Lane Davies | 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, the fourth season comes to an end.

Episode 4.21 “A Special Operation”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson., originally aired on May 17th, 1981)

Season 4 comes to an odd end with A Special Operation.

Getraer is injured when he crashes his motorcycle. He takes a piece of metal to the face and he nearly loses his eyesight. Luckily, the abrasive but brilliant Dr. Patterson (James Sloyan) is able to save both Getraer’s eye and his ability to see with it. However, the idealistic young Dr. Rhodes (A Martinez) worries that Patterson may have missed something. Can Patterson set aside his ego long enough to listen to his younger colleague?

Hey, wait a minute, isn’t this CHiPs?

I don’t have any way to prove this but there’s a part of me that strongly suspects the season finale of CHiPs was also a backdoor pilot for a medical show. So much time is spent with Patterson, Rhodes, and the nurses at the local hospital that it just feels like there was some hope that viewers would call in and demand to see more of Dr. Rhodes. A Martinez even gives a very Erik Estrada-style performance in the role of Rhodes.

Speaking of Estrada, he’s barely in this episode. (Ponch, we’re told, is preparing for to testify in a big court case.) It largely falls to Jon Baker to stop the assassin (Eugene Butler) who has been hired to try to take Getraer out of commission. This, of course, leads to the assassin stealing an ambulance and Baker chasing him. The ambulance flips over in slow motion but somehow, the assassin survives to that Baker can arrest him.

It was a strange end for a season that’s largely been dominated by Erik Estrada and his performance as Ponch. (Larry Wilcox, I will say, looked happy to have the finale to himself.) For the most part, Season 4 was an uneven season. The writing so favored Estrada over Wilcox that the show sometimes felt like it was turning into a parody of itself. The show that started out about two partners on motorcycles became a show about how Ponch could literally walk on water and do no wrong.

Next week, we start season 5!

2004’s Border Blues features Gary Busey as a wild-haired LAPD police chief who has psychic visions that enable him to track down a mad bomber.

Wow, that sounds great!

Well, believe it or not, that’s really only a minor subplot in this film. The majority of the film is about Andrei Samurov (Rodion Nahapetov), who was the greatest detective in Moscow before he immigrated to the United States. Now, he works in a restaurant and dreams of being the greatest detective in the LAPD. During a trip to Mexico, Andrei meets Larry (Eric Roberts), an American who now helps people sneak across the border. Larry is helping a Russian woman (Anna Nakhapetova) and her daughter make their way across the desert. Larry seems to take a special interest in the woman’s daughter. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Larry’s own daughter died under tragic circumstances.

Oh, and Erik Estrada’s in this too! He plays a Mexican cop named Morales and he yells a lot.

Gary Busey, Erik Estrada, and Eric Roberts!? How could this go wrong? Well, you could stick them all in a film that doesn’t make much sense and which has a plot that is next to impossible to follow. This is one of those movies where you get the feeling that the names were cast first and then a story was built around them. On the plus side, Eric Roberts actually gets a good deal of screentime and turns Larry into a rather interesting character. Larry is menacing but, there are times when he’s almost sympathetic. Roberts gives a good performance but, unfortunately, the majority of the film is focused on Rodion Nahapetov’s unconvincing turn as the greatest detective in the world. Nahapetov both directed and starred in this film and the end result is a vanity project that doesn’t seem to lead to anywhere in particular.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed: