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, infedility is in the air.

Episode 3.20 “With This Ring”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on April 5th, 1998)

When Cory and Victor find a dead man on the beach, all of the evidence seems to indicate that he was killed as a result of an extramarital affair.  His widow previously hired a detective agency to test his fidelity.  His killer forced his own wedding ring down his throat.  Someone is killing cheaters.

So, of course, Palermo has Cory and Victor go undercover as a married couple.

This isn’t the first episode of Pacific Blue to feature the bike cops going undercover.  It’s actually something that has happened fairly frequently during the third season.  On the one hand, it gets the characters off of those stupid bicycles.  On the other hand, why would a bunch of bike cops be investigating crimes?  Bicycle cops are like any other uniformed cop.  Their job is to keep general order, issue tickets, and secure crime scenes until the actual detectives can show up.  The bicycle cops are police officers but they’re not detectives.  At least, that’s the way it works in the real world.  In the world of Pacific Blue, the Malibu PD apparently doesn’t have a plainclothes department and all of the work is done by the same 5 bicycle cops.

While Cory and Victor go undercover, TC tries to deal with the fact that his parents are splitting up,  He really struggles with the news of their upcoming divorce.  TC is also in his mid-30s.  Once you’re closer to 40 than 30, you should be able to handle your parents splitting up with a modicum of maturity.  The only good thing about this storyline is that wonderful Andy Buckley made one of his far-too infrequent appearances as TC’s older brother.

This episode ended with TC and Chris promising each other that, in 35 years, they would still be together.  Those will probably be the 35 most boring years of anyone’s lives.

This was another forgettable episode.  At least there’s only two episodes left this season.  And starting with season 4, Mario Lopez arrives as a new member of Pacific Blue!  It can’t happen soon enough.