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, Baker has a new partner!

Episode 5.4 “The Killer Indy”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on October 25th, 1981)

When a group of bikers start holding illegal street races, Getraer wants it stopped before someone is seriously hurt!  Jon Baker and his partner Steve McLeish decide to end the races by any means necessary, especially since Steve’s brothers are involved….

Wait, who?

Played by a pre-transition Caitlyn Jenner, Steve McLeish serves as Baker’s partner in this episode.  We don’t really get much of an introduction as to who Steve is or why he’s even riding with Baker.  Everyone just acts as if Steve has always been there.  Ponch is not even mentioned and it’s difficult not to notice that Larry Wilcox seems a bit more cheerful than usual in this episode.  For once, he’s the one who gets to do all of the cool stuff while everyone else watches.

This was the first of several episodes that Erik Estrada missed during the fifth season, the result of being injured during a stunt gone wrong.  Jenner, who was then best-known as an Olympian, was brought in to play Steve McLeish.  Judging from this episode, Jenner was a remarkably bad actor.  Compared to everyone else in the episode, Jenner comes across as being awkward and stiff.  Like many nonprofessional actors, it’s obvious that Jenner was not sure what do when not delivering dialogue.  Jenner stands there, hands awkwardly positioned and occasionally trying to react to the other actors.  It’s really almost painful to watch.

It’s obvious that this episode was written with Ponch in mind.  Like Ponch, Steve has two brothers and used to be a motorcycle-racing delinquent when he was younger.  His older brother (who is played by the legendary character actor Robert F. Lyons) is named Toro, which might make sense if he was Ponch’s brother but, as it is, you really do have to wonder about the parents who would name one son Toro and the other sons Steve and Ted.  Ted, incidentally, is played by Kevyn Major Howard.  Howard, Lyons and Jenner have next to no features in common, leading one to wonder how they could possibly all be members of the same family?

There was some good motorcycle chase action in this episode.  There was also so much dialogue about the importance of wearing a helmet that, as soon as the gang’s leader announced he didn’t need a helmet, the most viewers had to know that he was doomed to ultimately be thrown from his motorcycle and crash headfirst into the pavement.  “He hit his head,” Getraer says and that’s the last we hear about the guy.

As for this episodes comedic subplot, Grossman begged his fellow patrol people to join him and his nieces at the waterpark.  While Baker, Steve, and everyone else took care of his nieces, Grossman hung out with his two bikini-clad neighbors.  Grossman winked at the camera as the CHiPs theme music started to play.

And so, it’s another day in L.A….