Am I the only one who ALWAYS gets worked up into a giggly manic fit as a result of watching the TV show CHiPs? (especially when some highly improbable chain of events leads to a 12 car/vehicle pileup with hazmat explosions in the intro segment and that adrenaline pumping music starts playing)
And what’s the deal with those freeze frame segments at the end of most CHiPs episodes? You know, where Ponch would drop a pen or spill some coffee or tell a really awful joke and they would carry on like it was the funniest thing in the world…and even though the gag was rarely funny in itself, they would show a series of reaction shots ending in freeze frames…it was something rather surreal. I don’t recall seeing something quite like that on any other show.
I love that show! In second grade it was on like TNN or something at around 8 in the morning so my friend Caitlin and I would watch it. We only watched it because of the cool sunglasses
~Kittie
Remember the episode of CHiPs where they were battling the evil menace of Punk Rock? The punk rockers they were up against had a band called Pain and the song they were singing went, “I dig pain! The feeling in my brain!”
Wasn’t that the episode that ended with Ponch taking to the stage to croon out disco tunes, to show the punk rockers the errors of their punk ways and the inexorable superiority of disco?
There was also an episode where Donny Most (Ralph Malph from “Happy Days”) played the role of some KISS clone devil rocker.
I love CHIPS. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s the motorcycles or the fact that the cops are more or less treated like the neighborhood heroes.
Yeah, I don’t get the cheesy ending either. That type of thing was pretty much a staple in the early 80’s. Lots of shows like Airwolf, Knight Rider, and CHIPs ended with someone making a dumb joke and everybody laughing, then FREEZE FRAME. I have no idea why this was so popular back then.
I love CHIPS. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s the motorcycles or the fact that the cops are more or less treated like the neighborhood heroes.
Yeah, I don’t get the cheesy ending either. That type of thing was pretty much a staple in the early 80’s. Lots of shows like Airwolf, Knight Rider, and CHIPs ended with someone making a dumb joke and everybody laughing, then FREEZE FRAME. I have no idea why this was so popular back then.
I can’t tell you how old this makes me feel. I watched CHiPs when it was a regular primetime series. My favorite character was the Sarge played by Robert Pine.
My little CHiPs story:
I was visiting a friend in L.A., and hoping to see a few movie/T.V. stars. (This was the trip on which I turned down the chance to watch the filming of a new sitcom because it was set in a bar – yes, the show was Cheers, which strangly enough is on my T.V. as I type this.) Anyway, my friend was driving me through some suburban part of L.A. when we pulled up at a stoplight, and she told me to look out my window. There, in a little cordoned off space at the side of the street, only a few feet from my face, was Erik Estrada, in full CHiPs regalia, sitting on a motorcycle, surrounded by a camera crew. It was a perfect L.A. moment, at least until the light changed.
When Ponch and John take some young houseapes that were skateboarding on the street (gasp!) to Del Mar Skate Ranch (though they never said it was that one) to show them where to skateboard safely. To further show how cool they are, they hop on the boards themselves.
Now picture this…Ponch in blue butthugger shorts, kneelength tube socks and sneakers going down a serpentine course on a banana board. Not only that, but they had him doing some oh so impossible kickturns with what maybe the worse stand in around.
I remember this distinctly as having one of the little farts describe both Ponch and John (yes he got his turn) as radical.
God I would pay good money to see the outtakes of both of them launching boards into the air.
On the rare occasions that I see the show these days, I’ve been struck by the incredibly leisurely editing. They’ll have a fifteen second establishing shot, followed by another establishing shot, just so that everyone understands fully that the next scene will take place at the ChiPs station. Then they’ll have one more to show that they are INSIDE the station. Only then will they start with the slow paced banter. Even during action segments they’ll insert these incredibly long, seemingly pointless shots just so viewers don’t get dangerously caught up in the action. It makes the Andy Griffith show look like E.R.
Police Squad did this to funny effect. At the end of an episode something would happen and then it looked like the scene was frozen. However, the picture was not paused, it was only the actors, and the regulars at that, who froze. Everything else on the screen would continue like nothing was going on.
Wasn’t John - the blonde - supposed to be the featured guy on this show? Then Ponch took over and became a heart throb. The rest is history.
ChiPs was one of those shows that featured alot of cars and motorcycles at the most inopportune time in automotive history - the 70’s and early 80’s. The cars are awful.
I think I saw one older car from the 60’s on that show. The rest were cars from sponsors, and they were horrible Detroit 70’s clunkers most of the time. Just awful.
I used to think that Ponch was the hottest thing around when I first started watching CHiPs. Then there was that little episode where he walked off the show for a while because he didn’t think he was getting paid enough. I was in my early teens and that pissed me off so bad (because my Dad worked VERY hard at a risky job and made FAR less with 5 kids to support) that I started giving Jon the eye–and found it was worth doing! I STILL think he is by far the cuter one!
i lived in south america for a year in the early 80’s and they had Chips on Tv down there. it was HUGE! the voices they dubbed over were horrible and made the show even stranger than here in the states. i hated the show and was embarrassed by it. i was forever telling people “thats not how it is in the US! thats just a stupid TV show!”
didn’t work. those folks just knew that was exactly what LA was like, and by extension, the whole of the USA. ugh!
Yeah. At the time of the CHiPs reunion movie a couple of years back, they had a “bhing the music” type show about it. John was supposed to be the lead man and have an Italian-American sidekick named Poncharelli. They liked Erik Estrada’s audition so much that they hired him and changed the character to Latino and the name to the much more Spanish-sounding ( :rolleyes: ) Poncharello.
I love the show. And I agree about the all the long establishing shots…it amazes me that all those pre-1990s shows had such long theme sequences, too.
