Russell Shannon | 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 Freevee!

This episode was a tough one.

Episode 2.5 “MAIT Team”

(Dir by John Florea, originally aired on January 13th, 1979)

On a desolate stretch of highway, several cars sit totaled. At least two are in flames. A truck sits stalled in the middle of the road, the bloody body of the driver still behind the steering wheels. A woman screams that her father is having a heart attack. Sitting off the road, in a ditch, is an overturned police car. Officer Sindy Cahill is unconscious in the wreckage.

This hardly a typical episode of CHiPs. This show has featured many spectacular crashes but this episode is the first to feature fatalities. And its not just one person who dies in the crash. Eleven people die, including the driver of the truck and the man having a heart attack. The sight of Ponch looking at the dead bodies is jarring because it’s not what we expect from a show like CHiPs.

And, I have to admit, it was jarring for me on a personal level. In May, my Dad was in a serious car accident, one that ultimately involved four vehicles. He broke his shoulder and, afterwards, had to learn how to walk again. He spent a week in a hospital. (That was the week that we didn’t have any power due to the storms so I couldn’t even call to get an update on his condition.) He spent a month in a rehab facility, staying there until his insurance company kicked him out. Severely weakened by the stress and Parkinson’s, he came home and died a month later. I still find myself thinking about how, if he just hadn’t gone to the store that Sunday, he never would have been in that accident and he would still be alive today. Did I say that I merely think about it? It’s actually something that I’ve been obsessing on, even since the hospital first called me to tell me what had happened. I had a hard time watching this episode of CHiPs and I’m having a hard time writing about it right now.

It’s a good episode, even if it is very different from the episodes that came before it. Ponch, Jon, and a group of experts (known as the MAIT Team) attempt to determine what caused the accident. With a lefty state senator (played by Victor Newman himself, Eric Braeden) and an insurance investigator (Michael Bell) both eager to put the blame on Cahill, it falls to the MAIT Team to figure out what caused the accident and to assign blame. In the end, just as with my Dad’s accident, they discover that no one was truly at fault. The setting sun reflected off a distant mirror and temporarily blinded the driver. Cahill ended up in a ditch after she swerved to avoid him. The other drivers were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Life is like that sometimes.

The emphasis here was on everyone working together to get to the truth. Even the state senator and the insurance investigator played an important role in discovering what happened. By being skeptical, they forced the MAIT Team to question everything and truly uncover the facts of the accident. As this episode made clear, the MAIT Team wasn’t formed just to exonerate Cahill. Instead, the MAIT Team was all about getting to truth, no matter what that truth might be.

Though this episode was not an easy one for me to watch, it was a good one.

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, things get a little bit sad on the highway to Heaven.

Episode 2.19 “Heaven on Earth”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 26th, 1986)

Now, this episode made me cry!

While visiting an amusement park on their day off, Jonathan and Mark come across a lost six year-old girl named Sarah (Morgan Nagler). Jonathan offers to take Sarah to the park’s security office but Sarah says that she’s not allowed to go anywhere with a stranger. After explaining that he’s a former cop and knows how to deal with lost children, Mark asks Sarah for the name of her mother. After learning that Sarah’s mother is named Nancy, Mark goes to the security office and has them page her. Soon, Sarah and Nancy are reunited. Yay!

Later, as they drive through the desert, Mark and Jonathan are nearly run off the road by a drunk driver. A few moments later, they come across an auto accident. The owner of a jeep swerved to avoid the drunk and instead crashed into a station wagon. Jonathan suddenly tells Mark that they should leave but Mark walks up to the overturned car and discovers that it was being driven by Nancy. Nancy survived the accident but Sarah did not.

Broken-hearted, Mark blames himself. He tells Jonathan that, if he hadn’t been so eager to show off, Sarah and Nancy wouldn’t have left the park when they did and they wouldn’t have been in the car accident. Mark pulls the car over to the side of the road and tells Jonathan to get out. Jonathan reluctantly does so and Mark drives off.

Mark drives until the car runs out of a gas on the outskirts of a small town. The proprietor of a local store tells Mark that the town’s pretty much been dead since the new turnpike was built. There are two gas stations but they’re both closed on Wednesday because the owners like to go fishing together. Reluctantly, Mark goes to the local boarding house and asks for a room for the night.

Mark is shown his room by a helpful girl named Wendy (Alyson Croft). Inside his room, Mark spots a picture of Wendy with Sarah and realizes that Jonathan led him to the boarding house. Later, at dinner, Mark meets Wendy’s father, a divinity student named Tom Ward (Michael Anderson, Jr.) When Wendy goes to call her friend Sarah to find out how the amusement park was, Mark can only sit in silence as Wendy tells her father that Sarah’s family wants to speak to him. Without telling Wendy why, Tom says that he has to go to Sarah’s house. He tells Wendy to get to bed early and then he leaves with his wife and their infant son.

Mark goes back to his room. Wendy pops in and to give him a heater because the furnace is broken. Unfortunately, the heater is also broken and makes an annoying clicking sound. Mark angrily kicks it over before going for a walk.

While standing outside of a church, Mark hears the sirens of fire engines. The Ward house is on fire! The firemen manage to get out Wendy’s grandmother but they say there’s no way to rescue anyone else. Mark rushes into the house, determined to save Wendy. And …. he promptly faints.

When he awakens, he’s with Jonathan. Jonathan says that “the boss” has decided to give Mark the chance to play God. Mark says that he wants everything he wishes to be true and that he wants all of his mistakes to be corrected as if they never happened.

As a result, the town is suddenly thriving but the proprietor of the now 24-hour gas station is dead as a result of having worked himself to death. Wendy is alive but, because Mark wished for her to have everything she ever wanted, she’s now a spoiled brat. And Sarah….

When Mark demands to see Sarah, Jonathan takes him to the cemetery and shows him that Sarah is still dead. Jonathan explains that Sarah’s death was not his fault. It was the fault of the drunk driver and there was nothing Mark could have done to save her.

Mark awakens in the burning house. Not only does he manage to save Wendy’s life but, once he’s released from the hospital’s burn unit, he and Jonathan once again hit the highway….

This was a good episode, though I have to say that the Wards were a lot more forgiving about Mark burning down their house than I would have been. This episode worked largely due to Victor French’s heartfelt performance as Mark. Watching him, it was impossible not to feel his pain. In the end, the message was a good one, though I do think it would have been nice to see the drunk driver punished for his actions.