Leslie King | 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, someone is performing emergency surgery on the street!

Episode 3.23 “Nightengale”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on March 23rd, 1980)

Something strange is happening in Los Angeles. Every time there’s a serious accident, a middle-aged woman (Louise Latham) appears and provides medical help to the injured. At the start of the episode, she even performs an emergency tracheotomy on the side of the freeway. Whenever the highway patrol officer on the scene asks her for her name, she avoids the question. And, whenever an ambulance shows up, she always manages to slip away. As Jon and Ponch discover, the woman is named Lucy Kenton and, even though she’s a medical expert, she’s not a doctor. With the help of the always-understanding Sgt. Getraer, Jon and Ponch help her to get her medical license so that she can legally perform surgery on the street. Good for them!

This was a bit of an odd episode. It seemed strange that the woman somehow always seemed to be around whenever there was an accident. A car would crash and suddenly, Lucy would come running up, almost as if she had been patiently waiting. The show acted as if it was just a coincidence but what are the chances that the same woman would be present at the sites of multiple accidents over the course of just a few days? And what are the chances that Ponch would just happen to be the responding officer at two of those accidents?

To be honest, that’s one of the things that always struck me as being strange about CHiPs. Somehow, the same people keep running into Ponch and Jon over and over again. I mean, Los Angeles is a big city and it’s home to a lot of people. But if you run into Ponch and Jon once, it seems you’re destined to keep seeing them for at least a week. Once they get that first speeding ticket or stern warning, people literally can’t step outside of their house without Ponch and Jon just happening to be somewhere nearby. That’s the sort of thing that would make me paranoid.

The B-plot of this episode featured a teenage couple whose van kept breaking down whenever they tried to run away from home. There wasn’t much to this story but it did feature “special guest star” Dana Plato as the younger sister of the female half of the couple. Plato delivered all her lines as if she was auditioning for a school play. Oddly enough, Dana Plato appeared at the start of this season as herself. She was one of the many celebrities to show up for the roller disco episode.

There really wasn’t much to this episode. It wasn’t terrible but it did feel somewhat insubstantial. We’re coming up on the end of the season and, from the last few episodes, I get the feeling the show’s writers just wanted to wrap things up and start their vacations. I don’t blame them!

Next week, the third season concludes!

This week, a Partridge leads a Brady into a life of crime!

Episode 2.3 “Family Crisis”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on September 30th, 1978)

Tired of being confined to a police car, Officer Sindy Cahill (Brianne Leary) cannot wait to graduate from motor school so that she can become the Highway Patrol’s first female bike cop. She’s so eager for the job that, when she’s off-duty, she rides around Los Angeles on a motor scooter and occasionally even makes an arrest. Most of the other motorcycle cops are skeptical about Sindy …. because she’s a woman. But Ponch is supportive of Sindy’s ambition …. because she’s a woman who he likes to look at. Ponch spends the majority of this episode standing behind Sindy and leering.

A fancy black Trans Am has been stolen from a movie set and it is being used in a series of robberies. The thieves have made no effort to disguise the car. They didn’t even bother to paint over the very noticeable green racing stripe that, in theory, would make impossible for them to drive around without being spotted. However, it doesn’t matter because the car is so fast and it can do so many fun movie tricks (like covering the street in smoke and oil) that no one can stop it. Sindy has come up with a plan to catch the thieves but Getraer doesn’t want to hear it and we all know why. In fact, when Sindy crashes her car while chasing the thieves, Getraer tells her that she needs to get checked out by the doctors before she goes back on duty. “If I was a man, you’d let me right back out on the street!” Sindy snaps. Sindy knows that Getraer is treating her differently …. because she’s a woman!

Fortunately, Getraer’s boss somehow finds a copy of Sindy’s plan and he decides that it’s brilliant. With both the LAPD and the Highway Patrol working together, they manage to ambush and corner the Trans Am on the Los Angeles docks. The two thieves push the wrong button in the car and they end up getting ejected from their seats and landing in the ocean. Baker and Ponch share a laugh while the two men probably drown.

The two nameless thieves are not the only ones stealing cars. Fred (Danny Bonaduce), a high school senior, is also stealing cars and — oh no! — he’s convinced his friend Wes (Christopher Knight) to go joyriding with him. What Fred didn’t count on was Wes being the nephew of Officer Jon Baker. Baker isn’t going to let anyone corrupt his nephew. When Ponch and Baker eventually catch Fred and Wes and their girlfriends in a stolen car, they put the handcuffs on everyone, even though only Fred is going to be charged with a felony. Baker tells Wes that he put the handcuffs on him to show him where his life is heading. Wes thanks his Uncle Jon and hopefully, he’s learned an important lesson about why the Bradys didn’t hang out with the Partridges.

Finally, Ponch has finally moved out of his RV and into a swinging new apartment! He’s got a view of the pool, so he’s happy. Good for him.

This episode …. actually, this episode wasn’t that bad. I liked Sindy because, if i was waiting to find out if I was going to be a motorcycle cop, I would probably ride around on a motor scooter too. And having Danny Bonaduce leading Christopher Knight astray appealed to me as a student of pop culture. There were some nice chase scenes. The Trans Am was cool. The California scenery was lovely. It was a fun episode.