Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.8 “Heat In The Hole”

Posted on June 23, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, Chris is finally sent to prison.

Episode 4.8 “Heat In The Hole”

(Dir by Terence H. Winkless, originally aired on October 11th, 1998)

This is the dumbest episode of Pacific Blue yet and that’s really saying something.

The incarcerated are being murdered at the local women’s prison so, of course, a bicycle cop is sent in undercover. Actually, two bicycle cops are sent in. The homicide squad wants Chris to go in and pretend to be a prisoner. TC gets jealous of the hunky homicide detective who is in charge of the case so he assigns Bobby to go undercover as a prison guard and keep an eye on Chris.

This is one of those women’s prisons where everyone is young and attractive (no meth addicts here!) and apparently the official uniform is a tank top. It doesn’t take long for Chris to establish herself as being tough and willing to fight. Every prisoner comes to respect her, which is important because, when a riot breaks out, Chris reveals she’s a cop and that she needs the help of the prisoners.

And the prisoners are cool with that.

Seriously.

“Ignore the cop part,” someone says, “Think of how she’s treated us!”

That’s the power of being a bicycle cop. You can show up in a prison, beat people up for two days, betray everyone’s confidence, and the prisoners will still forgive you for …. reasons, I guess.

Needless to say, if you’re an undercover cop in prison, do not reveal the truth in the middle of a prison riot. That might work on Pacific Blue but it’s probably the dumbest thing you can do in real life.

While TC is sitting around at home worried, Monica sees this as her chance to make a move on him. Considering that TC and Chris haven’t stopped arguing since they impulsively got married in Vegas, maybe Monica isn’t really the problem here. I know that we’re supposed to be rooting for TC and Chris but neither one of them is particularly likable. I would not want to go out on a couples date with them.

At the end of this episode, two corrupt prison guards are arrested. Chris leaves the prison. TC pretends to be happy about it.

This was a dumb episode.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.7 “Damaged Goods”

Posted on June 16, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the bike cops are it again.

Episode 4.7 “Damaged Goods”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on October 4th, 1998)

Bobby has a new girlfriend named Annie (Tracy Hutson). Bobby says that he’s in love with her. Meanwhile, Granger is in lust with Annie’s best friend, Jo (Shannon Elizabeth, in an early role). After Granger sleeps with Jo, Jo tells him that he owes her $200. It turns out that both Jo and Annie get paid to have sex. Meanwhile, Annie’s roommate is found dead below a 6-story window.

Chris is convinced that Annie’s roommate was murdered. TC and Cory disagree. TC is especially angry because he thinks Chris is spending too much time hanging out with her friends in Homicide. Oddly enough, none of those friends show up in this episode. As well. no one from the Vice Squad shows up to investigate the campus prostitution ring. Instead, this is yet another episode where it somehow all falls to the bicycle cops.

Monica goes undercover and joins Jo and Annie’s therapy group, where Dr. Alicia Alper (Joyce Hyser) teaches that prostitution is empowering. Soon, Jo recruits Monica to work as a an escort. Or, at least, I think it was Jo. This episode is edited in such a haphazard way that it was hard to keep track of what was actually going on.

This episode finds Cory worrying about how she’s going to survive as a single mom. Her ex-boyfriend, Doug (Owen McKibben), returns and says that he wants to be in the baby’s life. Cory says that it’s been over a month since Doug reacted to the news of her pregnancy by walking out on her. Doug threatens to sue for the right to be a part of the baby’s life. Cory has a miscarriage. She says it was due to the stress Doug put her under. Doug says that it was due to Cory still working a very physically demanding and rough job despite being pregnant. I felt so bad for Cory in this episode, especially since the only person (other than Doug) who bothered to visit her in the hospital was Chris, who is pretty much incapable of feeling or showing emotion.

Anyway, it turns out that Annie’s roommate was murdered by a client and then the client was murdered by Dr. Alper. However, when the bike cops arrest her, several other woman all walk up and declares that Dr. Alper is innocent because they killed the client. However, Dr. Alper confesses. Bobby breaks up with his girlfriend. That’s probably for the best. Everyone knows Bobby should be with Monica.

This episode …. oh God. I mean, it tried to liven things up a little. There were a lot of intense interrogation scenes and a lot of jump cuts that were apparently meant to create tension. We would watch Chris ask a question and then jump to someone in a totally different room answering an unrelated question. It was very showy but it wasn’t very effective. These folks aren’t hard-boiled detectives. They’re bicycle cops.

Seriously, where were the real detectives?

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.6 “Silver Dollar”

Posted on June 9, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, gamblers are causing trouble on campus! It’s time to send in an undercover bike cop!

Episode 4.6 “Silver Dollar”

(Dir by Scott Lautanen, originally aired on August 30th, 1998)

At the local college, a bookie is trying to fix games and having his henchwoman beat up the students and the teachers who owe him money. The funny thing about the bookie’s enforcer is that she wears all black and a translucent top and she is constantly kicking people in the face but no one ever seems to notice her. I mean, I can still remember how, during the fourth season of The Wire, Wee-Bey Bice got angry at his son Namond for having a different haircut from all the other members of his crew. Wee-Bey said that you never want to give the police an easy way to spot you in a lineup and that really does make sense. I get the feeling that Pacific Blue might not be as realistic as The Wire was.

Anyway, this is yet another episode where a bike cop goes undercover. This time, recovering gambler Russ is sent undercover to take down the bookies and he’s given $500 of the department’s money to play with. This seems like a terrible idea. Cory eventually figures out that it’s a terrible idea and she spends the entire episode randomly showing up and yelling at Russ about his attitude. Eventually, Cory gets so mad that she beats Russ up. “That was so badass!” Russ says and it was kind of. That said, I do have to wonder about the fact that all of the members of Pacific Blue really do seem to hate each other. They’re always getting into fights or yelling at each other. It takes a lot of charisma to pull off the whole “renegade who does things his way” schtick and, as a character, Russ really doesn’t have it. Unfortunately, Cory doesn’t really have the charisma to pull off the “boss who demands results” thing eitehr.

My point is that this was a boring episode, Russ is a boring character. His roommate, Jamie, is even more boring. The whole subplot about Russ having a lucky silver dollar felt idiotic. For all the time that was spent on Russ trying not to blow his cover, it’s debatable whether or not his police work really had that much to do with taking down the bad guys. Instead, Cory just showed up and beat everyone up. That’s one way to get results. And it actually makes a lot more sense than assigning a bike cop to work undercover.

Why are bike cops going undercover? Aren’t they just supposed to be handing out tickets? On a good day, it appears that there are only seven members of the bike patrol so can they really afford for one of them to go a week without riding his bike? Seriously, is this any way to keep Los Angeles safe?

None of this would happen if Spencer Pratt was mayor.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.5 “Overkill”

Posted on May 26, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s time for another stupid trip to L.A.

Episode 4.5 “Overkill”

(Dir by Sara Rose, originally aired on August 23rd, 1998)

Jamie is learning martial arts from Master Soo Han (Yoshi Jenkins). When she is saved from a group of muggers by a fellow classmate named Kyle (Matty Liu), she starts to fall in love with him. Soon, he is teaching her how to be a better fighter. For some reason, Jamie doesn’t tell Kyle that she’s a cop. That makes things awkward when Kyle realizes that 1) the man who killed his mother is a student in the class and 2) Kyle is being groomed to be a government assassin.

I’ve always said that you can tell when a show has cast a professional athlete in a guest role because the athlete is always the worst actor in the episode. That was certainly the case here. At first, I was sure that Matty Liu was a professional martial artist. It turns out that he’s actually a pro surfer but still, my point stands. It doesn’t matter how many camera tricks or jump cuts the show uses to make Liu look like a badass, he’s still an amazingly stiff actor. The scenes of him and Jamie falling in love don’t work because he’s not capable of showing any emotion, let alone love.

Speaking of love, Chris is still mad that her husband didn’t select her to be promoted to sergeant. When she discovers a murder victim, she impresses Homicide Detective Thomas (Carl T. Evans) by figuring out that the victim died from a — wait for it — broken neck. WOW! Amazing deduction, Chris! I mean, how difficult is it to spot a broken neck? Even though Chris is neither a medical examiner nor a detective, Thomas invites her to fill in for a sick Homicide detective. Chris accepts.

TC’s not happy about that! Actually, TC’s never happy. He’s been in charge of Pacific Blue for five episodes now and he hasn’t smiled once. He has spent a lot of time glaring. In fact, both he and Cory spend most of their time glaring at other people now. I guess that’s what you do when you’re in charge, management by glaring.

Finally, Bobby and Spazz compete over — wait a minute, I got a name wrong there. What is Spazz’s real name? Is it Granger? Yeah, okay, sorry about that. Bobby and Granger serve as body guards for a French actress (Lydie Denier), who claims that she’s being stalked. Bobby has seen all of her films but she’s more attracted to Spazz, for some reason. Sorry, Bobby! I would have picked you.

Anyway, this was one of Pacific Blue’s dumbest episodes yet. Chris is even more whiny than usual. TC and Cory are useless. Jamie and Kyle’s fight scenes are edited in such a way that one gets dizzy trying to follow them. This episode featured bad acting and worst direction, No wonder Chris wants to transfer to Homicide.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.4 “Users”

Posted on May 19, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Jamie goes undercover …. again!

Episode 4.4 “Users”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on August 16th, 1998)

Pacific Blue started out as a show about bicycle cops. I always thought that was a stupid premise but, regardless of my opinion, the first two seasons pretty much focused on keeping the cops on the bikes. However, with the third and now the fourth season, the bikes have started to feel superfluous. Now, the bike cops are suddenly working murders and going undercover. This all seems like stuff that actual detective should be doing as opposed to a bunch of glorified traffic cops.

For instance, this episode features Jamie being sent undercover to befriend a teenage drug dealer named Brandon Jeter (future choreographer and Michael Jackson-accuser Wade Robson). Brandon, who has witnessed a murder, is being used as an informant by an intense narcotics detective named Perry Marcus (Roger Floyd). TC and Cory make a big deal about how they don’t like Perry’s tactics but why would Perry care? He’s not a bike cop and they’re not detectives.

This is only Jamie’s fourth episode as a regular character but it feels like the 100th time that she’s been told to work undercover. The problem is that we don’t know much about who Jamie is so there’s not really any emotional pay-off to seeing her pretending to be someone else. Jamie is upset when she sees how everyone — from Detective Marcus to drug lord Nick Lambros (Corey Pearson) — is manipulating Brandon but we don’t really know why. We know nothing about Jamie’s homelife. We know nothing about her past. We don’t know why she became a cop. She’s a character with no inner life. It’s not the fault of actress Amy Hunter that Jamie comes across as being boring. The scripts, so far, have given her nothing to work with.

Meanwhile, Moncia is having an affair with the recently promoted Commander McKinnon (Jeffrey Meek). The affair is often physically abusive but, when Bobby confronts McKinnon, McKinnon claims that Monica enjoys the pain. Eventually, Monica and Bobby get McKinnon being abusive on tape. The episode ends with Monica lustfully spying on TC in a neighboring apartment. Ugh. This show really annoys me with the way it portrays Monica. She’s literally the only character on the show who has a positive and largely guilt-free attitude about sex and the show always seems to be determined to either punish or villainize her for it. (What makes this especially annoying is that the show both judges and leers at Monica at the same time.)

As usual, this episode could have worked if the characters were more interesting. The idea that everyone on the show was using someone else had potential but the execution fell flat.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 4.1 “The Bulls Own Up”

Posted on May 13, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

This week, we start season 4.

Episode 4.1 “The Bulls Own Up”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on October 5th, 1988)

It’s time for a new season of 1st & Ten and things have changed!

Yinessa is nowhere to be seen. Instead, this episode features a college quarterback named Sonny Clowers (Gary Kasper) who is being courted by agent Max Green (Mark Lonow). Also not around is Jill Schrader, the team’s owner. She has sold the team to a fast food chain. The new owner of the Bulls is Charles (Monte Markham). In his first meeting with TD Parker (OJ Simpson), Charles explains that he runs a clean-cut, all-American company and he expects the Bulls to be a clean-cut, all-American team.

In other words, it’s time to trade all of the trouble makers and the drug abusers. Charles doesn’t want a team of individuals. He wants a team of …. well, whatever the opposite of an individual is.

TD is not happy to hear about this. Neither is Mad Dog, who is revealed to come from a fabulously wealthy family. Mad Dog’s father wants Mad Dog to do something that requires more skill than football. Hmmm …. maybe Mad Dog and all the other players could form their own company and buy the team themselves?

That doesn’t really sound like a great idea to me. How can you release or trade a player when that player owns the team? However, TD thinks that it’s a good idea. Zagreb thinks it’s a good idea. And Dr. Death shows up for practice in a three-piece suit, which somehow convinces everyone else that it’s a good idea!

Why do I get the feeling that this idea will dropped after six episodes?

This was an okay season opener. The Bulls being sold to a fast food chain certainly makes more sense than Delta Burke acquiring them in a divorce settlement. OJ Simpson recoiling at the thought of the team being expected to avoid scandal? That was almost to on the nose!

Finally, I can’t end this review without saying Donald Gibb, RIP. On a show not known for great acting, Gibb was definitely the exception.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.3 “Seduced”

Posted on May 12, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the bicycle cops clean up Malibu.

Episode 4.3 “Seduced”

(Dir by Terence H. Winkless, originally aired on August 9th, 1998)

Last week, I said that it appeared that the Pacific Blue recruits were no longer living in their funky loft. Well, it turns out I was wrong. This episode opens with Granger at the funky loft, hosting a party. Unfortunately, the party comes to an abrupt end when Granger tries to play an adult movie on his totally hip VCR. Uh-oh — it turns out that the lead actress in Barely Legal is the 16 year-old sister of one of Granger’s (dead) friends!

(She’s also played by Alison Lohman, a reminder that everyone had to start somewhere.)

Granger and Bobby Cruz set out to take down Malibu’s adult movie underground. TC agrees to help by telling Jamie Strickland to go undercover as a film student who needs a job. Strickland says that she’ll do it but she’s not going to have sex on camera. However, once she reaches the set, the sleazy director decides to put her in the film. Strickland calls Cory. Cory says, “We can’t pull you out now.”

Really? You can’t? Why are bicycle cops even going undercover?

Meanwhile, Playpen magazine offers Monica money to pose for them. They offer even more money if Monica can get the other women of Pacific Blue to pose as well. Needless to say, the other women of Pacific Blue are not willing to pose and they talk about how demeaning Playpen is for women. (Cory, who is pregnant but not showing, is at least tempted.) But the show still features a lengthy montage of Monica’s photoshoot. This show always tries to have it both ways.

This episode probably would have worked better if Granger was actually an interesting character but he’s not. It also would have helped if we knew anything about Strickland’s character, beyond the fact that she’s super-competent, but we don’t. Even the veteran characters — TC, Chris, and Cory — don’t really have any personality. Thankfully, this season has got Mario Lopez playing Bobby Cruz like A.C. Slater on a bicycle and Shanna Moakler, playing Monica as a scheming agent of chaos. Only Lopez and Moakler seem to to have really understood what type of show they were on.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.2 “Treasure Hunt”

Posted on May 5, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, cliffhangers are abandoned and emotions run wild.

Episode 4.2 “Treasure Hunt”

(Dir by Terence H. Winkless, originally aired on August 2nd, 1998)

When last we checked in with Pacific Blue, we had a bit of cliffhanger going on. Bobby Cruz was still considering whether or not to become a bicycle cop. Detective Monica Harper was preparing to go back to her usual department. And TC had just announced to Strickland and Granger that he wasn’t sure whether or not they would be continuing as bike cops.

Well, apparently, that all got worked out between episodes. Strickland and Graner are still bike cops and they no longer appear to be living in that funky loft they were occupying during the previous episode. Bobby is now a bike cop. And Monica is a bike cop too because apparently, she got transferred to Pacific Blue. She explains to Bobby that she goes wherever she’s sent but she’s not real happy about being a bike cop. Hey, Monica, we’ve already got a whiny character on this show. We don’t need another.

That whiny character — and yes, it is Chris Kelly — wants to be a sergeant. So does Cory. Both Chris and Cory take the sergeant’s exam. Chris scores higher, though only by five points. However, TC offers the sergeant’s position to Cory. Chris, of course, whines about his decision. TC replies that Cory’s been with the department longer and, unlike Chris, she’s never been written up for having a bad attitude. TC feels that Cory will be a better role model for the new recruits and he’s probably right. I mean, one of the few consistent things about Pacific Blue has been that Chris is generally thin-skinned and fairly rude to the people that citizens that she’s supposed to be protecting. Chris is the bike cop who always seemed to be annoyed whenever she actually has to talk to anyone who doesn’t ride a bicycle.

One reason that is not mentioned for TC not promoting Chris is that Chris and TC are now married and I have to wonder how it would look if TC’s first action as commander was to promote his wife. Honestly, how are TC and Chris even working together now? This seems like a textbook case of conflict of interest.

As for the rest of the show, Strickland killed her first bad guy. Shaken after shooting a convenience store robber, Strickland goes to a bar and gets drugged! It turns out that someone is slipping GHB into the drinks on the boardwalk. Could it have something to do with two obnoxious radio hosts who are broadcasting from the pier? Bobby Cruz is not happy when he discovers that his 15 year-old sister is apparently a fan of their program….

Yes, Bobby Cruz is a Mexican-American bicycle cop from a tough neighborhood who is very protective of his younger sister. Wasn’t that Victor Del Toro’s character as well? Being from Texas, I’ve always been very aware of how television has always stereotyped any character who happens to have a Spanish last name. With Pacific Blue, it looks like they just crossed out Victor Del Toro’s name in their scripts and wrote in Bobby Cruz instead.

Finally, Monica is looking for a new apartment. Cory tries to keep Monica from finding out that there’s an apartment available in her building because …. Cory’s a bitch, maybe? I don’t know. It’s very out-of-character for Cory. How is Cory going to be a sergeant if she gets this upset and petty over a new person being assigned to Pacific Blue?

Oh! Also, Cory’s pregnant! So far, only Chris knows. Why would anyone tell Chris anything? Chris is like hella mean….

Wow, a lot happened in this episode! In fact, I’d say almost too much happened in this episode. One got the feeling that the show’s writers wanted to focus on the newer members of the squad but, at the same time, they knew they had to come up with something for Chris to whine about. In the past, Pacific Blue often felt understuffed. This episode was definitely overstuffed.

Something is going to have to give.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 4.1 “Glass Houses”

Posted on April 28, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we start season 4!

Episode 4.1 “Glass Houses”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on July 26th, 1998)

The fourth season of Pacific Blue opens with many changes.

Palermo and Victor have retired. Cory is now dating Doug Fraser (Owen McKibbin). At the start of the episode, Cory and Doug accompany TC and Chris to Vegas, where they are married by — you guessed it! — an Elvis impersonator.

TC is now in charge of Pacific Blue and, while Chris and Cory both make plans to take the sergeant’s exam, TC focuses on bringing in some new blood. At the police academy, he recruits two recent graduates — hyper-competent Jaime Strickland (Amy Hunter) and edgy rebel Russ Granger (Jeff Stearns). He asks and gets undercover cop Monica Harper (Shanna Moakler) transferred to Pacific Blue so that she can go undercover to break up a meth operation at the local college. Everyone is shocked when Monica turns out to be young and blonde. Were they expecting a 40 year-old undercover college student?

Not happy about having to ride a bicycle, Russ decides to insert himself into Monica’s undercover operation. Monica and Russ meet the two main dealers, Quincy (Joe Michael Burke) and Cherry (Michelle Beauchamp). They discover that they’re getting their drugs from a chemistry professor (Robin Thomas). What they don’t do is make an arrest. Quincy and Cherry murder the professor and escape after setting off a bomb in the chemistry lab.

TC is not happy with his new cops. In fact, the episode ends with him telling them that he has doubts about whether or not to keep them at Pacific Blue. Fortunately, we the viewers know that they’ll be okay because they are all now listed in the opening credits.

Also listed in the opening credits is Bobby Cruz (Mario Lopez), the campus cop who drags Monica out of the laboratory right before it explodes. Bobby has a history. He was a member of the LAPD but, disgusted by the anti-Mexican racism that he saw, he became a campus cop instead. (Where I went to college, the campus cops were the biggest joke around.) TC offers Bobby a chance to be a member of Pacific Blue. Bobby says that he’ll think about it. We all know that means yes.

And that’s a good thing because this show could definitely use more Mario Lopez! In fact, the only reason I started reviewing this stupid series was because I knew Mario would be joining the cast eventually. Let’s hope Mario’s magic starts to make things better soon!

As for this episode, it was …. well, it wasn’t good. Other than Lopez, none of the new characters really made much of an impression. But, I am an optimist. I have hope.

Never give up hope.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 3.22 “Best Laid Plans”

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, season 3 comes to an end.

Episode 3.22 “Best Laid Plans”

(Dir by John B. Moranville, originally aired on April 19th, 1998)

Heh heh …. they said laid.

The third season finale of Pacific Blue finds everyone at a crossroads, almost as if the showrunners weren’t sure who would be back for the fourth season so they wanted to make sure that everyone had an excuse to leave. There’s a lot of personal drama in this episode and I guess it would be compelling if any of these people were the least bit likable or sympathetic.

Victor Del Toro is being investigated by Internal Affairs and he spends the majority of the episode telling people that he suspects that he’s going to lose his job.

Cory is dumped by her long-distance boyfriend and leaps into a new relationship with some guy she accidentally punched at a bar. (She was trying to hit his friend, who was being pretty obnoxious at the time.)

Chris takes a pregnancy test and it’s positive. TC asks her to marry him. Despite the fact that Chris was previously hoping TC would ask her to marry him, Chris says no because …. well, because Chris is the worst. No, actually, it’s because Chris doesn’t want TC to marry her just because he feels like he has to. Chris and TC have separate scenes where they imagine how wonderful it would be to have a baby and how annoying it will be once the baby grows up to be a bratty teenager. But then Chris finds out that it was a false positive.

Palermo, meanwhile, is burned out. He’s feeling old. He wants to do more than just look at crime scenes. Plus, he’s having sex with a 22 year-old (played by Saved By The Bell: The Next Class’s Sarah Lancaster) and he’d rather do that then go to work.

Sadly, Palermo does have to go to work. A gang of criminals is breaking into people’s home and carving letters on their foreheads. (The letters correspond to their last name — Edwards gets an E and so on.) It turns out that the leader of the gang blame Palermo for his mother’s death and is spelling out P-A-L-E-R-M-O. The bad guys are always one step ahead because a member of the gang (Ginny Shcrieber) is working as a receptionist at Pacific Blue headquarters. Do they not do background checks before hiring people?

Palermo does catch the guy, though only after several people have been permanently scarred. Once again, you have to wonder why the bike cops are the only people working these cases. Add that the end of the episode, Palermo announces he’s going to Italy.

That’s one down and four more to go! Who will be around for season 4?

We’ll find out next week!