Megan Wyss – 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, Bruce goes to back to high school.

Episode 6.13 “High Times”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired at January 16th, 1983)

The Highway Patrol is investigating a series of car thefts. At the scene of the latest theft, they discover several video games token that can only be used at an arcade that sits near a private school. The auto shop teacher at the school is John Casey (Jim Brown), a former car thief-gone-straight. Ponch and Bobby decide to have Bruce go undercover as a new student.

Not surprisingly, this makes no sense. First off, Bruce is just a cadet. He hasn’t graduated from the Police Academy yet. So, really, it’s debatable whether or not he would even be allowed to do undercover work. Secondly, it was established during his first appearance that Bruce is something of celebrity. He’s the national speedway champion. When he won the championship, his picture was on the front page of the paper, along with an announcement that he planned on becoming a cop. When Bruce shows up at the school, he’s riding his motorcycle and he does a bunch of tricks in the parking lot. It’s as if he wants his cover to be blown!

This was a weird episode. Danny Bonaduce shows up as a student but he doesn’t have anything to do with the car theft plot. (Apparently, he’s not playing the gang leader that he twice played during the previous seasons.) Instead, he just dances in the hallway and is elected king of the Grease Hop. (That’s a school dance where everyone dresses like a character from Grease.) The rest of the student body rolls around on roller skates. As for the thieves, they’re pretty easy to identify. Benny (Andrew J. Lederer) wears glasses and is in debt to some gamblers and is constantly dropping tokens all over the place. Matt (Jon Caliri) is the tough guy who doesn’t see why the tokens are so important to Benny. They’re working not for Mr. Casey but instead for Coach Hutton (Bruce Bauer).

This was a strangely insubstantial episode, even by the standards of CHiPs. So much time was spent on Bonaduce and his friends acting silly in the halls that one got the feeling that the production team was fantasizing about doing any show other than another episode of CHiPs.

Probably the most surprising thing about this episode is that Bruce went undercover as a high school student instead of Ponch.

Monsters will not be reviewed tonight so that we may bring you this very special presentation of 1983’s Have You Ever Been Ashamed Of Your Parents?

Yes, my retro television reviews will return next week but, until then, enjoy this blast from the past. In this hour-long presentation, Fran Davies (Kari Michaelson) is upset when her mother (Marion Ross) takes a summer job working as a maid for a rich family. At first, Fran thinks that Andrea (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the daughter of her mother’s employer, is a stuck-up snob but she soon learns that Andrea is instead painfully shy and that she has parents who are rich but unloving. Meanwhile, Fran’s parents are …. well, I wouldn’t call them poor. The film acts as if they’re poor but, from all indications, they appear to be comfortably middle class. The point is that they’re not rich but they are loving.

This is worth watching for Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance as Andrea, a character to whom I could relate. It’s not easy being both shy and beautiful. Fans of great character actors will also be happy to see James Karen, playing Andrea’s father.

Now, without further ado, here is Have You Ever Been Ashamed Of Your Parents?