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, it’s all about bio-rhythms!

Episode 2.19 “Bio-Rhythms”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on February 17th, 1979)

The Davis family is back!

Now, if you don’t remember the Davises. they were the family of independent truckers who appeared in an episode called The Volunteers.  Patriarch Charley Davis (Tige Andrews) is taciturn and protective.  Their friend, Sam (Steve Franken), is taciturn and protective …. actually, to be honest, he and Charley are kind of interchangeable.  Daughter Robbie (Katherine Cannon) is in charge of the business and is being pressured by another trucker (Michael Conrad), who is willing to resort to sabotage to keep Robbie from making her deliveries.  It’s a good thing that Robbie has got Ponch on her side!

Technically, Robbie also has Baker on her side but this is definitely a Ponch episode.  Baker is present but he does very little.  Instead, it’s Ponch who flirts with Robbie.  It’s Ponch who stops by Robbie’s apartment and uses her shower.  It’s Ponch who spends an extended period of time wearing just a towel.  Somewhat inevitably, Charley shows up around the same time that Ponch steps out of the shower.  Ponch is kicked out of the apartment and his clothes are tossed out the window.  Ponch loses his towel while retrieving his clothing.  Cue the close-ups of an old woman staring at him with a impressed look in her eyes and Erik Estrada flashing his Estrada smile.  It’s not that Erik Estrada wasn’t nice to look at.  It’s just that he was so obviously aware that he was nice to look at that the whole scene ends up feeling rather smarmy.  One gets the feeling that there was a clause in Estrada’s contract specifying that he, and only he, would be allowed to show off on the show.

While Ponch helps Robbie deal with her rivals, he also learns about biorhythms, the pseudo-science that says that, by calculating how long someone’s been alive, it can be determined which days are going to be good for them and which days are going to be bad.  Sindy Cahill is doing a study on biorhythms for her master’s degree.  Getraer tells his squad that the department is also very interested in whether or not biorhythms effect an officer’s productivity.  Baker is skeptical about biorhythms but Ponch believes in them and even buys a biorhythm calculator.

Believing the Baker’s biorhythms have him at peak physical perfection, Ponch arranges for Baker to play handball against Getraer.  Ponch even takes bets.  Unfortunately, Ponch spent so much time figuring out Baker’s biorhythms that he never stopped to consider Getraer’s.  The episode ends with Getraer on his way to victory and Baker looking embarrassed.

Handball?  Biorhythms?  Corrupt labor unions?  Could this episode be more Californian?

This episode was fairly dull.  A huge problem was that the Davis family and their drama are never as interesting as the show seems to think that they are.  Much as with The Volunteers, I felt like I was watching a backdoor pilot for a show about the Davises when I really just wanted to watch a show about the Highway Patrol.  This episode didn’t do much for me.  Maybe everyone’s biorhythms were off when they filmed it.