Mary Linda Phillips | 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, not Ponch can smile his way out of the darkness.

Episode 4.8 “Wheels of Justice”

(Dir by Gordon Hessler, originally aired on December 21st, 1980)

The streets of Los Angeles are dangerous in this week’s episode.

Stan West (Basil Hoffman) is a reckless driver who is constantly causing accidents by driving too fast and making unsafe lane changes. He gets away with it because he keeps changing his name.

Arthur Holmes (Joshua Bryant) is a drunk who Jon and Ponch have pulled over several times. Arthur gets away with it by claiming, after every accident, that his wife was the one driving, Denise (Christine Belford) goes along with it, even though she hates the fact that she’s enabling her husband.

A group of cheerleaders drive around and do their cheers while driving!

Finally, a gas leak at the hospital leads to all the newborn babies being loaded into an ambulance for transport. When the ambulance is side-swiped by Stan, the babies end up at the station. Getraer gives everyone a lesson on how to properly soothe a crying baby. It’s cute but it’s also so manipulative that it leaves you feeling oddly used. But, hey, at least it’s cute!

This episode of CHiPs took a serious turn towards the end when the drunk driver swerved to avoid the cheerleaders and the end result is that his wife was thrown from the car and killed. When the car was shown crashing in slow motion, the wife’s mannequin actually fell out of the car. While I imagine that was probably not planned, it still created a memorably macabre image. In the end, Arthur ends up sobbing while Denise lies dead just a few feet away from him. That’s a pretty dark ending for an episode of CHiPs. Not even a quick scene of the officers holding the babies could change the fact that this was a really downbeat episode.

And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. Driving drunk is selfish, stupid, and dangerous and CHiPs deserves some credit for not holding back.

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Jonathan and Mark go back to high school, just in time for prom! I went to four proms over the course of my high school years and I loved every one of them. There is no greater American tradition!

Episode 3.17 “A Night To Remember”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on January 28th, 1987)

It’s time for the prom!

Danny (Mitchell Anderson) wants to ask out Melanie (Kimberly MacArthur) but can’t bring himself to do it because he’s feeling insecure about the fact that his father lost his engineering job and is now working at a gas station. Danny makes extra money working at the local pizza joint but he loses his job when he throws a punch at bully Richard Davies (J. Eddie Peck, future star of Lambada).

Sammy (Joel Hoffman) wants to ask his lifelong friend, Kate (Susan Savage). But Sammy feels insecure because he’s short. When he tries to buy lifts to make himself taller, Richard calls him out right when he’s about to ask out Kate. Sammy is an aspiring stand-up comedian and he’s on the verge of dropping out of school all together. “I can be a comedian or a teenager but I can’t be both!”

Don’t worry, though. Jonathan is their new social studies teacher. And Mark is the coach of the girl’s volleyball team because every assignment is designed, in some way, to humiliate Mark. In this case, Mark takes a volleyball to the nose and spends the entire episode worrying that it’s broken. Mark really can’t catch a break (heh) on this show. He has to drive everywhere. He’s usually the one who has to do all of the hard physical work while Jonathan just appears wherever he wants. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a union for human angel helpers but then again, it’s not like Mark ever seems to get paid for all of his hard work.

Anyway, the stakes aren’t particularly high in this episode. Both Danny and Sammy eventually find the courage to ask their dates to the prom, though Danny doesn’t do it until he’s actually at the prom. And both of them take some time to tell off Richard. “Still wearing your mother’s underwear?” Sammy asks and Richard turns a dark shade of red as if Sammy has accidentally guessed his greatest secret.

I actually always like these episodes where Jonathan and Mark become teachers. They’re not as depressing as the ones where they end up working at a shelter or a retirement home. This episode was just about giving the students the best prom ever and that’s okay. Not everything needs to be a huge drama! Sometimes, you just need a night to remember.