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, there’s a big cat on the loose!
Episode 5.14 “Tiger In The Streets”
(Dir by Charles Bail, originally aired on January 10th, 1982)
Ponch and Baker wonder why someone is digging deep holes in the Los Angeles hills and filling them with raw meat. Could someone by trying to capture a tiger that’s recently gotten loose from a wildlife park? Yes, that’s exactly what’s happening! The owner of the park wants to keep the cops from finding out but, when it turns out that the tiger is a mother and is missing her cubs, only the highway patrol can help Animal Control capture her. Baker likes Stephanie, the Animal Control officer. This is one of the rare episodes where Baker actually gets to have a romance while Ponch stands around and looks awkwardly out-of-place.
As for Ponch, he is more concerned with an ex-con who is at the center of a series of violent confrontations involving various car clubs. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this plot before. CHiPs has been repeating itself a lot during the fifth season. That said, the car chases led to a slow motion wreck and a scene of bouncing hydraulics. I’ve never been in one of those bouncing cars before. It seems like you would get ill riding in one of those.
Finally, Grossie wants to be a comedian. Harlan is a friend of legendary funny man Slappy White. Harlan gives Grossie a bunch of Slappy’s jokes about how black people are different from white people. Needless to say, the jokes don’t go over that well when they’re told be a white guy in a policeman’s uniform.
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, Ponch worries that he’s lost his touch.
Episode 5.13 “Breaking Point”
(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on January 3rd, 1982)
While pursuing a car thief, Ponch loses control of his motorcycle and crashes through the glass door of a jewelry store. He smashes into a display case and finds himself trapped underneath a shelf of jagged glass. One wrong move and he could lose his head!
Now, Baker and the other cops are able to rescue Ponch and move the display case. Still, the experience leaves Ponch so shaken that he starts to doubt himself. He starts to find excuses to not go out on his bike. He does paperwork back at headquarters. He claims that his bike has a vibration. The other members of the Highway Patrol start to whisper that Ponch is not pulling his weight. Getraer tells Ponch to take some vacation time and to get his head together.
Ponch’s sister, Patti (Maria O’Brien), is visiting. She’s a nurse but, like Ponch, she’s having doubts about her job. She would rather be a model, despite not being particularly attractive. Ponch isn’t happy about Patti giving up her career but he does arrange for Patti to spend some time with Jon’s model girlfriend, Christy (Mary Angela Young). While Patti and Christy are chatting, a man has a heart stroke and Patti saves his life. Patti realizes that her job is important and this leads to Ponch deciding that his job is important too.
I’m going to guess that this was designed to be Erik Estrada’s Emmy episode. Estrada does his best to capture Ponch’s uncertainty and his conflicted emotions but the thing with Erik Estrada is that you look at him and you just can’t believe he’s ever had a moment of self-doubt in his entire life. By the end of the episode, Ponch is back on his bike and flashing his big smile and there was never any doubt that he would be.
Even with Estrada hamming it up for the Emmy judges, this episode found room for two slo mo of doom accidents. How anyone could have survived the second accident, I have no idea. And yet, it appears that there weren’t any serious injuries. I guess we should be thankful for that!
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 …. hey, what is this!?
Episode 5.12 “Mitchell & Woods”
(Dir by Bernard L. Kowalski, originally aired on December 18th, 1981)
When an old high school friend of Michell’s is murdered, Mitchell and Woods uncover a male prostitution ring. Along with bringing the guilty to justice, they also help Chickee (Pamela Susan Shoop) find the courage to leave her abusive relationship….
No, there’s not much motorcycle action. No, there’s no slow motion car crashes. Yes, this is an episode of CHiPs. Well, kind of.
It’s actually a backdoor pilot for a show about Mitchell and Woods. Ponch and Baker show up at the start of the show to wish Mitchell and Woods luck. Ponch and Baker return halfway through the show so that Ponch can tell Mitchell and Woods about an informant named Avrom (Tony Burton). And, finally, Ponch and Baker return at the end of the episode and give our erstwhile detectives a parking ticket.
Backdoor pilots at the worst! You’re all prepared to spend 40 minutes with people you know and suddenly, a bunch of new folks show up and start demanding your attention. It doesn’t help that Mitchell & Woods is a terrible pilot and I’m not really surprised that it didn’t become an actual series. Can Mitchell and Woods prove that woman can be good detectives? Will they ever impress their new boss (Paul Gale)? I don’t really know the characters so I don’t care.
I swear, they could have at least brought back Caitlyn Jenner for this episode.
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, we say goodbye to a member of the highway patrol. Excuse while I wipe the tears away from my myopic eyes.
Episode 5.11 “Concours d’Elegance”
(Dir by John Patterson, originally aired on December 13th, 1981)
This is it. This the final episode to feature the character of Steve McLeish.
Played by a pre-transition Caitlyn Jenner, Steve was introduced as a replacement for Ponch while Erik Estrada was recovering from a stunt gone wrong. Once Ponch rejoined the series, there really wasn’t much for Steve to do but he still stuck around for a few episodes. He only appears for a few minutes in this episode. He arrests some joyriding teens who are constantly trying to get older people to buy them liquor. Maybe they should have asked Steve. He always seemed like was eager to please.
(I should mention that both of the “teens” appear to be in their 30s.)
I’m going to miss Steve, largely because Jenner’s bland performance was so bad that it actually became rather fascinating to watch. In this episode, he continues to deliver his lines with a puppy-dog earnestness that can’t disguise his total inability to show any emotion beyond wide-eyed wonderment.
As for this episode, it featured Baker and Ponch getting involved with a rich family. While matriarch Hannah Chadway (Claudette Nevins) tries to see Baker up with her niece, sleazy Anthony Chadway (Gary Graham) is illegally selling cars and using the family’s charity as a front. At one point, Hannah offers Baker a private security job. Baker turns her down. Couldn’t he have at least put in a word for his friend Steve? Ponch and Baker eventually take it upon themselves to tell Hannah that she needs to get her spoiled family under control. Hannah realizes they’re right. Personally, I would have told Ponch and Baker that it was really none of their business but that’s just me.
This episode feature two slow motion crashes, both of which are so severe that everyone involved should have been killed. (One accidents features not one but two cars flying through a trailer as it explodes.) Oddly, no one is seriously injured. I’m getting the feeling that CHiPs may not have always been a realistic show.
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, Ponch is back!
Episode 5.10 “Fast Money”
(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on December 5th, 1981)
This is getting weird.
After being either absent or only appearing in one or two scenes over the past few episodes, Ponch returns this week. He’s once again on active duty, patrolling the California highways with Baker. As much as I notice and joke about the obvious disdain that Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox held for each other, they do make a surprisingly good team. They just seem to belong together. If I’ve learned anything over the past few weeks, it’s that Larry Wilcox needed Estrada’s flamboyance and that Erik Estrada needed Wilcox’s cool professionalism. They balanced each other out.
With Ponch (and Estrada) back, there’s really no reason for Steve McLeish to stick around. And yet, during this episode — there he was!
He didn’t really have anything to do. Ponch and Baker were after some van-driving engineers who were using a hydraulic lift to hijack other cars. When they figured out which company had developed the hydraulics being used in the crime wave, Steve called the company’s chairman. (Steve says the chairman of the board is an old friend and no one acts surprise. I’m guessing maybe that was an inside joke or some sort of reference to the Olympics.) Later, Steve showed them a mansion that was fixing up so he could flip it. The scenes felt awkward and not just because of the Caitlyn Jenner’s total lack of acting ability. There really wasn’t any reason for them to be in the episode. There was no reason for Steve to be around. Ponch and Baker should have been out there, taking down those nerdy engineers and warning people about the dangers of technology. Instead, they were having to make time to hang out with Steve.
As I watched this episode, it occurred to me that maybe Caitlyn Jenner just refused to go home. Maybe Jenner showed up on set and wouldn’t leave until the writers wrote Steve a few scenes. That theory is really the only one that makes sense.
Anyway, this episode had a few good car crashes. The hydraulic lift was incredibly silly and so was Harlan’s suggestion that they could catch the thieves by tricking them into trying to lift a car that was weighted down with rocks. There was also a big subplot that was centered around Ponch trying to get the shower fixed in his apartment. I always like it whenever the show finds an excuse to show us either Ponch or Jon’s apartment. The wood paneling and the shag carpeting amuses me. They should have called this show Disco Cops.
According to the imdb, next week will be Jenner’s final episode. So, we’ll see how the saga of Steve McLeish comes to an end. I think he’s going to get arrested for taking payoffs from the mob. We’ll see if I’m right!
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 is just a mess.
Episode 5.9 “Finders Keepers”
(Dir by John Peyser, originally aired on November 29th, 1981)
Oh, it’s a Steve McLeish episode!
These episodes are fun because they were so obviously written and re-written to try to cover up the fact that Caitlyn Jenner was a terrible actor. In this episode, we learn that Steve is into rare flowers and that he drives a pretty snazzy convertible. And yet, despite these character details, Steve still doesn’t really have a personality beyond being kind of twitchy and always hesitating before delivering his lines. Jenner seemed to be made out of charisma anti-matter and it’s bizarre to see a public figure with absolutely zero screen presence.
This episode is a mess. Two teens steal a car and come into possession of some stolen money. Steve searches for the stolen car. An eccentric bounty hunter (Noble Willingham) drives from Texas to California in a pink Cadillac and gets in everyone’s way as he chases a fugitive. Oscar nominee Amy Madigan appears as a country singer who would really like to get it on with Baker but Baker always ends up running late. Ponch makes three brief appearances in this episode. It’s explained that he’s preparing to testify in a huge trial and that’s why Baker and Steve are temporary partners. None of the storylines really feel complete or connected. One gets the feeling that three different scripts were just randomly crammed together.
This episode had two effective car crashes and it was somewhat amusing to watch as Baker always showed up just a minute or two after Amy Madigan stopped singing. That said, this episode didn’t add up to much. The only thing that really made it watchable was Jenner’s bizarre performance.
There’s a part of me that kind of hopes that Ponch never comes back! Of course, if that happened, it would no longer be….
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!
Who will be Jon’s partner this week? Read on to find out!
Episode 5.7 “Bomb Run”
(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on November 15th, 1981)
I was really hoping that this would be another episode with Caitlyn Jenner playing Steve but no, Ponch was back. (Erik Estrada is the better actor of the two but Jenner’s performance is often so bizarre in its utter blandness that it becomes fascinating to watch.) This episode opened with Baker observing as Ponch piloted a small airplane. CHiPs was all about the California lifestyle and apparently, a big part of that lifestyle was being able to take off in a small private plane whenever you felt like it. Ponch thinks that he’s ready for a solo flight but Baker tells him that he still needs to work on his landing skills. Sorry, Ponch, you’re not a Kennedy.
The highway patrol is preparing for the big air show. Officer Baricza (Brodie Greer) is surprised when he sees his ex-girlfriend, Terri (Kristin Griffith), hanging out around an airplane and preparing to take part in the show despite the fact that she has always been scared of flying. What Baricza does not know is that Terri and her father (Ed King) have planned a big robbery to take place during the air show. While Terri drops bombs from the airplane, the explosions will cover the sound of two safecrackers (played by Brion James and Taylor Lacher) blowing open a safe and stealing a bunch of bearer bonds. However, things get complicated when the safecrackers illegally park their car (which leads to a helicopter towing it off, carrying it through the sky). Things get even more complicated when Terri’s father has a heart attack when they’re in the air and Baker and Ponch have to perform a mid-air rescue.
So, how does Baricza react to his ex-girlfriend being a criminal? We never find out. Ponch roughly lands Terri’s plane and then show pretty much ends. As a result, we don’t know what happens to Terri and her father. We don’t know if the police succeeded in catching the safecrackers. We don’t even know if Terri’s father merely passed out or if he actually died up there. Instead, Getraer makes a joke about Ponch’s terrible landing skills and we get the familiar CHiPs freeze frame.
This episode featured a lot of airshow stock footage and it was pretty obvious that the plot was secondary to showing off all of the planes doing fancy maneuvers in the sky. It felt a bit lazy on the part of the show’s producers but I also imagine that this episode was also fairly cheap to produce. There’s more stock footage than plot. As a result, the ending is a bit unsatisfying. Is Baricza upset about Terri being a criminal? Who knows? He certainly does seem to be amused by Ponch’s landing though!
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 Ponch and Jon’s anniverary!
Episode 5.3 “Moonlight”
(Dir by Earl Bellamy, originally aired on October 18th, 1981)
A highway accident leads to a bunch of cars flying through the air in slow motion!
Ponch works off-duty as a security guard for an action film. Ponch being Ponch, he ends up flirting with the two female stars. He also ends up accidentally flirting with their stunt doubles, both of whom turn out to be men wearing blonde wigs. Oh, Ponch!
Someone is dumping toxic waste and ruining the beautiful California country side. Ponch and Jon turn to their old friend, trucker Robbie Davis (Katherine Cannon), for help. However, it turns out that the waste is being transported and dumped by someone close to Robbie!
There’s a lot going on in this episode but the majority of the screentime is taken up with Getraer, Grossman, Baricza, Turner, and Bonnie thinking about how to celebrate Ponch and Jon’s 4th anniversary as partners. At one point, Getraer does point out that it’s unusual for an entire department to celebrate the anniversary of a partnership. I’m glad that someone said that because, seriously, don’t these people have a job to do? I mean, aren’t they supposed to be out there, issuing tickets and preventing crashes like the one that opened this episode? You’re not getting paid to be party planners, people!
Knowing just how much Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada disliked each other when the cameras weren’t rolling, it’s hard not to feel as if there’s a bit of wish-fulfillment going on with the anniversary storyline. Watching everyone talk about how Jon and Ponch are the perfect team, one gets the feeling that the show itself is telling its stars, “Can you two just get along? Everyone loves you two together!”
Reportedly, by the time the fifth season rolled around, Wilcox was frustrated with always having to play second fiddle to Estrada. Having binged the show, I can understand the source of his frustration. During the first two seasons, Wilcox and Estrada were given roughly the same amount of screen time in each episode. In fact, Estrada often provided the comic relief while Wilcox did the serious police work. But, as the series progressed, the balance changed and it soon became The Ponch Show. If there was a beautiful guest star, her character would fall for Ponch. If there was a rescue to be conducted, Ponch would be the one who pulled it off. When it came time to do something exciting to show off the California lifestyle, one can b sure that Ponch would be the one who got to do it. Baker got pushed to the side. This episode, however, allows Baker to rescue someone while Ponch watches from the background. “See, Larry?” the show seems to be saying, “We let you do things!”
As for the episode itself, it’s okay. There’s enough stunts and car accidents to keep the viewers happy. That said, the toxic dump storyline plays out way too slowly. At one point, Baricza finds a bunch of barrels off the side of the road and he looks like he’s about to start crying. It’s an odd moment.
The episode ends with Baker and Ponch happy. It wouldn’t last. This would be Larry Wilcox’s final season as a member of the Highway Patrol.
About halfway through 1974’s Airport 1975, Sid Caesar has one of the greatest lines in film history.
“The stewardess is flying the plane?”
Hell yeah, she is! After a collision with another plane takes out the crew of a Broening 747, it’s up to head flight attendant Nancy (Karen Black) to keep the plane from crashing until another pilot can somehow be lowered into the cockpit of the stricken airliner. Nancy’s never flown an airplane before but she is dating Al Murdock (Charlton Heston), who may be scared of commitment but who is still described as being one of the greatest pilots who has ever lived. None other than Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) says that no one knows more about flying than Al Murdock.
George Kennedy is the only cast member to return from the original Airport. When we previously met Patroni, he was the cigar-chewing chief mechanic for Trans World Airlines. In Airport 1975, he’s suddenly an executive with Columbia Airlines. His wife (Susan Clark) and his son (Brian Morrison) are also on the plane. Joe Patroni and Al Murdock are determined to bring that plane safely to the ground in Salt Lake City and if that means dropping a pilot into the cockpit from a helicopter, that’s what they’ll do. It’s all a question of whether or not Nancy can keep that plane from crashing while they round up a helicopter and a pilot.
Airport 1975 is so famous for being the movie where the stewardess is flying the plane that it’s often overlooked that it’s also the film where Linda Blair plays a young girl in need of a kidney transplant. When Sister Ruth (Helen Reddy) sees that the girl has a guitar with her, Ruth sings a folk song that has everyone on the airplane smiling. (If I was on a plane and someone started playing folk music, I’d probably jump out. That may seem extreme but seriously, you don’t want to test me on how much I dislike the folk sound.) This scene was, of course, parodied in Airplane! In fact, it’s pretty much impossible to watch Airport 1975 without thinking about Airplane!
It’s also overlooked that Gloria Swanson is one of the many stars to appear in this film but Swanson is the only one playing herself. Gloria Swanson starts as Gloria Swanson and I assume that this 1974 film was set in 1975 in order to generate some suspense as to whether or not Swanson was going to survive the crash. Swanson talks about how, in 1919, Cecil B. DeMille flew her over California. She does not talk about Joseph Kennedy or Sunset Boulevard and that’s a shame. As I watched Airport 1975, I found myself thinking about how different the film would have been if Gloria Swanson had been the one who had to pilot the plane instead of Karen Black.
“Gloria Swanson is piloting the plane?”
As entertaining as that would have been, it would have meant missing out on Karen Black’s intense performance as Nancy. At times, Nancy seems to be so annoyed with the situation that one gets the feeling that she’s considering intentionally crashing the plane into one of Utah’s mountains. At other times, she seems to be at a strange sort of peace with whatever happens. There’s a scene where she attempts to clear some of the clutter in the cockpit and an instrument panel falls on her head and it’s such a powerful moment because I know the exact same thing would have happened to me in that situation. There’s another moment where I’m pretty sure she accidentally kills the first pilot who attempts to drop into the cockpit and again, it’s a mistake that anyone could have made. The film doesn’t call her out on it because the film understand that none of us are perfect, except for Charlton Heston.
Speaking of which, Karen Black’s emotional performance contrasts nicely with the performance of Charlton Heston. This is perhaps the most Hestonesque performance that Charlton Heston ever gave. Al Murdock is confident, he doesn’t suffer fools, and he’s condescending as Hell. Every time he calls Nancy “honey,” you’ll want to cringe. And yet, it’s hard not to appreciate someone who can be so confident while wearing a tight yellow turtleneck. Charlton Heston watches as the first pilot to attempt to enter the cockpit plunges to his death and immediately declares that it’s his turn to try. “Get me in that monkey suit!” he snaps and it’s such a Heston moment that you have to love it.
There’s a ton of people in this movie. Norman Fell, Jerry Stiller, and Conrad Janis play three rowdy drunks. Erik Estrada, Efrem Zimbalist, and Roy Thinnes are the unfortunate members of the flight crew. Dana Andrews has a heart attack while piloting a small private plane. Myrna Loy appears not as herself but as Mrs. Delvaney, who spends almost the entire flight drinking. Christopher Norris plays Bette, who says that she may look like a teenager but she prefers to be called “Ms. Teenager” and that she’s trained in Kung Fu. Beverly Garland played Dana Andrews’s wife. Larry Storch is an obnoxious reporter. Character actor Alan Fudge plays Danton, the Salt Lake City controller who keeps Nancy calm until Charlton Heston can start snapping at people.
The first time that I watched Airport 1975, I was pretty dismissive of it but, over the years, I’ve rewatched it a few times and I have to admit that I’ve fallen in love with this wonderfully ridiculous film. There’s just so many odd details, like American Graffiti showing up as the plane’s in-flirt entertainment and Sid Caesar saying that he’s only on the flight because he has a small role in the movie and he finally wanted to see it. (It seems like it would have been cheaper to just go to a drive-in but whatever.) And there’s Karen Black, giving the performance of a lifetime and letting us all know that, in 1975, the stewardess flies the airplane!
Through the Shattered Lens 