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, Lt. Palermo has a lot to deal with.

Episode 3.10 “Only In America”

(Dir by Charles Siebert, originally aired on November 9th,1997)

Lt. Palermo has a lot going on in this episode.

When we first see Palermo, he’s playing basketball near the beach.  As has been established in the past, Palermo, a middle-aged white guy, is apparently the best basketball player in all of Santa Monica.  In this episode, he discovers that he’s now the second best.  Jamal Rasheed (Elimu Nelson), who has just moved to town and who spends most of his time sitting in the stands and reading, turns out to be an even better player than Tony Palermo!  Palermo is enthusiastic about Jamal until he discovers that Jamal is a former college player who was suspended when it was discovered that he was shaving points to pay for his drug habit.  Jamal claims that he’s now clean and that he’s taught himself to read.  Palermo isn’t sure that he trusts Jamal …. and if you’re asking how this is any of Palermo’s business, you’re having the same reaction that I had while I watched this episode.

Palermo is also concerned about a young, roller-blading Romanian named Dimitri Radu (Nathan Anderson), who keeps committing crimes and declaring that he has diplomatic immunity.  It turns out that Dimitri wants to exchange his diplomatic immunity for political refugee status.  Palermo discovers that Dimitri’s father is a big time arms dealer and that his former partners are looking to take out both him and his son.  He also learns that the U.S. government is going to give Dimitri’s father citizenship in exchange for him testifying against his partners.  Palermo is outraged!

And again, Palermo — you’re a bicycle cop!  You wear those stupid shorts every day.  Nobody cared about your opinion, dude!

This episode featured some truly horrendous acting on the part of the guest cast.  It also featured a shoot-out in which Cory killed one of the arms dealers.  Usually, an officer involved shooting would lead to the officer being on desk duty while the shooting is investigated.  Instead, Cory hops on her bicycle and continues to look for Dimitri.  This was a pretty dumb episode but it’s Pacific Blue so I wasn’t expecting anything different.

Oh, how happy I’ll be when I finish this series.