J.D. Hinton – 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, CHiPs goes country!

Episode 6.14 “Country Action”

(Dir by Charles Bail, originally aired on January 23rd, 1983)

Skip Miller (Tom Engleman) is a cowboy who owns a orangutang. He’s been hired to transport cattle but, after he’s injured in a highway accident, it’s revealed that the people who hired him were actually cattle rustlers! Ponch and Bobby go undercover as cattle buyers. Ponch also takes care of the orangutang, who may not be able to speak and who has terrible dental hygiene but who can identify the men who hired Skip.

How you react to this episode of CHiPs will depend on how much tolerance you have for country music and orangutangs. The orangutang is played by Manis, who also co-starred in Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can with Clint Eastwood. Watch as Manis walks around CHP headquarters! Thrill as Manis takes off on a motorcycle! Try not to freak out every time Manis shows off her rotting teeth! As for the country music, there’s a lot of it. Every time Ponch and Bobby go to the local country-western bar, we have to hear at least one song.

Larry Wilcox probably would have been a good fit for this episode. Officer Jon Baker grew up on a ranch and love animals. As it is, Erik Estrada seems to resent having to share screentime with Mavis and Tom Reilly is as spacey as ever. The folks behind the scenes were really running out of ideas.

Once again, Ponch does not mention the fact that his fiancée was recently killed by a drunk driver. You would think he would have flashbacks at every accident scene. Ponch, however, has moved on.

This week, the fifth season begins.

Episode 5.1 “Suicide Stunt”

(Dir by Michael Caffey, originally aired on October 4th, 1981)

The fifth season opens with the Highway Patrol pursuing a gang of thieves and also keeping an eye on Janos Szabo (Les Lannom), a motorcycle daredevil from Hungary who has come to Los Angeles to take part in charity show for “Highway Patrol Widows and Orphans.”

Since Hungary was controlled by the evil communists (hisssss!) when this episode originally aired, I assumed the episode would be about Janos trying to defect so that he could start a new life in the greatest country on Earth, the USA (yay!). Instead, it turned out that Janos was more concerned with spending time with an ex-girlfriend named Maria (Anita Jodelsohn) who had defected (Good for you, Maria!) and was now working for the Highway Patrol. The entire episode was pretty much scene after scene of Janos sneaking away from his handlers, stealing a vehicle, and then trying to kidnap Maria. Maria found it to be amusing. The members of the Highway Patrol were amused. Even Janos’s handlers seemed to be secretly amused. Still, when Janos set a fire outside of the CHP headquarters to distract everyone so that he could steal another car (this one with Maria in it), Ponch had no choice other than to arrest him.

“I am glad it is you who arrest me,” Janos says to Ponch, smiling like an idiot.

With Janos arrested, it falls on Jon Baker to perfect the stunts while riding Janos’s motorcycle. And Baker is able to do it easily, even the one that involves bursting through a ring of fire. So, I guess they didn’t need Janos to begin with. They should have just had Baker do it and they could have saved a lot of money. Way to waste the taxpayer’s cash, Jerry Brown!

(He was governor at the time. Then, like 30 years later, he was governor again.)

Odd episode, this one. Most season premieres try to go big but this was pretty much just another episode of CHiPs. The California scenery was nice. I always appreciate that this show was largely shot on location and, as a result, even the worst episodes have some value as a time capsule. That said, Janos was an incredibly annoying character. The fact that the show meant for us to laugh at his antics made him even more annoying. There’s only so many times you can watch one jackass try to abduct one woman before you say, “Enough already!”