Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 2.2 “The Volunteers”

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, we’ve got ourselves a convoy!

Episode 2.2 “The Volunteers”

(Dir by John Florea, originally aired on September 23rd, 1978)

After a high-speed chase causes a robbery suspect to crash his car into a chemical storage facility (which subsequently explodes), three truckers have to get their trucks full of chlorine gas to the next available facility. Unfortunately, it’s a 170-mile drive over rough terrain and it’s a very hot day. If the gas gets to hot, it’ll explode. If It doesn’t get to the storage facility in time, it’ll explode. In fact, it appears that just about anything can make chlorine gas explode. Californians might love chlorine for their pool but they don’t want it in the air.

Getraer assigns Ponch, Baker, Baricza, and Jane Turner to escort the trucks to the facility. Jane Turner (Rana Ford) is a new member of the highway patrol. She drives a squad car and she’s the first woman and only the second black person who we’ve seen working for the highway patrol on this show. She doesn’t really do much in this episode and, about halfway through, she breaks off from the main group to help deal with a highway pile-up. For that matter, Getraer and Baricza end up vanishing as well. As usual, it’s all on Ponch and Baker.

Despite the danger of a chemical spill killing the population of Los Angeles county, Ponch spends most of this episode trying to get laid. The episode opens with him leering at a jogging stewardess (Anna Upstrom) and then bragging about how he has a date with her later that night.

“She doesn’t smoke, drink, or dance,” Ponch says.

“What are you two going to do?” Baker earnestly asks.

Ponch arches his eyebrow and grins.

But Ponch is soon distracted by one of the truck drivers, a woman named Robbie Davis (Katherine Cannon), who is quick to yell that not only can she drive a truck but she can vote as well. Ponch arches his eyebrow and grins. Baker gets in on the action by saying, “Prettiest little truck driver I’ve ever seen.”

Robbie’s father (Tige Andrews) and the other trucker (Sam Brodie) all totally think Robbie should hook up with Ponch but they’re still amused when, late in the episode, Ponch accepts a ride from a blonde in a convertible. Ponch arches and eyebrow and grins as he gets in the car. WE GET IT, PONCH!

It’s not easy transporting chlorine gas. Along with rough desert terrain, there’s also a group of beer-drinking rednecks who drive by in a pickup truck and threaten to shoot one of the tanks. All of that drunk driving leads to another multi-car pile-up. For some reason, one of the vehicles in the pile-up was transporting a tiger, which promptly gets loose and enters a grocery store. Ponch and Baker grab raw meat from the butcher’s station and use it to trick the tiger into entering an office. After they shut the door, the owner of the store yells at them for wasting meat. There’s also a town puts up a roadblock to keep the trucks from coming through because they don’t want chlorine gas getting into the air. And then there’s an avalanche, which causes chlorine gas to leak out of Robbie’s truck, sending her to the hospital.

Considering everything that happens in this episode, it’s odd that it all feels rather boring. The best episodes of CHiPs focus on fast motorcycles and beautiful scenery. This episode featured slow-moving trucks and the desert. Bleh. I hate the desert. This episode also featured a lot of interaction between Robbie, her father, and their friend. In fact, they were so prominently featured that it wouldn’t surprise me if this episode was meant to be a backdoor pilot for a trucking show. (This episode aired in 1978, which was a big year for trucker movies.) But the Davis family just wasn’t that interesting.

This episode didn’t really capture my attention. Hopefully, next week will see a return of fast bikes and nice scenery.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 1.17 “Hitch-Hiking Hitch”

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Baker solves everything!

Episode 1.17 “Hitch-Hiking Hitch”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on February 9th, 1978)

It’s another crazy week on the highways of California.

Baker saves a wind sailor who loses control of his boat while testing it on the freeway. Baker saves a trucker when the brakes go out on his rig. Baker helps out an old man (George Chandler) who refuses to leave his home until he’s promised that he and his dog won’t be put in an assisted living facility. Baker tells two teenagers, Jenny (Lark Gein) and Marge (Stacy Nelkin), about the dangers of hitchhiking on the highways.

In other words, this is yet another first season episode of CHiPs where the main theme seems to be that Ponch is thoroughly useless. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Ponch definitely helps out. When Baker tells Ponch to direct traffic, Ponch hops off his motorcycle and starts waving at cars to either stop or go. But it’s still hard not to notice that, when something needs to be done, Baker is the one who does it. Indeed, Baker is usually the only one who knows how to do it. You have to kind of wonder why he’s not in charge since he always knows what to do.

Still, Sgt. Getraer is the man in charge and he’s been named “Sergeant of the Month” by CHiPs Magazine. Ponch and Baker are worried that Getraer is too humble to really enjoy the honor. For some reason, Ponch thinks that playing a joke on Getraer by switching out his helmet will make Getraer enjoy life more. It really doesn’t make much sense to me but this is Ponch that we’re talking about.

There’s an odd scene where Ponch and Baker are having lunch at a diner. A man in a van pulls up and sees that their bikes are in the parking spot that he wants. The man, who is rather large, picks up the bikes and puts them on the sidewalk. He then picks up a car and moves it to the side. Luckily, Getraer rolls up and gives the guy a ticket.

While Baker and Getraer are doing their jobs, Ponch is trying to get laid. When Mary Kate (Katherine Cannon) comes to the station to bail out her sister (who is one of the hitchhikers), Ponch takes one look at her and says, “I bet you were named after your grandmother, who was also very beautiful.” Mary Kate responds that she was named after two spinster aunts. She goes on a few dates with Ponch and claims that her sister has been led astray by her friend. It turns out Mary Kate is wrong and her sister is the one who keeps insisting on hitchhiking.

The hitchhiking nearly ends in disaster but fear not! Baker is there to save Marge from some creeps driving a van. Seriously, what would California do without Jon Baker?

Anyway, the scene with the out-of-control truck was kind of exciting but otherwise, this was a typical episode of CHiPs. It wasn’t particularly memorable but the California scenery was lovely to look at. Anyone want to go wind sailing?

Retro Television Reviews: Can Ellen Be Saved (dir by Harvey Hart)

Posted on July 16, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1974’s Can Ellen Be Saved! It can be viewed on YouTube!

Ellen Lindsey (Katharine Cannon) is an intelligent but depressed teenager who feels that she just doesn’t belong anywhere in the world. She’s not interested in the money and class-obsessed lifestyle of her parents, Arnold (Leslie Nielsen, back in his serious actor days) and Bea (Louise Fletcher). At the same time, she’s also not interested in the silly lives of her friends, who spend all of their time chasing boys and talking about celebrities. Ellen is looking for something deeper and she thinks that she may have found it when she attends a religious retreat led by a charismatic man named Joseph (Michaele Parks).

Everyone at the retreat is very friendly and very dedicated and very concerned with finding more to life than just surface pleasures. They spend hours listening to sermons. They spend even longer singing hymns. The leaders of the retreat emphasize that anyone can leave whenever they want but, if they do, they’ll still be making the biggest mistake of their life. Ellen is happy because she’s finally found a group of friends who seem to feel the same way that she does about society and materialism. Joseph is happy because he’s brainwashed another member of his cult who he can now send out to panhandle for him and the compound.

Arnold and Bea are not happy when Ellen runs away to join Joseph’s commune. When Arnold visits the commune, he discovers a secretive world where outsiders are not welcome. He also discover that Ellen no longer seems to be capable of thinking for herself. With the police unwilling to help, Arnold and Bea turn to an enigmatic deprogrammer named James Hallbeck (John Saxon). Hallbeck specializes in grabbing kids that have joined cults and bringing them back to their parents. Of course, it’s hard not to notice that neither Joseph nor Arnold seems to be giving much thought to what Ellen actually wants from her life.

Can Ellen Be Saved? is a well-made TV movie that has a lot in common with later films like Split Image and Ticket To Heaven. As in both those movies, the first half of the film details how cults initially brainwash their members while the second half deals with the sometimes harsh process of reversing that brainwashing. And, just as in those two later films, Can Ellen Be Saved? features parents who mistakenly assume that their child can be returned to them exactly as she was before. Though all three of the films feature cults that are definitely sinister, they also feature main characters who were lost before they joined the cult and all three of them end on an ambiguous note, leaving us to wonder if the characters have regained their free will or if they’ve just traded one brainwashing for another.

Along with being a well-written and well-acted film, Can Ellen Be Saved features one of those once-in-a-lifetime casts. Popping up in small roles are familiar faces like William Katt, Rutanya Alda, and Kathleen Quinlan. Michael Parks and John Saxon are both convincing as two morally ambiguous characters whose own motives are left enigmatic. Katherine Cannon is sympathetic as Ellen, whose need to be a part of something leaves her vulnerable to manipulation. Finally, it must be said that Leslie Nielsen — despite his reputation for having been a dull dramatic actor — is actually very effective as Ellen’s confused but well-meaning father. Usually, when I watch Neilsen in a dramatic film, I find myself expecting him to wink at the camera or deliver a silly line in a deliberately flat and unemotional tone. But, in this film, I actually forgot I was watching Leslie Nielsen. Instead, he just become a suburban dad, trying to understand why his daughter was so dissatisfied with the life that he had worked so hard to give her.

I wasn’t expecting much from Can Ellen Be Saved? but it turned out to be surprisingly effective.