Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 5.4 “Blue Hawaii: Part Two”

Posted on November 3, 2026 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 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, things wrap up in Hawaii.

Episode 5.4 “Blue Hawaii: Part Two”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on August 8th, 1999)

In Hawaii, the California bike cops and the Hawaiian anti-drug task force decide to work together to get revenge for the death of Officer Peter Cho. “For Peter,” the bike cops say, obviously moved by the death of someone who they barely knew. They decide that the best way to take down drug dealer Michael Shane (Shawn Michaels) is with an undercover operation. Of course, the last time they tried to take down Shane with an undercover operation, Peter got shot. I swear, these idiots never learn anything. They’re kind of like the people in Michigan who are incapable of understanding that a senatorial candidate who spends the majority of his time voluntarily hanging out with anti-Semites is probably a rabid anti-Semite himself.

Luckily, Shane doesn’t learn anything either. When Cory presents herself as being a former bank employee who can hack into a bank and steal a lot of money, Shane falls for it. Or, at least, he does for a few minutes. Eventually, he figures out what’s going on and, after a tense standoff with the other cops, he makes a run for it. In one of the dumbest scenes I have ever seen, TC borrows a stranger’s bicycle so he can pedal it through the hotel while chasing Shane. I mean, I get that this is a show about bicycle cops but I’m starting to feel that TC uses bicycles the way that some people use a security blanket.

While that’s going on, Bobby considers staying in Hawaii with Claire (Kristanna Loken) but eventually, he decides not to because I imagine the only reason people were watching this show in 1999 was to see Mario Lopez chase after the bad guys. Just as with last week’s episode, this was clearly meant to be a pilot for a series that would have followed the Hawaiian cops. (Baywatch relocated to Hawaii around the same time.) As such, it’s not like Claire could have followed Bobby to California. So, I guess Bobby and Claire are done.

There is one odd moment where Bobby and Claire are talking about the undercover operation that got their colleague Peter killed. Bobby says that all he could think about was that, if anything happened to Claire, he’d never forgive himself. Claire says she was thinking the same thing about Bobby. Umm, hello? Peter’s dead! Remember all of that “For Peter” nonsense? I swear, bicyclists are so self-centered.

There’s another moment where TC gets a call from Monica, who is still in California. She informs him that there’s a guy running for mayor who says he’s going to eliminate the bicycle patrol because it’s a waste of money. I want to vote for him!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 5.3 “Blue Hawaii: Part One”

Posted on October 27, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the bike cops go to Hawaii!

Episode 5.3 “Blue Hawaii: Part One”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on August 1st, 1999)

TC, Cory, Bobby, and Granger are sent to Hawaii so that they can spend five days training other bicycle cops. If there’s anything that this show has shown over the past five seasons, it’s that it takes a lot of training to be a bicycle cop. For instance, you have to know how to look smugly self-satisfied while holding up traffic. That’s not a natural skill. That’s something you have to learn. Whenever Cory responds to a legitimate question by yelling and shoving someone into a wall, you’re seeing years of training. Whenever Chris runs a bystander over with her bicycle and then says, “Just doing my job,” that’s her way of sayin, “Your taxes paid for this!”

Bobby and Granger spend their first Hawaiian night at a strip club. A drug dealer (Dax Griffin) mistakes Bobby for a buyer. This leads to Bobby and Granger getting involved in an undercover operation. We meet the other members of Hawaii’s special undercover task force. There’s Sgt. Aikau (Andy Bumatai), a surfer who puts a curse on TC. There’s Matt Cho (Lorenzo Callender), who acts just like Bobby. There’s an Australian cop (played by Corey Page) who acts just like Granger. And then there’s Officer Claire Keene (Kristanna Loken) who acts just like Cory.

As you probably already guessed, this episode was a backdoor pilot for a series that was didn’t end up happening. (This episode aired the same year that Baywatch became Baywatch Hawaii.) It’s also a two-parter, which means this episode ends with Bobby and Granger still working undercover, the drug dealers still on the loose, and the Hawaiian cops in need of some lessons on how to work undercover. Bobby is also falling for Claire and is thinking about transferring permanently to Hawaii.

Like a lot of backdoor pilots, this episode fails because it asked us to get emotionally invested in a bunch of new, poorly-drawn characters. The fact that all of the Hawaiian cops had the same personality tics as their California counterparts didn’t help matters. That said, I enjoyed this episode just because it was shot in Hawaii and the scenery was lovely.

Next week, we’ll conclude our trip to paradise with Part Two of Blue Hawaii!

BloodRayne (2005, directed by Uwe Boll)

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

In 18th century Romania, Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a vampire/human hybrid who is being forced to work in a freakshow by Leonid (Meat Loaf). After Rayne escapes, she meets a fortune teller (Geraldine Chaplin) who informs her that her father is the feared king of the vampires, Kagan (Ben Kingsley), and that he raped her mother. Rayne teams up with a group of vampire hunters (Matthew Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Michael Madsen) and sets out to destroy her father once and for all.

BloodRayne is perhaps not the worst film ever made about a vampire/human hybrid in Romania but it’s also nowhere near the best. Instead, it’s another one of Uwe Boll’s cheap-looking video game adaptations where a group of talented actors slum it as action stars. (Michael Pare, Udo Kier, and Billy Zane also appear in the movie.) The movie is full of bad wigs and big swords. Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez are neither convincing as Russians or people who lived in the 18th Century. Geraldine Chaplin tries to keep things interesting, Ben Kingsley doesn’t. Kristanna Loken is actually a good choice for Rayne, in that she’s hot and she’s convincing in the action scenes. This is an easy film to laugh at but it features enough blood and nudity to keep its target audience happy. Don’t try to follow the plot, though. You’ll get a headache.

While we were watching the movie last night, Lisa suggested that Ben Kingsley was using his Gandhi Oscar as a stake. Now that would have been something worth seeing!

Lifetime Film Review: The Madam of Purity Falls (dir by Sam Irvin)

Posted on October 4, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

One of the first rules of moving to a new place, avoid any location that has a potentially ironic name.

Seriously, don’t live near a virgin spring. Don’t move into the house at the end of Charity Drive. Avoid Peaceful Meadows at all costs. Happy Street? Don’t even think about it. And Purity Falls?

Listen, there’s no way that moving to a town called Purity Falls is a good idea.

Still, that’s what Nicole and her children do in the Lifetime film, The Madam of Purity Falls. The recently widowed Nicole (Kristanna Loken) even gets a job as the guidance counselor at Purity Falls High School! Since the family is still struggling to come to terms with the death of Nicole’s husband and the children’s father, the hope is that a new home can help them move on. Younger sister Justine (Sloane Avery) is willing to give it a try. But older brother Jason (Trevor Stines) is resistant from the beginning. Even meeting and befriending Chad (Jonathan Bouvier) doesn’t seem to help with Jason’s angst. Of course, Chad is soon found floating in a swimming pool, dead. Can you believe such a thing could happen in Purity Falls?

Trying to adjust to a new school, Jason joins the wrestling team and even meets a girl who seems to like him. But how can Jason go on a date when he doesn’t have a car!? And how can he get a car if he doesn’t have any money!? Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t his new neighbor, Courtney (Olivia d’Abo), mention that she had some odd jobs that she needed done around the house and that she would be willing to pay him to do them? At first, Jason is reluctant to work for Courtney but one of his fellow wrestling teammates assures him that working for Courtney will be the greatest experience of his life.

Courtney has a nice big house and a lucrative job selling organic cosmetics. Everyone in Purity Falls seems to know her. She puts Jason right to work, paying him for landscaping and sex. Realizing that there’s a lot of money to be made from being a suburban prostitute, Jason agrees to become one of Courtney’s “boys.” Soon, he’s sleeping with almost every frustrated housewife in Purity Falls, making all sorts of money, and getting into all sorts of danger!

Of course, Nicole is curious as to why her son keeps sneaking out of the house and then staying out for so long. And some of Jason’s clients are into some things that make Jason uneasy. And, of course, there’s the fact that people are dying. Hmmmm …. being a suburban prostitute might not be as easy as it looks! But is Jason already in too deep to escape his new life?

The Madam of Purity Falls is an enjoyably over-the-top in execution as it is in its name. This is one of those films where everyone lives in a nice, big house and they’ve all got nice, big secrets to hide. Don’t take the film too seriously. Just enjoy it for the melodrama and the sex and for Olivia d’Abo’s enjoyably villainous turn as the Madam of Purity Falls.