Tag Archives: Hap Lawrence

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.20 “Hot Winds”

Posted on 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, the world goes mad!

Episode 2.20 “Hot Winds”

(Dir by Parker Stevenson, originally aired on May 3rd, 1997)

A hot wind is blowing down from the hills and into Los Angeles.

People are going crazy in the streets.  Strangers are attacking each other for no reason.  Riots are breaking out.  The world seems like it’s gone off its axis and no one knows how to react.  Is the heat driving everyone mad or is it something else?  Diamont Teague tells Mitch and Ryan that he suspects that something supernatural is happening.  Mitch, as usual, argues that people in Los Angeles have always been crazy.  Not like this! Diamont says.

Is Diamont correct?  As he, Mitch, and Ryan leave the office, they run into an aggravated man who proceeds to beat on a brick wall until his hands are covered in blood.  Mitch assumes that the man must be on drugs.  Diamont says that they need to drive out to the desert so that they can find the source of the wind.  Mitch is skeptical until he starts seeing a ghostly image of a robed man carrying a scythe.

It’s a long trip out to the desert, made even longer by the rioting and the madness all around.  Mitch stops long enough to keep a woman from throwing her baby over a ledge.  But, as soon as Mitch grabs away her baby, the woman jumps anyway.  It’s quite a fall and somehow, the woman survives.  Luckily, Mitch is there to render CPR while the crazed crowd watches.  The world may going mad but Mitch is still a lifeguard, dammit.

Driving through the desert, Ryan wonders why she, Mitch, and Diamont aren’t going crazy like everyone else.  It’s a good question.  Seriously, last week was a lot of fun because it gave us a chance to watch the Hoff got possessed by a demon.  It’s hard not to regret that he didn’t get a chance to go crazy in this episode.

In the desert, the robed man with the scythe dances.  The scythe apparently is what sends down the hot air.  If Mitch can get the scythe away from the man, the violence can stop.  Who is the man?  Apparently, he’s a devil worshipper.  Ryan suspects that there might be hundreds of similar people out there.  Maybe they’re the ones who are responsible for all the madness in the world!  Has Ryan already forgotten that, a few episodes ago, it was established that the Knights Templar secretly controlled the world?

This episode was actually not bad.  The scenes of people suddenly going mad were effective and the man in the desert was actually a pretty ominous image.  Even the show’s overreliance on Dutch angles felt effective for once, drawing the audience into a world that was permanently off-balance.  I enjoyed this episode and I’ll remember it the next time I see a stranger yelling on a street corner.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 2.6 “Trick or Treat”

Posted on 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 Freevee!

It’s a Halloween episode!

Episode 2.6 “Trick or Treat”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on October 21st, 1978)

It’s Halloween in Los Angeles!  That means that people will be asking for treats and playing tricks and getting into all sorts of trouble.  But, for the California Highway Patrol, it’s just another day and night of trying to keep everyone safe.

Ponch’s day gets off to a bad start when he and Baker chase a van onto a movie lot.  The van’s driver, it turns out, was speeding because he was transporting thirteen black cats to a film set.  When Ponch and Baker finally pull over the van, the cats get loose and all 13 of them march past Ponch.  Later, at headquarters, Ponch is forced by a narrow hallway to walk under a ladder.  *GASP*  Ponch insists that he’s not superstitious but he also won’t stop talking about his encounter with the black cats.

Ponch is in for some bad luck and it shows up in the form of an 8 year-old named Tommy who squirts Ponch with perfume while Ponch is patrolling the neighborhood.  Ponch tells Tommy that playing tricks like that could lead to him getting arrested and hauled off to jail.  Tommy panics and runs away from home.  Guess who gets the blame for that?

That’s not all that’s going on this Halloween night.  (Since this episode aired in 1978, it’s also the night that He came home.)  Eddie (Bobby Van) and his girlfriend, Susan (Elaine Joyce), are holding up convenience stores.  (Susan distracts the cashiers by wearing a translucent ghost costume.)  An older woman (Fran Ryan) is stealing bags of candy from young trick-or-treaters.  Paula (Barbara Leigh) and Karen (Jenny Sherman) are stealing speed limit signs as part of a superfun scavenger hunt.  And Sgt. Getraer is determined to figure out the identity of the Hobgoblin, a member of the highway patrol who reads macabre poetry over the police radio throughout the night.

Fear not, though …. everything works out in the end.  Tommy is not only found hiding out in an abandoned house but Ponch is the one who finds and rescues him.  Eddie and Susan get chased and arrested after trying to pull one robbery too many.  (Their van crashes as a result of two teenagers throwing eggs on the windshield.  Some tricks are good, apparently.)  The old woman turns out to be a distraught suburbanite who lost her engagement ring and who thinks that she may have tossed it in some kid’s trick-or-treat bag.  (Fortunately, the ring is found in her candy bowl and no one presses charges.)  Paula and Karen lose the scavenger hunt but they win future dates with Ponch and Baker.  And Getraer figures out that Artie Grossman is the Hobgoblin.  In the end, everyone smiles and laugh and that’s the important thing.

For a Halloween episode, Trick or Treat was rather low-key but that’s okay.  I liked the day-in-the-life approach that the episode took and it was fun to see that even the members of the fearsome highway patrol were capable of enjoying the holiday.  We should have as good a Halloween as Ponch and Baker.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 1.13 “Another Song For Christmas”

Posted on 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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

It’s time for a Christmas episode!

Episode 1.13 “Another Song For Christmas”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on December 19th, 1984)

Oh, that Fast Eddie!

Played by the familiar character actor Geoffrey Lewis, Fast Eddie is a wealthy used car salesman.  He knows how to turn on the charm.  He knows how to close the sale.  Fast Eddie may have grown up poor but now he’s rich and he’s determined to not sacrifice one cent.  It’s the day before Christmas but Fast Eddie has no problem refusing to give money to charity.  He has no problem ripping off an elderly couple looking for an affordable car.  He has no problem firing Dave Ratchett (Jeff Doucette) when Dave refuses to roll back a car’s mileage.  Fast Eddie doesn’t care that Dave’s son is sick and Fast Eddie certainly doesn’t care that it’s Christmas Eve.  He even orders his butler (Ivor Barry) to work on Christmas Day.

Jonathan and Mark stop by Fast Eddie’s car lot but they don’t buy a car.  They just observe Fast Eddie at work.  After they leave, Mark watches as Jonathan has a brief conversation with Santa Claus (Don Beddoe).  It turns out that, like Fast Eddie, Mark doesn’t really have the Christmas spirit.  Jonathan suggests that Mark should re-read A Christmas Carol.  Mark starts to read it but falls asleep after the first page.

Meanwhile, at his mansion, Fast Eddie also falls asleep but is soon awakened by Jonathan who takes him to the past and shows Eddie how his poor childhood led him to grow up to become overly obsessed with money.  Mark then appears and shows Eddie what’s happening in the present.  Eddie’s lawyers are trying to shut down a charity so that Eddie can buy their headquarters.  Poor Dave Ratchett is having to explain to his family that he lost his job.  Eddie is moved by the sight of Dave’s wheelchair-bound son, who will die unless he gets the operation that Dave will now never be able to afford.  Finally, Jonathan takes him to the future and shows Eddie that no one will visit his grave after he dies.

Eddie wakes up infused with the spirit of Christmas and soon, he’s running around town and giving people, including Dave, all of his money and other gifts.  Interestingly enough, Mark also wakes up and he tells Jonathan that he had a dream in which he was the Ghost of Christmas Present.  Just like Eddie, Mark wakes up with a new appreciation for the Christmas holidays.

I’ve lost track of how many different version of A Christmas Carol that I’ve seen.  The idea of turning Scrooge into a used car salesman is an interesting one and I liked the fact that Eddie and Mark apparently both had the same dream.  This may be the only time in which one of the “ghosts” learned a lesson as well as Scrooge.  That said, Geoffrey Lewis — who was good in so many different films — goes a bit overboard as Fast Eddie.  He’s so desperate and twitchy that it’s easy to believe him as a used car salesman but not as a successful one.

Next week, Jonathan and Mark search for a missing friend.