‘CHiPs’ Retro Recap: ‘Tiger in the Streets’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Over the course of the past five seasons, the police serial CHiPs has offered up some fascinating cases for Officers Jon Baker and Frank Poncherello to solve. For we’ve seen them bring down gardening thieves, fight daredevils on the highway, go undercover as racers to bring down criminals, capture some nasty poachers and they’ve even managed to get involved in ending a drug war. Which is a pretty impressive resume for certain, one that should be difficult to sully writing wise because there really is little these officers can’t handle. But it just so happens that the next episode of this series found a way to add an awkward footnote to their records, by having them go after their most unique fugitive yet; a tiger.
 
Yes, you read that right. A freakin’ tiger. Because ‘Tiger in the Streets’ saw one of these majestic cats escape from a handler who planned to lease the cat (named Princess) out to Hollywood movies. And of course, having a cat on the loose meant all kinds of possible trouble and the only reason that Ponch and Jon stumbled upon this surprise is because the same handler was digging traps in the hills to catch Princess and people were falling into them. Which meant it was up to our dynamic duo and a tough-as-nails Animal Control officer to bring this big kitty to safety. Something they eventually managed to accomplish by using kittens as sound bait, since Princess had a few before escaping and well, let’s just get it out there right now; this was silly.
 
Because Ponch and Jon are the best of the best at their jobs, so having them chase after a tiger after five years of showing their worth is just lazy writing for certain and what makes this move more irritating is the sheer fact that this episode actually offered up a secondary plot that had the potential to be quite powerful and moving. For in this tale we were also introduced to a group of Hispanic kids that belonged to a car club known as the Jaguars, and unfortunately for them, they drew the ire of a man who really didn’t like Hispanic people and he was quick to cause trouble for these kids by constantly attempting to run their car off of the road. Which means this series was making an attempt to tackle the topic of racism and sadly, it failed at its endeavor.
 
Simply because, it dedicated too much time to the Tiger plotline and had it made that the B Plot, there could have been a proper exploration on this matter. One that could have withstood the test of time since racism toward Mexican Americans is a topic that is still relevant in 2020. But instead, everything is handled here in brisk and lazy fashion and what’s worse, is that the writers’ room tried to make this segment edgy by injecting a racial slur into our Creep of the Week’s vernacular and what they chose is just plain goofy. Because the dude refers to Hispanic people as ‘tacos’ and while this reviewer isn’t advocating for shows in this vein to encourage racial slurs or use them on the regular; we need to believe that this guy has a deep rooted hate for people of color so a lesson can be learned, and using a food to talk down about them is just awkward and it serves to remind us how afraid the show was to really handle this topic.
 
But while it is nice to see this racist punk wear some fine wrist bracelets at the end of the story, this whole episode just feels off kilter. An issue compounded further by the whole ‘Grossman wants to be a stand-up comic’ storyline as well and it is hard to say, but the fact of the matter is; this is another episode that signals the downfall of this magnificent series. Because once you see a show starting to give focus to the side endeavors of side characters, you know something is amiss and Grossie’s quest and every other issue we’ve discussed, are more red flags as to how this series fell out of favor with audiences and what’s fascinating about the series right now, is that a short run of quality episodes have given way to outright inconsistency and it should be interesting to see what kind of episode awaits us next. Until then.

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