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 Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network!  It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

Oh no!  It’s the cops!

Episode 1.8 “Burnout”

(Dir by Lyndon Chubbuck, originally aired on April 20th, 1996)

This episode of Pacific Blue opens with a hilarious scene of Victor and Cory sneaking up on some drug dealers that they’ve spotted making a sale.  What makes it hilarious is that Victor and Cory somehow manage to do this while 1) wearing their blindingly white t-shirts and 2) riding their bikes.  There’s not much good to say about this show but there’s an undeniable amusement factor in the show’s insistence that bicycle cops don’t look massively dumb creeping up on people while on their bikes.

It turns out that the dealers aren’t selling the usual “smack,” as Cory puts it.  Instead, they’re selling steroids!  Sheila (Shannon Tweed) is upset that one of her waitresses had gotten hooked on steroids and…. wait, who?  Sheila briefly appeared in the pilot episode but she hasn’t been mentioned since and this is certainly the first time that we learn that Lt. Palermo’s girlfriend owns a restaurant.  This episode acts as if Sheila is a regular character that we all know and love.

I get the feeling this episode was meant to air earlier in the season.  Not only does Sheila return but Chris is back to being her arrogant, bitter self.  Chris was a fighter pilot until her eyesight failed, a story we hear again and again in this episode.  (She no longer has 20/20 eyesight but whenever she talks about it, she makes it sound as if she literally went blind.)  Another pilot, Greg (Peter Barton), comes to visit her and makes a few jokes about how riding a bicycle is lame.  This gives Chris a chance to defend her job and to also call out Greg for being a sexist who just wants to get laid before returning to the skies.  Chris may be right about Greg but he’s played by the totally adorable Peter Barton so really, why not?

Meanwhile, on the beach, a schizophrenic man annoys the owner of a bodega by playing his saxophone.  Fights break out,  Cory tells the saxophone man to play his instrument under the pier.  Presumably, it will be easier for him to get mugged or murdered under there.  I like that the solution when it came to the crazy homeless man was just to find somewhere else for him to be crazy and homeless.  Don’t take him to a shelter or a hook him up with mental health professionals or anything silly like that.

This show …. ugh.  I’m really hoping the first season is an outlier and the subsequent seasons will be an improvement.  The only thing worse than bicyclists are people who are cocky about being bicyclists.  For 8 episodes now, it’s been one person after another expressing shock at the whole bicycle thing.  We get it.  We understand.  The cops look stupid on their Schwinns.  But, that’s the show.  If Pacific Blue is still trying to justify its existence after eight episodes, that’s not a great sign.