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’s episode features a future Oscar nominee!
Episode 5.2 “Vagabonds”
(Dir by Bruce Kessler, originally aired on October 11th, 1981)
The saying goes that “everyone had to start somewhere,” and, for actor Ed Harris, somewhere included guest-starring on an episode of CHiPs.
The future Oscar nominee appears as Lonny Wilson, the scion of a family of a hillbilly con artists. He and his brother, Daws (Jesse Vint), purposefully cause auto accidents and con their victims out of their money in return for not calling the police or the insurance company. Lonny’s young son, Jamie (James Calvert), is looking forward to joining the family business until he actually is injured while taking part in one of the family’s cons. Lonny reconsiders his way of life and, by the end of the episode, he’s cooperating with the highway patrol.
Does Ed Harris come across as being a future star in this episode? Well, he definitely has charisma. He has screen presence. That said, this is also CHiPs, a show that was mostly about capturing potentially serious auto accidents in slow motion. No one came across as being a future star on ChiPs and that was actually a part of the show’s appeal. The stars on CHiPs were always the motorcycles, the cars flipping over on the freeway, and Ponch’s blinding smile. That said, Ed Harris gives a good performance. For that matter, so does Jesse Vint as his brother. This is a well-acted episode of CHiPs. Such things do exist.
In all fairness, I should also note that, when this episode aired, Harris had already starred in George Romero’s Knightriders so, while Harris may not have been a household name, it’s probably still debatable whether or not this was really at the start of his career. Ultimately, the important thing is that, two years after appearing this episode, Ed Harris would play John Glenn in 1983’s The Right Stuff and firmly established himself as one of our best character actors.
As for this episode, it also features the Highway Patrol taking part in a “supercycle” race, which is a race featuring bicycles that you lie down on as you peddle. I don’t know why anyone would want to do that but whatever. Jon Baker wins. Yay, Highway Patrol!
On that note of victory, Retro Television Reviews is going on a holiday break so that I can focus on the Oscar precursor awards and reviewing Christmas movies so this will be last CHiPs review of 2025! CHiPs will return on January 5th, 2026!
Through the Shattered Lens 