Patrick Cranshaw | 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, two dumbs kids case a lot of trouble.

Episode 3.18 “Kidnap”

(Dir by Gordon Hessler, originally aired on January 26th, 1980)

Ponch and Baker have been assigned to escort to stupid kids — Pete (Brad Savage) and his weirdo friend Ray (Christopher Holloway) — to the country courthouse so that they can receive some sort of an award for an essay that they wrote about traffic safety. I don’t know, it sound pretty dumb. For some reason, local news reporter Pat Blake (Jayne Kennedy) is there to cover the story. Ponch gets busy flirting with Pat and Baker’s busy hitting on Pete’s older sister (Judy Strangis) and nobody notices Pete and Ray getting into an unlocked limo and starting the engine.

Meanwhile, two crooks named Solkin (played by legendary character actor Timothy Carey) and Bickel (Warren Berlinger) escape from custody, run down to the parking garage, and hop in the limo. Because those dumb kids turned on the engine, Solkin and Bickel steal the car with the two stupid kids in the backseat!

Even though this is entirely the fault of Pete and Ray, the entire Highway Patrol mobilizes to rescue them. This episode is one long chase scene. Solkin and Bickel want to drive up to Canada. (Draft dodgers!) Pete and Ray are trying to figure out a way to escape. Ponch and Baker are trying to discreetly follow without letting the crooks know that they’ve been spotted. Unfortunately, two stoners in a van try to help and almost give away the entire operation.

Of course, the kids are rescued and, of course, it’s all because of Ponch. Ponch dresses like an auto mechanic and then borrows a banged-up Cadillac that has fuzzy pink seat covers. Ponch follows the men and continually plays La Cucaracha by honking the car’s horn. While Baker and the other members of the Highway Patrol struggle to keep track of the kidnappers and continually screw up, Ponch solves this case almost single-handedly!

Okay, that’s a little unfair on my part. This is one of those episodes where the emphasis really is on team work. Everyone — from Grossie to Getraer to Bear to Ponch and Jon — does their part to follow the limo and to come up with a plan to save the kids. Still, it’s hard not to notice that, when it comes time to save the kids, it’s pretty much Ponch doing it on his own. We’re closing in on the end of the third season and it’s pretty much undeniable that CHiPs has become The Ponch Show.

This episode was kind of annoying, despite the presence of the always entertaining Timothy Carey. The main problem was that the two kids were jerks who had no one to blame but themselves for getting into that bad situation. I hope they were grounded for the rest of their lives!

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 Freevee and several other services!

This week, Jonathan encourages an elderly man not to give up.

Episode 1.23 “The Right Thing”

(Dir by Victor French, originally aired on March 27th, 1985)

Elderly Harry Haynes (Lew Ayres) lives with his son (Michael Durrell), his daughter-in-law (Marcia Rodd), and his grandson, Matt (Matthew Labyorteaux). When Harry wets the bed one too many times, his daughter-in-law demands that he be moved to a nursing home. (I suppose it’s a sign of the time that, too modern ears, that may sound like the set up for a tasteless joke but it’s actually how the episode begins and Lew Ayres does such a good job portraying Harry’s shame and panic that your heart just breaks for him.) Harry isn’t happy about going to the nursing home and he’s on the verge of giving up on life. Fortunately, the new orderly is Jonathan Smith and Harry is the week’s mission. Jonathan isn’t just in the nursing home to pass out magazines and books. He’s also there to encourage Harry not to give up hope.

This episode is the epitome of what most people would probably come up with if they were asked to describe a typical episode of Highway to Heaven. It’s sentimental, emotional, and so achingly sincere that it’s hard not to get caught up in it, regardless of how heavy-handed and occasionally simplistic the storytelling may be. With Jonathan’s encouragement, Harry starts to run with his grandson. Harry and Matt enters a grandparent/grandson relay race together. Harry’s son says that, if Harry wins, he’ll be allowed to move back home. Harry does win but it turns out that no one told his daughter-in-law about the deal. To the show’s credit, Harry’s daughter-in-law is not monster. She’s just exhausted from having to take care of the house, her teenage son, and an elderly man. Harry realizes that it wouldn’t be fair to her for him to move back in so, instead, he announces that he’s going to travel and see as much of the world as he can in the time he has left.

There was nothing subtle about the plot of this episode but Lew Ayres gives a sensitive and honest performance as Harry and Matthew Labyorteaux matches him as Harry’s grandson. (Lew Ayres was an excellent actor whose career began in the early days of Hollywood. He starred in the Oscar-winning All Quiet on The Western Front but his own pacifist beliefs led to him being temporarily blacklisted when he registered as a conscientious objector. He later made a comeback, appearing in films like Johnny Belinda and Advise and Consent but never receiving an Oscar nomination, due to the controversy over his beliefs.) This is a sweet episode, even if it is perhaps a bit simplistic with its message that old age can be held off by simply not giving up. Sad to say but aging is going to get us all eventually.