CHiPs – The Complete Second Season (Warner DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C Extras: C Episodes: C
Now a
hit, CHiPs promptly became sillier
and what little drama it offered slowly deteriorated into broad silliness. Not that the first season was brilliant TV or
anything, as the link to our coverage at this link will show:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5636/CHiPs+–+The+Complete+First+Season
This time,
producer Cy Chermak had a hit on his hands that surpassed Kolchak: The Night Stalker (a non-hit in its time) as his most
successful TV show and not only ended, but actually trivialized the police
drama. Of course, it is fun for some to
see the actors in each show you might recognize, like Marvin Kaplan, a great
voice for animated cartoons who is recognized best as Henry on the hit
Alice. What struck me about this Complete Second Season (1978 – 79) is
the amount of top rate talent who may have done some of the worst work of their
careers behind the camera.
Directors
like Gordon Hessler, Don Weis and Alex Grasshoff were wasted on terrible, run
of the mill, lite writing, but the equally big shock is that savvy writers like
Rudolph Borchert, Max Hodge (who created Mr. Freeze for Batman), L. Ford Neale, John Huff and Steven Lord were collecting
easy paychecks for a series that ran on an underlying current of jokey nonsense
and co-stars Larry Wilcox (who directed an episode himself!) and Erik Estrada
really were the selling points because this show is total fluff. Only nostalgia and being a late 1970s time
capsule allows these any watchability.
The 22
hour-long episodes here are presented in their original 1.33 X 1 film frames
and there is little variance in their decent, if not spectacular quality. The MetroColor is nominally impressive; the
show was made by MGM. The Dolby Digital
1.0 Mono is even weaker and sometimes more compressed than expected. Extras include an episode with highlights of
the first two seasons, plus new Real CHiPs featurette with Estrada
hosting. For posterity and fans, that is
more than many better TV shows get.
- Nicholas Sheffo
