MovieChat Forums > CHiPs (1977) Discussion > The season 3 two-parters are brutal...

The season 3 two-parters are brutal...

posted 10 years ago by Inspector81
2 replies | jump to latest

...as in unecessarily two-parts, yikes!

I'm watching the season 3 dvd's and wow, both "Roller Disco" and "Drive, Lady, Drive" could've easily been cut down to one good episode instead of two overly long boring episodes.

Nothing dates a program faster to the 70's then Disco music and having to endure gratuitous close-up shots of 70's chicks roller skating in their bikinis to disco music for 5-10 min was nothing more than ratings grabbers of the time. Not to mention the whole anti-tailgater car and Leif Garrett sub-plot could've been completely cut and nobody would've missed it.

In the other two-parter it just went on and on with the female NASCAR driver trying to adopt little orphan Annie. Stick to following Jon and Ponch and the show is good, start making some other guest actor the star and it blows.

I am a casual NASCAR fan and I will point out this episode has some redeeming qualities it should've stuck with. One was seeing Riverside International Raceway again was awesome and they intermixed real NASCAR footage in with their phony race.

Candi the female driver was supposed to be in a minor league NASCAR class but she was actually driving Richard Petty's famous STP 43 car who in reality was tearing up NASCAR's top series known as the Winston Cup series in 1979. Nowadays Riverside Raceway no longer exists as it was torn down and razed for homes back in 1988.

Riverside was a unique track because it was a Road Course with right and left turns and it was replaced on the tour with Sonoma Raceway in 1989. In the race at the end of the episode they intermix real 1979 Winston Cup footage at Riverside and if you look closely at the front row at the start of the race you will see a blue and yellow #2 car. That car was being driven by a rookie named Dale Earnhardt.

The placement of these two eps on the dvd set is also a little weird. The episodes are in airdate order, so "Roller Disco" was the season premiere on 09/22/1979, but the episode is broken up into two separate parts of 1hr episodes on the dvd set instead of one long 2hr special like it would've been when first aired. So it has two sets of intros and outros like it does in syndicated reruns.

Then "Drive, Lady, Drive," which aired on 11/10/1979, is also listed as 2 parts on the dvd set but is shown as one continuous complete 2hr episode as it was when first aired. OK...what gives, was somebody sleeping when they made this dvd set? They couldn't have made "Roller Disco" one continuous episode?

[–] charcas67 10 years ago

I just watched Drive Lady Drive last night on the DVD; I prefer it to Roller Disco as the storylines are more interesting and less gimmicky and reliant on pop culture trends of 1979. That being said, there is a lot of padding (all that footage of cars racing around the track) in Drive Lady Drive to stretch it into a two hour (minus commercials) episode.

[–] Inspector81 10 years ago

Agree, they could of easily cut both episodes down to one good episode. Drive, Lady, Drive had the needless first race at Phoenix that should've been cut but it was the more enjoyable of the two for me as well.

Since Riverside Raceway doesn't exist anymore it was fun for me seeing it as it was in 1979. What I think is funny is two episodes later in "Destruction Derby" Ponch and Jon are at Ascot Park, another race track that doesn't exist anymore in Los Angeles. It seems one of the creators of the show was a big race fan.