Frank Arno – 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, Ponch falls in love.

Episode 6.8 “Head Over Heels”

(Dir by Richard Irving, originally aired on December 5th, 1982)

Ponch falls in love.

Well, of course he does.

Listen, it’s not like Bobby is going to be allowed to fall in love. Bruce isn’t going to fall in love. Grossman? He’s been on this show since the beginning and he’s still struggling to even get a date. Nope, if anyone on CHiPs was going to fall in love, it was going to be Ponch. Watching this episode and taking the last few seasons into account, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was specifically written into Erik Estrada’s contract.

We all know what we’re watching.

Ponch falls for Vanessa (Beverly Adams), a teacher who he meets while speaking at a Mothers Against Drunk Driving meeting. It’s a whirlwind romance. Sure, they have their problems. Vanessa isn’t sure that she can handle falling in love with a “street cop” who puts his life in danger every day. Ponch gets mad when he sees Vanessa talking to her ex (Dennis Holahan). But eventually, Vanessa realizes that Ponch will always be a cop and Ponch is informed that talking does not necessarily equal cheating. Ponch asks Vanessa to marry him. He gives her a “space puppy” that he buys from a kid on a street corner. (“He’s not really from space,” the kid says. Hey, kid, we saw Ponch battle a UFO a few weeks ago.) Everything is perfect….

And then, during a big picnic to celebrate the engagement, Vanessa gets run over by a drunk driver. Vanessa dies with Ponch holding her. It should have been a big dramatic and emotional moment and perhaps it would have been if the show had let the scene play out as opposed to dropping in a montage of flashbacks to scenes that we had just watched ten minutes ago. Perhaps if the episode had been scored to the unnerving silence that comes with most tragedies, it would have brought tears to my eyes in a way that the adult contemporary romantic ballad did not. We get the full Erik Estrada experience as Vanessa dies, with Erik trying so hard to force us to cry that the performance runs the risk of having the opposite effect. Ponch is distraught but Estrada still makes sure that the camera gets his good side.

I’ll say this. I appreciate that the show’s anti-drunk driving message. (Rumor has it that this episode was specifically made in an attempt to turn down the heat after Tom Reilly was arrested for driving under the influence and the real Highway Patrol threatened to pull their sponsorship as a result.) Imagine the episode’s impact if the victim had been someone we actually knew as opposed to a one-off character who was so obviously being set up to tragically die that she might as well have had “Doomed” stamped onto her forehead. As it is, Vanessa ends up feeling more like a plot device than an actual human.

That said, don’t drink and drive. It’s not worth it.

This week, CHiPs deals with the oil crisis!

Episode 3.4 “High Octane”

(Dir by John Florea, originally aired on October 6th, 1979)

Tonight’s episode of CHiPs is a real history lesson.

The episode was aired at a time when the U.S. was suffering from a shortage of gasoline. Conflict in Iran had led to both the Shah fleeing the country and Americans being taken hostage. Oil production fell, OPEC raised its prices, and people panicked and started to hoard gasoline. Many states instituted odd-even gas rationing, which meant that only people with an odd-numbered license plate could purchase gas on an odd-numbered day and only people with an even-numbered license plate could purchase gas on an even-numbered day. As so often happens when the government attempts to micromanage a crisis, this only made things worse as there were soon long lines at the pump and reports of fights breaking out between people at gas stations. Even with the rationing, many gas stations ran out of gasoline before they could serve every customer. If you didn’t arrive early enough, chances were that you would not be able to put gas in your car,

California was one of the many states to institute odd-even rationing and this episode of CHiPs is all about the battle over gasoline. Two crooks are siphoning gas from independent gas stations and then reselling it to other stations. (Their biggest customer is played by veteran screen tough guy, Aldo Ray.) Getraer is injured when he crashes his bike while chasing the two crooks, which makes this case personal for Ponch and Baker. Meanwhile, Ponch and Baker have to break up fights at the gas station, chase yet another guy who was caught siphoning gas from a car, and save yet another motorist who passes out from the fumes of all the gas cans that he had in the backset of his car. Ponch even starts to date Beth (Ellen Bry), because she works at a gas station and can tell him the best time to show up to make sure that he and Baker are able to fill up their bikes. Meanwhile, at headquarters, Harlan is giving lessons on the best way to keep unused fuel from evaporating.

Of course, it wouldn’t be CHiPs if there wasn’t also a light-hearted sports angle. This week, everyone’s into roller hockey. Ponch serves as the referee for the CHP-sponsored kids’ roller hockey game and everyone agrees that he’s the best referee that they’ve ever seen. And why not? He’s Ponch and, by the time the third season rolled around, CHiPs was definitely The Ponch Show. Later, the adult officer play roller hockey as well. It’s the show’s way of saying, “California’s still fun, even with the gas rationing!”

I enjoyed this episode because I’m a history nerd and it was interesting to see how the show dealt with the 1979 oil crisis while it was occurring. It’s interesting that this episode was a bit cynical about rationing, as CHiPs was usually a show that portrayed the government and its policies as positively as possible. In 1979, even the audiences of CHiPs was fed up with having to pay — let me check my notes to make sure I have this right — nearly a dollar a gallon for gas.

Really? Just 90 cents for a gallon gas? Get me a time machine. I’m going to 1979!