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 fifth season comes to an end.
Episode 5.27 “Force Seven”
(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on May 23rd, 1982)
When evil rich guy Nakura (John Rhys-Davies) steals a short-range missile from a military convoy, he informs the Mayor of Los Angeles that he will fire that missile at the city unless he’s paid a healthy ransom. The Mayor wants to send in the SWAT Team but one-eyed Lt. John Legarre (an eyepatch wearing Fred Dryer — yes, the star of Hunter) objects. Guns won’t do the job, Legarre explains. Why not send in Force Seven?
Led by Legarre, Force Seven is a secret division of the LAPD. Including Legarre, there’s only four of them. (So, why aren’t they Force Four?) Sly (Tony Longo — hey, Mad Dog from 1st & Ten) is tough and strong and also a ventriloquist. Cindy (Dona Kei Benz) is small but fast and doesn’t have a sense of humor. Rick Nichols (Tom Reilly) is a rebel cop who does things …. HIS WAY! What do they all have in common? They all know karate!
This doesn’t sound like an episode of CHiPs, does it?
Well, technically, it’s not. It’s a backdoor pilot. Ponch and Baker appear at the start of the episode, arresting an engineer who is carrying the schematics for the stolen missile. And they also appear at the very end of the episode, in which Getraer asks them if they remember that engineer they pulled over. However, neither Ponch nor Baker interact with anyone from Force Seven. I get the feeling that the Force Seven pilot was shot and then someone decided, “Why don’t we add Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox and disguise this as an episode of CHiPs?”
Imagine if you were a CHiPs fan in 1982. It’s the night of the season finale. You turn on the TV because you want to watch motorcycle chases and car crashes. Instead, you find yourself watching Fred Dryer wearing an eye patch and Tony Longo using a puppet to discuss elements of Eastern philosophy. That’s one reason why backdoor pilots have never made sense to me. They always seem like they would have just ticked off anyone who was watching.
Force Seven did not become a show. From watching this episode, I think it probably would have been enjoyably dumb if it had led to a series. As I already mentioned, Fred Dryer wears an eye patch. Tony Longo is made up to look like Sylvester Stallone. (His character is even named Sly!) There’s something kind of amusing about two guys who are so big that they could obviously just take anyone out with one punch instead choosing to drag out every fight with karate.
(Amusingly enough, in Force Seven, the mayor of Los Angeles was played by former real-life mayor Sam Yorty, who ran for President in 1972. The police commissioner was played by Ed Davis, the real life former chief of the LAPD who was serving in the California State Senate at the time and who later ran for the U.S. Senate in 1986.)
It is a little sad that this was Larry Wilcox’s final episode of CHiPs. Fed up with Estrada getting all of the good storylines, Wilcox did not return for Season 6. (His replacement would be played by Force Seven‘s Tom Reilly, though as a different character.) For the first two seasons, Wilcox was the main character while Erik Estrada was the comedic sidekick. However, by the time season 5 rolled around, it was clear that the producers were far more interested in Estrada than Wilcox. As an actor, Wilcox wasn’t a showy as Estrada but he was more believable a cop. In his final episode, Wilcox gets not a grand goodbye but instead appears only in two brief scenes.
Next week, we’ll start the sixth and final season!
Through the Shattered Lens 