Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 3.24 “Dynamite Alley”

Posted on June 23, 2025 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 Prime!

This week, season 3 comes to an end.

Episode 3.24 “Dynamite Alley”

(Dir by Bruce Kessler, originally aired on March 30th, 1980)

After testifying in a trial in Bakersfield, Bonnie (Randi Oakes) is driving back to Los Angeles when, somehow, she ends up flipping her squad car. In the hospital, Bonnie swears that she had to swerve suddenly to avoid a truck that came out of nowhere. The only witness to Bonnie’s accident is a pre-adolescent named Corey (Bryan Scott), who was watching as Bonnie drove by his house. Corey says that he saw the truck but Ponch and Jon come to suspect that he might be lying because he doesn’t want Bonnie to get in trouble. Meanwhile, Grossman is writing an article on how tired drivers can hallucinate seeing other vehicles and he comes to suspect that this is what happened to Bonnie.

And he’s right! It’s interesting that, just last season, CHiPs did an entire episode about proving that Sindy Cahill was not responsible for a crash she was involved with. Meanwhile, this season ends with an episode that’s all about Bonnie being a menace on the streets. Of course, event though Bonnie flipped her car after imagining seeing a truck in front of her, she gets to keep her job and everyone has a good laugh about it.

My main issue with this episode is that Corey was 1) portrayed as having a stutter and 2) nicknamed Blabbermouth by everyone he knew, even the characters who were supposed to be sympathetic to him. When he showed up in the hospital to confess that he didn’t really see a truck push Bonnie off the road, Bonnie replies, “Oh, Blabbermouth.” Even Jon and Ponch call him Blabbermouth. As a former stutterer, this episode really annoyed me.

As for our B-plot, the “funny car show” is in town. All sorts of weird vehicles show up on the streets. One man tries to drive a tank to the show and people start throwing bottles at him. When Baker and Ponch show up to investigate the tank, Baker nearly gets hit by a glass bottle that’s thrown at him by two kids. Ponch grabs one of the kids but then just laughs and lets him leave. Really, Ponch? BAKER COULD HAVE LOST AN EYE!

And that’s how the third season ended, with Bonnie crashing her squad car because she had a hallucination and a poor kid with a stutter being called “Blabbermouth” by the police. That’s not the best way to end a season.

Season 4 starts next week!

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 3.9 and 3.10 “Drive, Lady, Drive”

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s a special two-hour episode of CHiPs!

Episodes 3.9 and 3.10 “Drive, Lady, Drive”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on November 10, 1979)

The police at nearby Palma Vista are on strike and the state of California has agreed to allow some members of the Highway Patrol to patrol the town until the strike is over. Getraer assigns Baker, Ponch, Bear, and some new guy named Lenny (Leon Isaac Kennedy) to head over to the town, Baker is named the OIC, which I eventually figured out stood for “Officer in Charge.” Getraer knows better than to give the job to Ponch.

Ponch, by the way, is back! After being absent for two episodes due to Erik Estrada actually injuring himself in a motorcycle crash, Ponch returns in this episode and he goes through the entire episode with this huge grin on his face as if he’s saying, “You know you missed me.” Ponch’s return means that Baker is once again relegated to being the strong, silent partner who doesn’t really get to do anything. In fact, Baker crashes his motorcycle early on in this episode, as if the show was trying to tell us, “See? It could happen to anyone!”

The striking cops accuse Baker, Ponch, Bear, and Lenny of being scabs and strike breakers. I’m not really a fan of public sector unions. (When it comes to the police striking, my hero is Calvin Coolidge, who came to fame when he broke up a policeman’s strike in Massachusetts.) Still, it felt strange to watch the show’s heroes cross that picket line. That would definitely not happen on television today.

There’s a lot going on in Palma Vista. There’s some rich kids who keep joyriding in a dune buggy and who think they can escape prosecution by crossing the city limits. (Joke’s on them! The Highway Patrol has jurisdiction everywhere!) There’s some truck hijackers who are setting up a headquarters in town. There’s an angry city councilman (Michael Conrad) who doesn’t feel his children should be held accountable for their actions.

That said, the majority of this two-hour episode centered on a stock car race and one of the racers, Candi Wright (Kelly Harmon). Will Candi win the big race or will she lose to her friendly rival (and possible future romantic partner) Don Croyden (Jordan Clarke)? Will Ponch be able to both date her and do his job? And most importantly, will she be able to adopt a traumatized little girl (played by Tracey Gold) who Candi discovered outside of a burning house? That’s a lot of storylines for someone who wasn’t even a regular cast member and a part of me wonders if maybe this episode was meant to be a secret pilot for a Candi Wright television series. It would explain a lot.

This really was a basic episode of CHiPs, with the only real difference being that it was two-hours long for some reason. A lot of what happened in the episode, especially the racing footage, felt like filler. There was really no need for this to be a double-sized episode. It also doesn’t help that, as opposed to the lovely Los Angeles scenery that we usually see, this episode took place in a rather ugly town. There was some appropriately spectacular crashes but, in the end, this episode ran too long and felt a bit pointless. Get the Highway Patrol back on the highways!

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 2.20 “Quarantine”

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, things get a little dull.

Episode 2.20 “Quarantine”

(Dir by Harvey S. Laidman, originally aired on February 24th, 1979)

When a Korean teenager tries to stow away in the backseat of a car being driven by two women who freak out when they discover that he’s back there, it’s Ponch and Baker to the rescue. They take the teenager back to the station. Unfortunately, the teen, who does not appear to speak English, turns out to be extremely ill. He’s rushed to a hospital and the station is put under quarantine.

That means that Baker, Sindy, Grossman, and Getraer are all stuck with each other. (Ponch was lucky enough to get out of the station before the quarantine was declared.) There are also two prisoners at the station, a man (Tom Poston) with multiple personalities and a young but witty criminal (Jody St. Michael) who wears a leather jacket and who is always looking for an excuse to crawl around in the air ducts. Eventually, Harlan enters the station and ends up getting quarantined as well. Oddly enough, the doctor who tells them that they’re quarantined is allow to enter and leave the station, despite not wearing any sort of protective gear. For that matter, the two women who were in the car with the teenager are also allowed to leave. This really isn’t much of a quarantine!

It’s also not much of an episode of CHiPs. I know that I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about how, during its second season, CHiPs essentially became the Ponch show but I may have to stop doing that. Ponch is barely in this episode and the end result is definitely the most boring episode of this show so far. This is an episode that could have actually used Erik Estrada’s tendency to overact every single minute that he’s onscreen. Larry Wilcox was definitely a better actor than Estrada but he’s so low-key that Baker’s just not that interesting when he’s left to his own devices. One gets the feeling that Estrada would have totally gone totally overboard in portraying Ponch’s desire to leave the station but that would still have been more interesting than what we ended up with.

CHiPs is ultimately a show that’s about the joy of the California scenery and the excitement of driving a motorcycle down the highway. It’s a show that works best when everyone is outside and on or in some sort of of vehicle. With the exception of the opening scenes, this episode takes place almost entirely inside the station. (And the station, it must be said, it not a particularly intriguing location.) This episode fails because it goes against everything that makes CHiPs an entertaining show. Fortunately, in the end, it turns out that the kid only had the flu and quarantine comes to an end. Baker and everyone else is set free so that they can ride again.