Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 2.23 “The Greatest Adventures of CHiPs”

Posted on December 2, 2024 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, the second season of CHiPs comes to a close. Now, if you don’t remember much about what happened during the first two seasons of the show, don’t worry. This finale has got you covered. But first, let’s watch the opening credits and chair dance to the CHiPs theme song.

Episode 2.23 “The Greatest Adventures of CHiPs”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on May 12th, 1979)

With Ponch and Baker absent from the morning briefing because they’ve gone to Bakersfield to teach a class, Sgt. Getraer announces to the assembled members of the High Patrol that they have been nominated for an award for going beyond the normal call of duty. Everyone’s totally excited for Ponch and Baker. Armed with a bulky 70s tape recorder, Grossie asks everyone for their favorite Ponch and Baker stories so that he can write a speech honoring them….

Yep, it’s a clip show.

It’s not just any clip show, either. It’s a 90-minute clip show. Of course, there’s only about fifteen minutes of new footage. The rest of it is made up of scenes of Baker yelling at motorists and Ponch smiling. Even when CHiPs attempts to show why both of them deserves a reward, it’s obvious that Baker does all the work and Ponch gets all the credit.

I understand the logic behind clip shows. They’re cheap and it allows almost everyone to have the weekend off. They’re not very entertaining to watch, though perhaps they carried more weight in the days before streaming and DVRs ensured that you could rewatch your favorite scenes whenever you wanted to. They are, however, very easy to review.

This clip show marks the end of the show’s second season. A clip show always seems like a weak way for a season (much less a show) to go out but again, I get it. Everyone’s tired. Everyone wants to head to Cabo for the summer. Get us out of here! CLIP SHOW!

(That said, this clip show does get some credit for including some pretty groovy disco footage! SOLID! Estrada gets to do his Travolta impersonation while everyone watches and claps.)

The second season of CHiPs was actually pretty entertaining, even if it is kind of silly just how much the show highlights Ponch over Baker. Technically, of the two of leads, Larry Wilcox was the better actor but Erik Estrada always seemed like he was having more fun. The second season had a few dud episodes but it also had its share of spectacular stunts and a lot of lovely California scenery. Sindy Cahill being perfect at everything got old pretty quickly but at least Arthur “Grossie” Grossman was around to provide some comic relief.

Well, that’s it. There’s not too much you can say about a clip show. Next week, we’ll start season three!

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 5.5 “Country Blues/Daddy’s Little Girl/Jackpot”

Posted on November 13, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, Gopher almost gets rich!

Episode 5.5 “Country Blues/Daddy’s Little Girl/Jackpot”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on October 31st, 1981)

I have to admit that I groaned a bit when I saw that Florence Henderson was going to be one of the passengers on this week’s cruise. I still haven’t quite recovered from the trauma of reviewing The Brady Bunch Variety Hour and, whenever Florence Henderson showed up on any of these shows, she always had to sing a song. Florence wasn’t a bad singer but she wasn’t a particularly interesting one either. I remember that she always seemed like she was trying too hard to be Barbra Streisand whenever she performed a song of the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Her version of Broadway and easy listening was always adequate without being very memorable.

And, on this cruise, Florence does sing. She’s playing Annabelle Folker, a country singer who is hired to provide entertainment for the cruise. She sing a few country songs and speaks with a thick (and not very convincing) country accent. Annabelle is happy to discover that her childhood friend, Martin Correll (James Noble), is on the cruise with his uptight girlfriend and campaign manager, Barbara (Carol Lawrence). Martin — or Blinky as Annabelle calls him — is thrilled to be reunited with Annabelle. Barbara is less enthused and she eventually tells Annabelle that, if Martin is ever going to be a success in politics, he can’t spend all of his time with a country singer who says whatever pops into her head. What’s weird is that Annabelle decides that Barbara is right. She and Martin aren’t meant for each other. Martin is too much of a career politician. In the end, Martin leaves with Barbara and Annabelle leaves alone. It was a weird story. Annabelle came across like a stalker but Barbara wasn’t particularly sympathetic either. Martin was just kind of wimpy.

Meanwhile, Marcy Crane (Randi Oakes) boards the boat with her father, Richard Simmons (Mason Adams). Marcy’s just gotten a divorce and Richard is very protective of her. At first, he’s concerned when she meets Dr. Jonathan Hunt (Frank Bonner), a veterinarian. Once Marcy explains that she’s not going to rush into another relationship and she’s just looking for casual sex, her father gives the couple his blessing. This was an oddly inconsequential story.

Finally, Gopher finds a bag that’s full of money! After he counts the money, he discovers that he is now $47,612 richer! (Adjusted for inflation, that’s the equivalent of $130,000 today.) Or, at least, that’ll be the case if Gopher keeps the money. But Gopher’s a good man at heart so, ultimately, he tells Captain Stubing about the money. Stubing says that money will be Gopher’s if no one claims it at the end of the cruise. And indeed, it turns out that the money was not lost by any of the current passengers. Gopher’s happy until he spots a little old woman crying on the dock in Los Angeles. She says that she took a cruise two weeks ago and lost a bag with her life’s savings. Gopher gives her the money. Awwwww!

This was a sweet story and it was kind of nice to see Gopher get a plotline. Fred Grandy was a likable actor and I always like the episodes where Gopher reveals that he’s actually got a good heart underneath his goofy exterior. This story did feature one rather silly fantasy sequence, in which Gopher imagined riding in a limousine with Stubing as his chauffeur, Julie as his wife, and Viki as a little beggar child. It was kind of a weird fantasy, to be honest.

One good story out of three does not make for a great cruise. I enjoyed Gopher’s plotline but the other two stories alternated between being dull and annoying. This was not a great cruise.

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 2.13 “Down Time”

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Ponch loses his car and Baker loses his wallet.

Episode 2.13 “Down Time”

(Dir by John Florea, aired on December 16th, 1978)

While chasing two female car thieves, Ponch crashes his motorcycle and sprains his finger. Getraer is overjoyed because he can now require Ponch to take a few days off work. Ponch is happy because he’s just moved into a new apartment and he wants to get to know his neighbor, Kim Balford (Randi Oakes).

Kim says she’s an aspiring actress but actually she’s the head of a ring of car thieves. In fact, by an amazing coincidence, they’re the same car thieves that Ponch was chasing when he injured himself! Kim sees that Ponch has a new car, a brown Firebird. Ponch really loves that car. Well, too bad! Kim and her associates steal his car.

To Getraer’s disappointment, Ponch is soon spending his entire vacation at headquarters, pressuring people like Detective Bill Ross (Burr DeBenning) to find his car. Detective Ross informs Ponch that he’ll probably never see his car again but Ponch is determined to get it back.

Baker, meanwhile, just want to find his wallet. His misplaced it and he has no idea where it is. Ponch is upset that Baker is more upset over losing all of his money and his ID than over Ponch losing his car. Baker, realizing that this is CHiPs and Ponch therefore always comes first, apologizes to Ponch and agrees to set aside his own problems to help Ponch out.

Fortunately, Ponch and Baker do figure out that Kim is the one behind the car thefts. It all leads to a chase through the streets of Los Angeles. Kim and her two partners-in-crime are in one of those big trucks that are used to transports cars from one place to another. (I can’t imagine driving one of those things.) Since they’re off duty, Baker and Ponch have to make due with Baker’s pickup truck. (Fortunately, Grossman shows up on a motorcycle so this episode doesn’t turn out like that weird season one episode where Baker and Ponch spent the entire episode in a patrol car.) Kim is caught but, of course, Ponch’s beloved firebird is destroyed in the chase.

Good news, though! Baker finds his wallet in his jacket. Yay! YOU GO, BAKER!

This episode was actually a lot of fun. Watching it, you could just hear people in 1978 saying, “They steal cars? …. But, they’re women!” Randi Oakes, who would later be a regular on the show as a member of the Highway Patrol, gives a wonderfully over-the-top performance as Kim. As well, anyone watching should be able to relate to Getraer’s annoyance as he discovers that there’s no way get Ponch to stay home. Best of all, with so much of the action taking place in Ponch’s swinging bachelor pad, this episode was pretty much a museum-quality exhibit of the late 70s. Watching this episode was like stepping into a time machine.

It was fun!

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 4.24 “Paquito’s Birthday/Technical Advisor”

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to 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 the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984. Almost the entire show is currently streaming on Daily Motion.

This week, season 4 comes to an end.

Episode 4.24 “Paquito’s Birthday/Technical Advisor”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on May 23rd, 1981)

This week, Tattoo is stunned to see Manuel (A Martinez) and Consuelo Lopez (Linda Cristal) get off the plane with their young son, Paquito (Anthony Trujillo). Tattoo immediately guesses that Mr. Roarke must have given them a special deal so they could come to the Island and he snaps that Roarke is too nice.

Roarke, never one to worry about being nice when it come to Tattoo, replies that young Paquito nearly died earlier in the year and now, Manuel and Consuelo are on the verge of losing their frame. Manual and Consuelo wanted to give Paquito a wonderful birthday party before they end up homeless. Take that, Tattoo!

Manuel’s wealthy relative, Dona Delores (Victoria Racimo), is also on the Island and Paqutio soon starts hanging out with her, despite Manuel resenting her for having money. Delores, who cannot have children of her own, has an idea. Maybe she could adopt Paquito and give him the life that Manuel and Consuelo never could. In return, she could help Manuel’s out with his money problems.

Don’t worry! Manuel and Conseulo don’t lose Paquito and they even get to stay on Fantasy Island. And it also turns out that Delores isn’t so bad after all. This is Fantasy Island and nothing bad has happened on Fantasy Island since that hunter died at the end of his fantasy. The ending is happy and the fantasy is ultimately pleasant and kind of forgettable. In the end, what I’ll always remember is that the voice of young Paquito was obviously dubbed by an adult woman trying to sound like a child. That was kind of weird.

Of course, it wasn’t as weird as the other fantasy.

Nancy Harvester (Randi Oakes) has spent the past few years of your life taking care of her terminally ill uncle. After her uncle passed, he left her a fantasy in his will. He wants Nancy to enjoy life and finally get a boyfriend. When Roarke informs Nancy why her uncle wanted his will to be read on Fantasy Island, Nancy replies that she’s never even been with a man and there’s no way she can make her uncle’s last fantasy come true. (Her uncle’s last fantasy was for his niece to lose her virginity? That is definitely kind of creepy….) Fortunately, Nancy’s childhood crush, Gene (Jim Stafford), is on the Island and Roarke summons a special friend to give Nancy advise.

Meet Helen of Troy (played by Jill St. John)!

Yes, the same Helen of Troy who inspired one of the bloodiest and most tragic wars in ancient history is the person that Mr. Roarke recruits to give advise to Nancy. I mean, was the mermaid busy? What about Aphrodite? Remember how Aphrodite lives on Fantasy Island? Couldn’t Mr. Roarke have asked them to help out?

Interestingly enough, the dialogue between Helen and Roarke indicate that they are lifelong friends, which would indicate that Mr. Roarke is several thousand years old. Helen also makes a few comments that suggest that she and Roarke were once quite close. Was Mr. Roarke involved in the war with Sparta? I wonder which side he was on.

But what about Nancy? Does Helen help out Nancy? Yes, of course she does. This is Fantasy Island so, of course, Nancy and Gene depart on the same plane.

All fantasies come true on Fantasy Island, which is one reason why the original show continues to be so loved. I would argue that the reason why the recent Fantasy Island reboot failed was because it complicated things by attempting to explore the lives of the people who lived and worked on the Island, as opposed to just focusing on fantasies with happy endings. For all the time that I’ve spent speculating about what the Island actually is and how it works, it ultimately doesn’t matter. No one cares how Fantasy Island works. All that matters is that it does.

So ends season 4 of Fantasy Island. It was a bit of an uneven season. The obvious hostility between Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize made more than a few scenes a bit awkward to watch. I miss the playfulness that defined their interactions during the earlier seasons. But still, the Island is lovely and it’s fun to imagine what it would be like to really go there.

Next week, Roarke and Tattoo are joined by a new helper as the fifth season begins!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: CHiPs 1.6 “Baby Food”

Posted on December 18, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Ponch continues to screw up even the simplest of tasks!

Episode 1.6 “Baby Food”

(Dir by Paul Krasny, originally aired on October 27th, 1977)

This week’s episode of CHiPs is yet another story about how Frank “Ponch” Poncharello is terrible at his job.

While riding down the highway, Ponch and Baker find themselves stuck behind a truck that is transporting several boxes of baby food. Suddenly, the truck’s backdoor slides open and the boxes start to fall onto the highway. Baker is able to easily dodge the boxes, pull up to the side of the truck, and motion for the driver to pull over. Ponch, on the other hand, is nearly killed because he comes close to hitting every box that falls out in front of him. I mean, the boxes are not that big. I’ve never even driven a motorcycle and I could probably do a better job of avoiding them than Ponch did.

Once the driver of the truck has stopped and the boxes are being reloaded, Ponch and Baker head on their way. They are heading to headquarters, where they are supposed to be waiting for a call from the courthouse to let them know if they need to come down and testify in a case. Still, Baker finds the time to pull over and ask two hippies if they need any help changing a flat tire on their school bus. Baker is perfect and Ponch …. well, Ponch is not.

At headquarters, Ponch hits on the dispatchers, commandeers a meeting room so he can watch his favorite soap opera, and is basically so obnoxious that Getraer kicks both Ponch and Baker out. After taking some time to rescue a man and his dog from a car that’s caught on fire, Ponch and Baker head over to the trailer park that Ponch calls home. Ponch wants to change his uniform (which got covered in soot as a result of the fire) and Baker wants to see Ponch’s beautiful new neighbor. Despite being under orders to remain easily contactable, Ponch accidentally knocks his phone off the hook.

That’s not good because Gatraer actually needs to talk to Ponch. It turns out that the baby food that fell off the truck is infected with botulism and two of the boxes are missing! Gatraer has to leave his office and ride his bike all the way to Ponch’s trailer park to let Ponch — who is now wearing a “Keep on Trucking” t-shirt — know about the contaminated baby food. Gatraer asks Ponch and Baker if they saw anyone scavenging at the scene. It takes Baker a while to remember the school bus but at least he did remember! Ponch apparently only has a five-minute attention span.

The hippies are eventually tracked down and their baby is rushed to the hospital, where he recovers. While Gatraer congratulates Ponch and Baker on finding the contaminated food, he does tell them that they need to stop getting personal calls at the office. It turns out that Melinda, the trailer park girl that Ponch likes, has been calling HQ and asking to speak to Baker. Obviously, Melinda knows who has career potential and who is one mistake away from getting evicted from his mobile home.

This episode was enjoyable because it’s always fun to watch people get mad at Ponch. Larry Wilcox reveals some unexpected comedic abilities in this episode. (Just look at his face when he realizes Ponch is using a conference room to watch his favorite soap opera.) I also liked how clean and friendly the trailer park was. CHiPs originally aired quite a bit before my time but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the show led to be people moving to California. I mean, even the trailer parks are nice to look at!

Film Review: Acapulco Gold (dir by Burt Brinckerhoff)

Posted on September 10, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I just finished watching Acapulco Gold, a rather goofy 1976 film about …. well, who knows?

The film starts with some well-shot footage of marijuana farmers checking out their crop but then it abruptly abandons all of that to follow an American insurance salesman named Ralph Hollio (Marjoe Gortner). Ralph is at an airport in Acapulco, waiting to board a flight back to America. He’s approached by a nun who asks him to carry a piñata for her. Ralph says sure but — oh no! — that piñata is actually full of heroin! Ralph’s an unwitting drug mule and not a very good one because it doesn’t take long for him to get himself arrested and sentenced to 40 years in a Mexican prison.

Despite this run of bad luck, Ralph remains surprisingly cheerful. One is tempted to almost describe him as being a Candide-like figure but that would probably be giving this film too much credit. In prison, he meets another prisoner, a boat captain named Carl Solberg (Robert Lansing). Carl is sprung from jail by local businessman, Morgan Frye (John Harkins). Frye wants Carl to sail a boat from Mexico to Hawaii. Carl agrees but he insists that Morgan also pull some strings so that Ralph can serve as his first mate. Morgan, of course, agrees.

The film’s “action” shifts to Hawaii, where it turns out that Ralph and Carl are being used as a part of a much bigger plot. Or something. To be honest, it’s a bit difficult to figure out just what exactly is going on. Acapulco Gold has a make-it-up as you go along feel to it. Occasionally, it’s amusing. Often, it’s frustrating. As soon as you start to get in any way interested in one storyline, it gets abandoned. The film doesn’t have a plot as much as it has a bunch of scenes that we’re left to assume are meant to be somehow connected.

For instance, there’s an elderly couple who keep showing up at inopportune times, providing what I guess is meant to be comedic relief. At one point, it appears that the couple is surely doomed but, several scenes later, they show up at a golf course and they look none the worse for wear. There are lengthy sailing scenes, mixed in with lengthy helicopter scenes. None of them add much to the plot but the Hawaiian scenery is frequently nice to look at. Ralph falls for Morgan’s girlfriend (Randi Oakes) while a Congressman and a corrupt DEA agent use huge, oversized walkie-talkies to communicate with two people who we occasionally see wandering around in the jungle. There’s a golf cart chase, which ends with a labored joke about a two-strike penalty. And, since this is a low-budget 70s film, there’s a day-for-night sequence that is so ineptly lit that we can barely see anyone for several minutes of the movie. (Though his face may not be visible, one can always spot Marjoe Gortner by his hair. 70s Marjoe had a lot of hair.)

At its best, Acapulco Gold is a charmingly incoherent time capsule, a chance to hop in a time machine and go back to 1976. At its worse, it’s a total mess. That said, it’s short enough that it’s never exactly boring and the randomness of it all occasionally lends the film a dream-like atmosphere (albeit one of those dreams that you forget about after you’ve been awake for 87 minutes). As I previously stated the Hawaiian scenery is lovely and some members of the cast — Robert Lansing and Ed Nelson, in particular — do the best that they can with their inconsistently written characters. The whole thing is such a slapdash affair that it becomes oddly fascinating to watch.

As for the film’s star, Marjoe Gortner was a former child evangelist whose claim to fame was being the subject of Marjoe, a documentary in which he admitted that he didn’t believe in anything that he preached and that he was just scamming people out of their money. Perhaps not surprisingly, Gortner was usually best-cast as villains or unpredictable rogues. (His best performance was as a morally ambiguous space pirate in Starcrash.) In Acapulco Gold, Gortner is playing a normal, ordinary guy who finds himself caught up in the drug underworld. Gortner is miscast as a naive innocent and, instead of projecting any sort of shock over anything tht he experiences, Gortner’s laid back performance suggests that there were multiple reasons why this film was called Acapulco Gold.

Acapulco Gold is currently viewable on Prime. It’s not a particularly good film but Hawaii has always looked great.