Nerds That Geek TV Rewind: 'CHiPs'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

We all have our guilty pleasures. There's one food we cannot resist when we see it on the menu or before us on the table. Or that song on the radio that we all turn up and sing along to in the comfort of our cars, provided of course our friends never find out we rocked out to it. There's that movie we always stop to watch when it comes on cable or pop in the DVD player first chance we get.  But for me, my biggest guilty pleasure came from television. You see, I am a HUGE fan of the late 1970's buddy cop T.V. show...CHiPs.

Go ahead. Take a moment to judge and mock me. Then once you're done, take a moment to think about your guilty pleasure and let's call us even. All set? Good. Let's continue then talking about one of the best things I ever discovered during my childhood. Now, I managed to find this little gem on cable TV back in the summer between seventh and eighth grade and made sure to never miss an episode. In fact, my favorite summer activity in those days was sleeping in, yet after discovering CHiPs I actually made an effort to get up early to make sure I didn't miss a single re-run.  

Normally I would take the time to really break down a show or a movie for all of you, but there's not much to tell here.  Ponch and Jon are the two main characters of this show and if the picture hasn't clued you in yet, they are California Highway Patrol Officers, they are part of the motorcycle division and well...everything else is pretty clean cut and dry.  Every single episode followed a pretty basic formula. You would enjoy a car chase or calamity that would involve our two main characters to start off the show, followed by a crime that Ponch and Jon would need to solve all while we followed along in their day to day lives. There was plenty of comedy and fun and more car chases before they snagged the bad guy or saved the day. That's about it really.  

Yet the show is so campy and endearing that you can't help but enjoy it. It's television that is so vastly different from what we enjoy now when it comes to cop shows. There are no brooding detectives here, or a mastermind killer or detailed forensic evidence to solve the mystery. Like I said, it's car chases and over the top everything. Really, it's just plain fun and I'm not the only one to enjoy it. The series ran for six seasons and even managed to spawn a two hour special on TNT entitled CHiPs '99.

And the only reason it's back on my radar, is because I just so happened to find this bad boy on DVD through Amazon, and now every single season, and the movie in question is mine, and I couldn't be happier over the fact that I can enjoy every single adventure on the road with Ponch and Jon whenever the heck I want, and I just felt the need to celebrate this series today and who knows, with the entire collection in my possession, it may be high time to Retro Recap every last one of them, so we can all bask in the wonder that is CHiPs.

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