because the show tells us early.  It’s a two-man operation.  One guy works as a valet parker at a trendy restaurant.  The other guy sits in his van until the first guy brings over the keys of whoever they’re going to rob.  We know it but the cops don’t know it so we still have to sit through Ponch and Baker investigating the robberies and somehow not figuring out what’s going on,  even though it’s extremely obvious.

So, the crimes weren’t that interesting this week.  This show was mostly about celebrating the local children’s hospital and, even more importantly, celebrating Ponch’s popularity at the local children’s hospital.  All the nurses love Ponch.  All the children love Ponch.  Only the recently paralyzed Kelli (Dana Laurita) is immune to Ponch’s charms but he wins her over eventually.  Given the way this show treated Ponch, I’m surprised he didn’t magically heal her.

In other words, this is another episode in which Baker does a lot of work and Ponch gets all the credit.  There are a few exciting chases, as there were with every episode of CHiPs.  Whatever else you may want to say about the show, it’s obvious that the producers understood that people were watching for the high-speed pursuits and the crashes.  This episode even features Ponch on a boat.  The bad guys can’t even swim away to safety!  Of course, it’s Ponch who got on the boat.  There’s no way that Baker was going to get do anything like that.  I’m surprised Ponch even needed a boat, to be honest.  If nothing else, Ponch should be able to walk on water by this point.

Anyway, it was an okay episode.  Ponch appears to be full recovered from his injuries from earlier in the season so watch out, bad guys!