‘CHiPs’ Retro Recap: ‘Quarantine’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

Sometimes, television shows change things up and offer their audience some unique plotlines and character moments, and there’s good reason for that. Because once in a while you simply have to mix it up storytelling wise, but while the characters may go and do something new, and the story may surprise, all of these shows stick to one inherent rule; never mess with the core formula of the show. That means if the story takes place on a starship in space, you keep the starship involved somehow, and if it’s a police serial named CHiPs, and it is about two highway motorcycle cops named Frank Poncherello and Jon Baker, you keep those guys on their bikes and on the highways.
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Which is why I was so incredibly surprised by the next episode in this series, ‘Quarantine’. Because this particular tale did the outright impossible and found a way to take both Ponch and Jon off the road in the most unique way imaginable, by exposing some of the CHP’s finest officers to a potentially contagious and dangerous illness. That, was set into motion by having Ponch and Jon join in on a high speed pursuit early on in this tale, wherein we learned that two college gals were being held hostage by a young Asian man, who was sitting in the backseat of their car with a pipe bomb, and rather than let them get to his desired destination of Bakersfield, they led the vehicle to Central and that’s where things really got interesting.

Because once this unfortunate convoy arrived at their destination, the young man stepped inside Central and promptly passed out after threatening Grossie, Getrear, Sindy and Jon and a couple of prisoners present in the breakroom with his homemade bomb. And that’s when we came to discover that he was severely ill, prompting a quarantine of headquarters and well, my first worry was that this episode would quickly go into some boring territory since clearly the formula was about to be abandoned in this tale. But thankfully, that wasn’t the case in the slightest. Because the addition of the criminals I made mention of, allowed for some fascinating plot lines to unfold. After all, it’s not every day that a man with multiple personality disorder is included in a quarantine, something that everyone in the office handled beautifully by way of respect and genuine care for this man, and it was equally as entertaining to see Sindy chase the other guy through the ventilation shafts when he tried to escape.

But the true centerpiece of this segment of the story revolved around a quest for knowledge. Because if the doctors at the hospital could figure out where this young man came from, they would better understand his symptoms and if his illness was a legitimate issue or not, and thanks to Jon and Sindy’s fine detective work, they were eventually able to figure out why he wanted to go to Bakersfield. In that, a family there was going to adopt him and they also discovered that his path from South Korea to Los Angeles meant that whatever he picked up along the way, wasn’t contagious after all, meaning a happy ending was in order since everyone was able to go home without a single worry when it comes to their health, including the gentlemen in custody, since the charges were completely dropped for both of them.

If anything, this really did turn out to be one impressive episode, for several reasons. First and foremost, it was bold. I mean come on, taking Ponch and Jon off of the road for a majority of an hour? That really is a brave move, because we tune in for highway chases and quick thinking from our dynamic duo, so to slow it down here was quite a risk, one that quite frankly, paid off in spades. Because this really was a well-acted, compelling story, and the perfect blend of quick quips and juicy plot points allowed for the hour to fly by and well, this is just another home run for this series, and I am very happy to see that the tail end of season two is once again focused on telling unique stories that change things up and I get the funny feeling that the final two episodes of this season, are going to be utterly phenomenal because, why stop now? Until next time.  

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