Ike Eisenmann | 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 Freevee!

This week’s episode is all about mistakes.

Episode 2.12 “High Explosive”

(Dir by Barry Crane, aired on December 9th, 1978)

This week’s episode features Jon Baker competing in a rodeo. That’s not really a surprise. Since the show began, it’s been established that Baker is a cowboy at heart and this episode is certainly not the first time that he’s mentioned growing up on a ranch in Wyoming. (Larry Wilcox, himself, grew up in Wyoming and had some real-life rodeo experience.) What is interesting is to listen to how the various actors pronounce the word rodeo.

Most of them, to their credit, pronounce it correctly. A rodeo — that is, an event involving cowboys, steers, clowns, and all the rest — is pronounced “road-ee-oh.” That’s how Larry Wilcox, Robert Pine, and the majority of the cast pronounce it. Erik Estrada and Paul Linke, however, both pronounce it “Roe-Day-Oh,” as in the famous street in Beverly Hills. Just a tip to any of our readers up north: Down here in the southwest, we pronounce it with a “dee” and not a “day.”

As for the rest of the episode, it’s all about mistakes. For instance, ambulance driver Brad Holmes (Steve Oliver) loses his job after he gets arrested for reckless driving. Desperate for money and not wanting to tell his wife that he lost his job, he agrees to transport a huge amount of old and unstable dynamite and he steals an ambulance with which to transport it! Not smart. Brad is an even worse driver with the explosives in the ambulance. Ponch and Baker chase him down and Brad crashes on a playground. While Ponch and Baker arrest Brad, a bunch of kids pick up the dynamite. UH-OH! Fortunately, Brad helps Ponch and Baker get the dynamite back. He asks Ponch and Baker to put in a good word with the judge.

(Yeah …. I don’t know how many good words you can really put in for someone who used a stolen ambulance to transport highly unstable explosives through a heavily populated area of Los Angeles.)

Meanwhile, 14 year-old Barry (Ike Eisenmann) accidentally shoots a car with his pellet gun. The car crashes. The driver, Mary Barnes (Roseanne Katon), survives with minor injuries but her sister nearly dies. Mary says that she wants to press charges against Barry. She doesn’t care that he’s only 14. Baker and Ponch arrange for Mary to spend the day at the rodeo with Barry, so that she can see that he’s just a scared kid who didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Barry is from Utah and lonely and Baker and Ponch feel sorry for him.

But you know what? The fact of the matter is that Barry is 14. He’s not some 10 year-old kid. He’s a teenager. He’s old enough to know better than to shoot a pellet gun around a busy highway. Barry is a lonely kid and that sucks. But again, he nearly killed someone and he caused a huge wreck. I’m on Mary’s side. Throw the book at Barry. Letting Barry get away with doing something that stupid isn’t going to be good for him or anyone else. Mary, however, disagrees with me. Barry’s off the hook and he even gets to go to the rodeo.

What a frustrating episode! Ponch and Baker let me down but at least one of them knows how to pronounce rodeo.

The great Don Meredith will always be remembered for a few things.

He’s remembered for being the first Dallas Cowboys quarterback, leading the team to multiple championship games but sadly never making it to the Super Bowl. If you’ve seen North Dallas Forty, the quarterback played by Mac Davis was based on Meredith. North Dallas Forty was based on a book by Phil Gent, a former Cowboys wide receiver. When asked about the book and Gent’s portrayal of himself as being the best player on the team, Meredith reportedly said, “Hell, if I had known Phil was that good, I would have thrown him the ball more often.”

Don Mereidth was also one of the first players to make the jump from playing on the field to calling plays in the broadcast booth. He was the good old boy who served as a foil to Howard Cosell and who sang “Turn out the lights, the party’s over” whenever it became obvious that one team was going to win the game.

He will also always be remembered for an incident in 1979 when, while covering a game in Denver, he supposedly said, “Welcome to Mile High Stadium — and I am!” This is actually an urban legend. Meredith never actually said he was high on national television but if a member of the original Monday Night Football Team was going to say that, it probably would have been Dandy Don.

Don Meredith is less remembered for his acting career but, like a lot of retired football players in the 70s, he tried his hand at performing. As an actor, Don Meredith was a very good quarterback. His performances were superior to Joe Namath’s but his range was undeniably limited. Smart producers essentially had Don Meredith play himself, a laid back good old boy who liked his beer and enjoyed hanging out with his buddies.

Banjo Hackett was typical of Don Meredith’s films. In this made-for-TV movie, Meredith plays the title character. He’s the nicest horse trader in the old west but not even someone as laid back as Banjo Hackett is going to stand for someone stealing from him. When he learns that his nephew, Jubal (Ike Eisenmann), has been put into an orphanage and that evil bounty hunter Sam Ivory (Chuck Conners) has stolen Jubal’s favorite horse, Banjo steps up to the huddle. First, he engineers Jubal’s escape from the orphanage. Then he and his nephew track Sam across the frontier, determined to catch up with him before he sells Jubal’s horse.

Banjo Hackett was obviously meant to serve as a pilot for a television series. The series never happened but Banjo Hackett itself is a likable film that will be best appreciated by western fans who are looking for something harmless to watch. Don Meredith may not have been a versatile actor but he had a sincere screen presence and Chuck Conners was always an effective bad guy. The cast is full of familiar western actors, including Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones, and Jeff Corey. As a movie, Banjo Hackett is as amiable as its lead character.