Diana Castle | 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This week, the bicycle cops go after pharmaceutical smugglers.

Episode 3.18 “Caretakers”

(Dir by Sara Rose, originally aired on March 8th, 1998)

This week, a drug company is smuggling and distributing black market pharmaceuticals. Leslie Jordan plays Bo, the crazy man who lives in a storage unit and who has figured out what the company is doing. When he gets shot in the back, Chris feels guilty because she refused to listen to his ramblings earlier. After undergoing hypnosis to search for clues as to who shot Bo, Chris goes undercover as a potential drug buyer. It always amuses me whenever any member of the bike patrol goes undercover. None of them are capable of not coming across as being a cop and that’s especially true in Chris’s case. Everything from the way they talk to the way they glare at everyone to the way they stand just a little bit too rigidly screams, “Cop!” And yet the criminals never seem to catch on.

Meanwhile, Victor’s mother is deathly ill and needs some drugs to save her life. Luckily, the local priest has connections. But can Victor set aside whatever his issue is with the church? Does anyone care? I mean, I’m glad that Victor’s mom is alive at the end of the episode but Victor isn’t that interesting of a character.

We are three season into Pacific Blue and none of the characters are really interesting enough to carry the show. Even the lifeguards on Baywatch had more personality than the members of the bike patrol. The main thing that I’ll remember about this episode is that, even when they were keeping an eye on Chris working undercover, the cops all brought their bicycles.

The important thing is that Leslie Jordan survives his injuries. At the end of the episode, TC locks Chris in the Bo’s storage unit so that she’ll be forced to listen to his conspiracy theories. I guess TC’s okay with not getting any for a month.

I’d like this show better if the rode motorcycles.

This week, Palermo dies but it’s not a permanent condition.

Episode 3.14 “Heartbeat”

(Dir by Terence H. Winkless, originally aired on December 28th, 1997)

This week, Pacific Blue decided to stop pretending that it was anything more than a Baywatch ripoff by having Carmen Electra appear as Lani MacKenzie, the lifeguard that she played on Baywatch. She helped the bicycle cops out with a rescue and then the bike cops helped her out when she had to break up a knife fight on the beach.

Lani was also present to discuss a new program in which two EMTs will ride with the cops. They will learn how to get around on a bicycle while teaching the bike cops stuff like CPR. One of the EMTs is Alexa Cholak (Alex Datcher), an ex-girlfriend of Palermo’s. This complicates things when an explosion rips across the beach. Palermo and a random woman are injured. Alexa and all the bike cops work on restarting Palermo’s heart, giving him mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. Palermo lives. The woman dies. The woman’s boyfriend then sues the bike patrol because he says that they were so concerned about saving Palermo that they essentially just let his girlfriend die. We’re supposed to dislike the boyfriend but he is actually kind of …. sort of …. right? Chris points out that the woman would have died even if the EMTs had tried to save her but they had no way of knowing that at the time. Essentially, they decided to save their friend Palermo while ignoring someone else who was seriously injured.

This really gets to one of the major problems I have with Pacific Blue. The show just assumes that we’re going to be on the side of the bike patrol no matter what, despite the fact that they often come across as being a bunch of jerks. That’s certainly the case here. When Palermo returns to the office, everyone starts applauding and cheering for him, despite the fact that the dead woman’s boyfriend happens to be standing just a few feet away.

This episode features scenes of the members of the bike patrol being interviewed by a therapist after the explosion. Palermo says that, when he was dead, he didn’t see a bright light or feel any sort of inner peace. He didn’t see his loved ones waiting for him. It’s like even the show is admitting that Palermo is going to go to Hell for creating the bike patrol.

As for the rest of the episode, Chris and Victor investigated the claims of an environmentalist whack job (Michael Houston King) who said that a big evil businessman (Larry Wilcox, of CHiPs fame) was polluting the beach. It turned out the environmentalist was telling the truth. Meanwhile, shaken by the death of the woman and the resulting lawsuit, Alexa resigned from the bike patrol. It would have been touching if Alexa had actually been in more than one episode. Still, each member of the bike patrol popped a wheelie in honor of Alexa. It was dumb. Get those bicycles off the beach!

Stupid episode, this week.