Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.4 “Moving Violation”

Posted on December 4, 2023 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 learn who is a good cop and who is a not-so good cop.

Episode 1.4 “Moving Violation”

(Dir by Edward M. Abroms, originally aired on October 13th, 1977)

Tonight’s episode of CHiPs doesn’t so much have a plot as much as it’s just a random collection of incidents that are designed to allow us to see the differences in personality between Officer Jon Baker and Officer Frank “Ponch” Poncharello.

Officer Baker is quiet, conscientious, and mild-mannered. He’s the officer who spots a stolen church bus but gives his partner the credit for discovering it because his partner is on probationary status with the department. On a more serious note, he’s also the guy who is sent to inform women that they are now widows because their husbands met misfortune on the California highways. Tonight’s episode sees Baker being sent to inform a woman that her husband has died and Baker handles the job with sensitivity and tact. He wipes away a tear of his own as the woman starts to cry. Larry Wilcox was not exactly the most expressive actor in the world but, in that scene, he did a wonderful job.

Officer Poncharello, on the other hand, is a screw-up who smiles frequently, lies to an almost pathological extent, and who often looks straight at the camera while delivering his lines. He’s the type of police officer who needs his fellow officers to lie to Sgt. Getraer about what a good police officer he is. If Officer Baker is the ideal highway patrolman, Ponch is the guy who really shouldn’t be out there. It’s not just that Erik Estrada looks notably less assured on that motorcycle than Larry Wilcox. It’s also that Ponch himself doesn’t ever really seem to be paying attention to …. well, anything!

This episode, Ponch lies to a woman and gets her to go out on a date with him under the assumption that he’s a sergeant. She’s not thrilled to discover that he’s just a police officer and that he drives (and live in) an RV. Ponch is not thrilled when he gets a ticket for not using his turn signal and he has to take a driver’s education class. Worried that he might run into someone who he has ticketed, Ponch wears a fake mustache and, eventually, a fake beard.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s not much of a story to this episode. Ponch and Baker just deal with whatever they come across, whether it’s a stolen church bus or a man trapped in a van with a bunch of rattlesnakes. The oddest moment of the show comes when they pull over a motorist played by football player Roosevelt Grier and Grier proceeds to start beating up his car. Ponch and Baker just watch in amazement. At one point, Grier puts his fist through a window and Ponch laughs. Uhmm …. how about checking to make sure the guy isn’t bleeding to death?

And, hey — guess who shows up in driver’s education class at the end of this episode!? And guess who rips off Ponch’s fake beard and mustache. The episode ends with a freeze frame of a nervous Ponch laughing but I don’t think he’s going to be laughing much longer.

This was a weird episode. It was basically a combination of broad comedy, lovely California scenery, and that one shockingly dramatic scene in which Baker told a woman that her husband was dead. The episode was obviously meant to introduce us to Baker and Ponch. I would definitely prefer to get pulled over by Baker because he’s obviously just trying to do his job quickly and efficiently. Ponch, on the other hand….

Anyway, assuming that Ponch wasn’t killed by Rosey Grier, he should be next week! We’ll see what happens!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Chips 1.3 “Dog Gone”

Posted on November 27, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Baker gets a dog and Ponch makes an enemy!

Episode 1.3 “Dog Gone”

(Dir by Michael Caffey, originally aired on September 29th, 1977)

When an adorable sheepdog puppy ends up on the Los Angeles highway, Baker and Ponch manage to rescue it, though not before it causes a minor wreck on an overpass. The official CHiP policy is that all stray animals should immediately be turned over to the shelter but Baker takes one look at the puppy and decides that he can’t just leave it with anyone else. In fact, every member of the highway patrol quickly falls in love with the dog.

Everyone except for Sgt. Getraer, who is allergic to dogs and makes it clear that the puppy is not to be kept around the station.

At first, Baker tries to keep the dog in his apartment but it turns out that the dog likes to bark. So, Baker heads out to the trailer park where Ponch lives in an RV and apparently spends all of his time watching football while only wearing his boxer shorts. (One gets the feeling that Erik Estrada had an “at least one shirtless scene per episode” clause in his contract.) Baker leaves the dog in the RV and then runs off before the half-naked Ponch can protest.

Fortunately, for Baker, Ponch decides that he loves the dog, which he named Fido.

Unfortunately, for Ponch, Fido’s owners eventually show up at the station and ask if anyone has seen their dog. The dog — who even I, while admittedly not being a dog person, has to admit is cute — is reunited with his family and I guess Ponch is alone again.

Meanwhile, three really stupid criminals — Boots (Bill Adler), Zero (Jeffrey Druce), and Little John (James Crittenden) — are really angry with Ponch because, at the scene of the earlier accident, Ponch prevented Boots from threatening another motorist. Boots and his friends hops into their dune buggy and decide to stalk Ponch and Baker. Boots even decides to sabotage Ponch’s motorcycle by loosening the front bolt so that the wheel will eventually come off while Ponch is riding it. However, these three criminals are so stupid that they sabotage the wrong motorcycle. As a result, the entire second half of the episode is full of close-ups of Baker’s front tire wobbling as he speeds down the highway.

The subplot with the criminals is really dumb but the way it plays out shows that Larry Wilcox had a point when he complained about the show’s producers always favoring Erik Estrada. Not only is Ponch the one who faces off against Boots at the scene of the accident but he’s also the one who gets to save Baker’s life at the end of the episode. When a guilt-stricken Zero goes to Getraer and tells him about what Boots did to the motorcycle, it doesn’t take long for Getraer to figure out that they accidentally sabotaged Baker’s motorcycle instead of Ponch’s. With Baker unable to hear his radio due to being involved in a high-speed chase, it falls to Ponch to chase after Baker and warn him. The bike still crashes but Baker is not seriously injured and Ponch …. well, Ponch is just a big damn hero!

(Admittedly, there is a scene earlier in the episode where Baker performs mouth-to-mouth recitation on a motorist who has had a heart attack and saves the man’s life. But even then, Ponch is the one pushing on the man’s chest to try to get his heart going again. Baker’s a good cop, the show tells us, but Ponch is a big damn hero.)

This episode …. well, at least the dog was cute! And the California scenery was lovely to look at. Still, a cop show like this needs to have some smart or at least intimidating criminals for the cops to do battle with and Boots was such an idiot that it was hard to take anything he and his gang did seriously. In the end, this was a typical episode of CHiPs, full of stiff acting but impressive motorcycle stunt work. Probably the most interesting thing about this episode was discovering that Baker was the one with a swinging bachelor pad while Ponch was the one living a solitary life in a trailer park. I’m just happy that the dog was reunited with its family.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.2 “Undertow”

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Ponch takes a deep breath and he gets real high.

Episode 1.2 “Undertow”

(Dir by Christian I. Nyby II, originally aired on September 22nd, 1977)

On tonight’s episode of CHiPs, a true crisis breaks out.

The California Highway Patrol’s basketball team loses a game!

Now, they would have won the game if Ponch had been playing. I’m only two episodes into this series and it’s already pretty obvious that there’s apparently nothing that Ponch can’t do. However, while at the scene of an accident on the highway, Ponch stood right in front of a leaky cannister of nitrous oxide! He ended up getting so high that he started seeing double, dancing in the halls of the station, and basically just acting like a total jackass. Of course, he smiled the whole time. Baker was less amused.

Because of his temporary high, Ponch was sent home and ordered to stay in bed for a day. He missed the game and the CHiPs lost to some other off-duty branch of California law enforcement. Fortunately, Sgt. Getraer is able to set up a rematch and, with Ponch now able to play, the CHiPs win by two points! And, of course, the winning shot is taken by Ponch because there’s nothing that Ponch can’t do. This episode ends with a series of freeze frames of Ponch winning the game and proving that California has the best highway patrol in the country.

Of course, the basketball game is only the B-plot of this episode of CHiPs. The main storyline deals with fake tow truck driver (Angelo de Meo) who is listening to the police radio for calls from women who have broken down on the highway. The driver goes to wherever the women are calling from but, instead of towing their car, he instead steals their money! The first time that Ponch and Baker chase him, the crooked tow truck driver gets away. The second time, they catch him. Of course, both of the chases lead to multi-car wrecks on the highway. This episode features the first instance of a car flipping over in slow motion on this show. Apparently, that would go on to become a CHiPs trademark.

Of course, there are other little things that Ponch and Baker have to deal with. They pull over a drunk driver (Jim Backus) and Ponch, who is high from the nitrous oxide, struggles to give him a sobriety test. They also pull over an old surfer (Paul Brinegar), who has a talking myna bird in his truck. The bird was cute. These scenes did not add up too much but I imagine they were included to drive home the idea that Ponch and Baker are professionals, even if they do spend a lot of time talking about basketball.

This episode was actually kind of fun. Erik Estrada is not a particularly subtle actor to begin with and this episode actually gives him an excuse to overact even more than usual. As much fun as it is to watch Estrada bounce off the walls, it’s even more interesting to glance over at Larry Wilcox and see just how much he appears to resent having to work with someone who always has to be the center of every scene. Neither Wilcox nor Baker seem particularly unhappy about Ponch being sidelined for a good deal of the episode. Just as in the pilot, the chase scenes were genuinely well-filmed and it was impossible not to enjoy the shots of the motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic.

Next week, Ponch will probably save someone’s life while Baker seethes in the background. We’ll see!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.1 “Pilot”

Posted on November 13, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I was trying to pick a show to review after finishing up Nightmare Café, Jeff suggested that I go with CHiPs, a very 70s show about the adventures of the California Highway Patrol. I agreed after he showed me two episodes that involved a roller disco. I mean, how could I resist?

Of course, we won’t get to the roller disco for a while. That happened at the start of season 3. Instead, we’re starting at the beginning, with the pilot. The year was 1977. Jimmy Carter was president. Jerry Brown was the governor of California. And two cops on motorcycles were about to roll into history….

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Paul Krasny, originally aired on September 15th, 1977)

The pilot for CHiPs doesn’t waste any time in introducing us to our two main characters. When we first see officers Jon Baker (Larry Wilcox) and Frank “Ponch” Poncharello (Erik Estrada), they’re on their police motorcycles and chasing after a stolen sportscar. The chase being on the freeway and then eventually leads into Los Angeles. Unlike the live police pursuits that we regularly see on television, this chase is unique in that there aren’t any other police officers involved, other than Baker and Ponch. Maybe that’s the way that cops did things in the 70s but it does seem like Baker and Ponch would have had an easier time of it if they had some backup. As it is, they don’t catch the thief but Ponch does crash his motorcycle.

Sgt. Joseph Getraer (played by Robert “father of Chris” Pine) is not amused to learn that Ponch has damaged another motorcycle. The pilot wastes no time in establishing that Baker is the responsible, good cop while Ponch is the wild cop who takes risks and is always in trouble with the brass. In fact, Ponch is on probation because of all the disciplinary reports that have been written against him. Baker insists that Ponch is a good cop but it does seem like Ponch does manage to frequently crash his motorcycle.

Apparently, Larry Wilcox and Erik Estrada did not get long while they were co-starring on CHiPs. That’s not surprising. That tends to happen on a lot shows. What is interesting is that, even in the pilot, neither one of the actors seems to be making much of an effort to even pretend to like the other. Whenever Estrada flashes his big smile or dramatically looks up to the heavens, Wilcox looks like he’s having to use every bit of his willpower not to roll his eyes. I always point out when two performers don’t have any romantic chemistry. CHiPs is an interesting case where there isn’t even any friendship chemistry. At no point, during the pilot, do you get the feeling that either Baker or Ponch would really be that upset if the other was reassigned to some other part of the highway patrol. Even in the scenes where Baker defends Ponch as being a good cop, Larry Wilcox seems to be delivering the lines through gritted teeth.

As for the episode itself, it really is standard 70s cop show stuff. The stolen cars are being smuggled in a moving truck and, eventually, Baker and Ponch spot the bad guys on the highway and, after a chase, they catch them. Of course, before they do that, they deal with two accidents (one involving a glue truck and another featuring a woman trapped in an overturned car and yes, Ponch does get her number) and Baker orders a kid on a bike to pull over so he can give him some advice about riding in traffic.

As I said, it’s all pretty standard. But that doesn’t matter because, from the first minute we see them, the motorcycles are extremely cool and so are the scenes of Ponch and Baker weaving in and out of traffic while pursuing the car thieves. Baker may be dull and Ponch might come across as being more than a little flaky but no one is really watching for them. The pilot is all about celebrating the idea of driving fast on the highway and basically reminding the world that you don’t have to follow the rules, even if you are the one who enforces them! If you don’t want to join a car theft ring, you can always just get a badge and a motorcycle. Either way, it’s ton of fun!

For all of the episode’s obvious flaws, it was still easy for me to understand why this pilot led to a series. Motorcycles are cool! Will they still be a cool after 100+ episodes of CHiPs? That’s what we’re about to find out.