Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 6.9 “Return To Death’s Door”

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, a future star makes an appearance and Bruce gets a chance to prove himself.

Episode 6.9 “Return To Death’s Door”

(Dir by Winrich Kolbe, originally aired on December 12th, 1982)

Teenage Chris (Lee Montgomery) is risking his life in dangerous street races! Can Ponch, who knew Chris’s older brother and who was there the day that Chris’s brother was killed in a street race, get through to Chris? Sure, he can. He’s Ponch. He can do anything.

This episode of CHiPs felt very familiar. This is not the first time that the show featured Ponch having flashbacks to his youth as a juvenile delinquent. Of course, Estrada plays himself in the flashbacks and, by the time the sixth season rolled around, he was a little bit old to be convincing as a teenager. But no matter! What’s important is that Ponch took part in one last race to convince Chris to change his life around. That’s the power of Ponch! (And fear not. Ponch appears to have gotten over the death of his fiancée in record time.)

While Ponch was saving lives and changing outlooks, two honeymooners from the South were stealing cars and having a fun time seeing the sights. Honey Jean was played by Kathy Shower while her new husband, Billy Joe, was played by an actor named Bryan Cranston.

That’s right. Bryan Cranston!

This episode proves that everyone had to start somewhere. Today, Bryan Cranston is best-known for playing Walter White on Breaking Bad and the father on Malcolm in the Middle. (To be honest, I think Malcolm in the Middle is one of those shows that people claim to like more than they actually do.) In 1982, he was just a young actor playing a down-home car thief on CHiPs and speaking with a really broad country accent.

Interestingly, it’s Bruce Nelson who arrests Billy Joe and Honey Jean. Between Ponch ending the street races and Bruce making arrests, Bobby Nelson really didn’t get to do much in this episode. Tom Reilly may have been listed second in the credits but this episode treated him like a bystander. From what I’ve read, Reilly and Estrada got along even worse than Estrada and Wilcox. When Reilly got arrested for driving while intoxicated, it led to the real Highway Patrol threatening to pull their sponsorship and, if CHiPs had come back for a seventh season, it’s easy to imagine that Reilly would have been gone and Bruce Penhall would have been Ponch’s new partner. That actually might have worked because Penhall is a far more believable cop than the somewhat spacey Reilly.

In fact, Bruce gets to do a lot of good things in this episode. He also rescues a dog that had gotten loose on the highway and brings it to the station. Harlan adopts it and Getraer spends this episode sneezing. Eventually, the dog’s owner picks up the dog. Don’t worry, though. Bruce shows up with yet another dog and this one is even cuter than the first!

The dogs were cute and I enjoyed saying, “Wait a minute! Is that Bryan Cranston!?” For a sixth-season episode of CHiPs, that counts as success.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 7.9 “Fantasy Island Girl/Saturday’s Child”

Posted on September 9, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984. Unfortunately, the show has been removed from most streaming sites. Fortunately, I’ve got nearly every episode on my DVR.

This week, we have two fantasies that seem very familiar.

Episode 7.9 “Fantasy Island Girl/Saturday’s Child”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on December 10th, 1983)

Actress Marion Sommers (Stella Stevens) comes to the Island. Lawrence is a huge fan and can’t imagine what fantasy she could possibly have. Roarke explains that Marion wants to be reunited with her children. The twist is that her children don’t know that Marion is their mother. They think that their mother died and that they were adopted by Fran Woods (Diane Baker).

Marion is told that, because of the way she phrased her fantasy, she’ll get to meet her children on the island but she can’t tell them that she’s their mother. The children have spent the last few years with Ms. Woods as their mother. Marion agrees but she doesn’t keep her word and, by the end of her fantasy, she’s told both Bill (David Kaufman) and Ellie (Amy Linker) that she is their mother and that she wants them to come with her. Bill and Ellie reject her, saying that Ms. Woods will always be their mother. However, they would like it if Marion would be their friend.

Lawrence asks Marion to give him her autograph so he can give it to his niece. Then, after Marion leaves, Lawrence tells Roarke that he doesn’t have a niece….

This fantasy seemed awfully familiar. I don’t really have the time to go back and reread every Fantasy Island review that I’ve written but I’m pretty sure that this show has already gone to the “I’m a famous actress who wants to meet the children that I gave up” well more than a few times. In this case, it just felt like everyone was going through the motions.

As for the other fantasy, it involved the Fantasy Island Girl Beauty Pageant and, again, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen several versions of this pageant fantasy in the past. This time, it’s the pageant’s producer, Nick Gleason (Paul Burke), who has a fantasy. It seems that Nick has a reputation for fixing his pageants so his fantasy is to run a totally “clean” and honest pageant. It seems like he could have just done that on his own without even having to go to Fantasy Island. Since when have fantasies become about doing things that most people would just do naturally?

Nick’s daughter, Tina (Audrey Landers), enters the pageant and suddenly, Nick finds himself tempted to fix the pageant for her. When Roarke explains this to Tina, Tina withdraws from the pageant and Nick doesn’t fix the pageant. Nick is so happy that he finally put on a honest pageant but the only reason he didn’t fix the pageant was because Tina dropped out. If she hadn’t dropped out, he totally would have rigged it. So, I’m not really sure that Nick has anything to brag about. It’s kind of like bragging about not robbing a bank because it was closed on Sunday.

Lawrence is appointed as one of the judges for the beauty pageant. You know who really enjoyed beauty pageants? Tattoo. This would have been a fun fantasy for Tattoo. Instead, we just get Lawrence looking all huffy and puffy.

The trip to the Island was no fantasy.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 3.3 “Valley Go Home!”

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Ponch and Jon go to the beach!

Episode 3.3 “Valley Go Home!”

(Dir by Barry Crane, originally aired September 29th, 1979)

There’s been a string of thefts at the beach. Someone is stealing radios out of cars and then making a fast getaway. Somehow, this thief is able to blend in so well with everyone else that no one even notices him breaking into the cars until it’s too late. Jon and Ponch have been assigned to patrol the beach and keep the radios safe.

Of course, Jon and Ponch don’t just worry about radio thieves. When two women lose control of their car while towing a sailboat, Jon and Ponch are there to not only help them stop the car but also to ask them out on a windsurfing date. (Every episodes of CHiPs found a way to promote the so-called “California lifestyle.” It was probably one of the most effective tourism commercials ever filmed. I don’t even swim and this episode still made me want to go wind surfing.) They also get involved in the rivalry between three local white surfers and a group of Latino teenagers from the Valley. Both groups drive Chevy vans with ornate decals. One gets the feeling that the blonde surfers call their van the “Second Base Mobile.”

This is an episode of CHiPs that takes place at the beach so you’ve probably already guessed that it doesn’t take long for Ponch to find an excuse to put on a speedo. Baker and Ponch not only work together but they also hang out together. On the show, they’re best friends. (Behind-the-scene, Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada were not quite so close.) They spend a lot of time at the beach, eating ice cream. Baker wears modest swim trunks. Ponch walks around in his speedo and shows off his dazzling smile. One gets the feeling that, if this episode had been made in 1999 instead of 1979, Ponch would have been handing out AOL CDs to everyone he met and saying, “When you sign up, I get fifteen free minutes to talk to you.”

Ponch has a theory that the radio thief is disguising himself as someone who works at the beach. (Needless to say, Ponch comes up with the theory while Baker agrees because, on CHiPs, everything was much pretty much about Ponch.) Ponch suspects that the thief might be the local ice cream man. Ponch and Baker eat a lot of ice cream in this episode. Eventually, it turns out to be the local trash collector. The ice cream man is off the hook!

As far as the surfers and the Valley kids are concerned, it all works out. Of course, it works out in the most dangerous way possible, with the surfers and the Valley kids chasing each other in their vans and both crashing their vehicles. After 48 hours in jail, all of them are back on the beach. The surfers agree to teach the Valley kids how to handle a board. The Valley kids agree to take the surfers to Mexico. Ponch and Jon have a good laugh before going windsurfing. How can you not love California?

This was a pretty silly episode but the beach scenery was nice. It’s hard for me to not enjoy a show that features not one but two vans. All hail the 70s!