John B. Moranville | 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 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.

This week, season 3 comes to an end.

Episode 3.22 “Best Laid Plans”

(Dir by John B. Moranville, originally aired on April 19th, 1998)

Heh heh …. they said laid.

The third season finale of Pacific Blue finds everyone at a crossroads, almost as if the showrunners weren’t sure who would be back for the fourth season so they wanted to make sure that everyone had an excuse to leave. There’s a lot of personal drama in this episode and I guess it would be compelling if any of these people were the least bit likable or sympathetic.

Victor Del Toro is being investigated by Internal Affairs and he spends the majority of the episode telling people that he suspects that he’s going to lose his job.

Cory is dumped by her long-distance boyfriend and leaps into a new relationship with some guy she accidentally punched at a bar. (She was trying to hit his friend, who was being pretty obnoxious at the time.)

Chris takes a pregnancy test and it’s positive. TC asks her to marry him. Despite the fact that Chris was previously hoping TC would ask her to marry him, Chris says no because …. well, because Chris is the worst. No, actually, it’s because Chris doesn’t want TC to marry her just because he feels like he has to. Chris and TC have separate scenes where they imagine how wonderful it would be to have a baby and how annoying it will be once the baby grows up to be a bratty teenager. But then Chris finds out that it was a false positive.

Palermo, meanwhile, is burned out. He’s feeling old. He wants to do more than just look at crime scenes. Plus, he’s having sex with a 22 year-old (played by Saved By The Bell: The Next Class’s Sarah Lancaster) and he’d rather do that then go to work.

Sadly, Palermo does have to go to work. A gang of criminals is breaking into people’s home and carving letters on their foreheads. (The letters correspond to their last name — Edwards gets an E and so on.) It turns out that the leader of the gang blame Palermo for his mother’s death and is spelling out P-A-L-E-R-M-O. The bad guys are always one step ahead because a member of the gang (Ginny Shcrieber) is working as a receptionist at Pacific Blue headquarters. Do they not do background checks before hiring people?

Palermo does catch the guy, though only after several people have been permanently scarred. Once again, you have to wonder why the bike cops are the only people working these cases. Add that the end of the episode, Palermo announces he’s going to Italy.

That’s one down and four more to go! Who will be around for season 4?

We’ll find out next week!

This week, the second season ends.

Episode 2.22 “Rumpelstiltskin”

(Dir by John B. Moranville, originally aired on April 20th, 1997)

Rumpelstiltskin. That’s the nickname that FBI agent Tim Stone (David Lee Smith) has given to expert counterfeiter Laszlo Parkes (Josh Richman). Laszlo and his three associates — Sheila (Heidi Lenhart, who was Jenny Garrison on California Dreams), Lana (Diana Barrington), and Bree (Jennifer Sky) — are passing the fake money all around Santa Monica. Laszlo is planning on scoring a big drug deal. Meanwhile, Bree and her boyfriend (Tim Griffin) are planning on taking out Laszlo.

Agent Stone requests that Cory and Chris be assigned to work with him. It soon become apparent that Stone has more in mind than just work. Chris likes Stone but Stone like Cory. When Chris find out that Stone and Cory slept together, she throws a fit. I’ve noticed that Chris really only has to modes on Pacific Blue. Either she’s disturbingly robotic and unconcerned with civil liberties or she’s getting mad about something and threatening to go all-Fatal Attraction on somebody. I’ve also noticed that the show’s writers are incapable of imagining Chris or Cory in a situation where they don’t end up falling for whoever they’re working with.

The funniest part of this episode was when word came in of a shoot-out so all the cops jumped on their bicycles and rode over to the scene. Seriously, a guy was taking fire and instead of jumping in a car and speeding over there, everyone decided to ride their bicycles. Somehow, the bike cops were able to take down the mob and also arrest Laszlo. I always wonder how they get people to the jail after they arrest them. Do they chain them to the bicycle or something?

After the shoot out, Tim and Cory enjoyed a romantic sunset and Tim promised that he would return soon.

And so ended the second season!

Wow, the second season sucked. Here we are, about to start season 3, and I’m still struggling to tell everyone apart. Chris and Cory still don’t have a personality. Everyone still looks silly on their bicycles. This show grows more pointless with each episode.

Next week …. we’ll start season 3!