Let’s end the week with something a bit more fun. For me, anyway.
I’m not a huge cop show fan though I watched more as a kid when that’s what my parents had on. 1980s cop shows weren’t burdened with stuff “ripped from the headlines” or showcasing the worst parts of the human race. They were allowed to be a little more fun, and the ones focusing on police officers didn’t always have to involve murderers and rapists. A few years ago they came out with a movie called Chips, supposedly a remake of NBC’s classic TV series, and from what I saw in trailers alone it was not a favorable adaptation. The two main characters, Jon Baker and Frank ” Ponch” Poncherello, were treated as idiots, there’s police corruption, and the movie failed to find an audience with its style of humor. The show was light in tone but this seems more like a mocking parody than anything respectful of the original OR the CHP.
“CHP” is short for California Highway Patrol, which is why the title has those odd lower case letters. CHiPs was created by former LA County deputy Rick Rosen, after seeing a motorcycle cop from the CHP. It wasn’t the first show about the Highway Patrol (for example the 1950s show Highway Patrol) but it is still remembered, currently airing on Charge!, which is where my dad has been watching it since we switched TV providers. (Frontier seems to be closing its TV service one channel at a time and we don’t have a lot of options in our area.) The show follows two motorcycle cops and some of the interesting–and occasionally weird–adventures they come across. The other main character is Sgt. Getraer, the guy running the place. While he sometimes gets annoyed by Ponch’s antics he knows they’re good cops and unlike the movie the show never makes the character, or the CHP in real life, look bad.
It’s through my dad’s watching that I found out about a third intro I didn’t know existed, so I thought I’d go back and look at all three to see how good they are. Let’s start not with the pilot but with the first regular intro.
