The Bike Patrol has a new transferee, Scott Kramer, a ten year veteran and department bad apple who seems to take extreme risks without regard to personal safety. He's teamed with Chris to try and stop a pair of bikers on Harleys who are robbing merchants in the Venice area and fleeing on their choppers. After several near death experiences, we come to realize that the reason this cop is so reckless is that he knows he has less than six months to live and wants to spend that time taking down every last criminal he can. To complicate matters, Chris Kelly develops a crush on this wild loner.

Elvis the bike mechanic gets everyone involved in his can't miss lotto scheme, pooling more and more money to the point where greed overcomes friendships among our regulars.

The Big Spin

Jim Davidson

Darlene Vogel

Marcos A. Ferraez

Paula Trickey

David L. Lander

Rick Rossovich

All Jammed Up

The Phoenix

Ambitious police officer Chris Kelly is introduced to the Bike Patrol after she's transferred from the P.R. Department of the Santa Monica Police Department.  T.C. Callaway, at a crossroads with his long term girlfriend, faces additional family pressure to quit the force and join the family business in Newport Beach.  The entire unit is on the trail of a vicious car-jacker working the beach area.

Pilot

While the Bike Patrol is being used as a CRASH Unit to fight gang activity in the beach area, Cory McNamara is forced to shoot a gangbanger fleeing a crime scene.  When no weapon is found, the incident becomes potential ""bad shoot"".  The situation is made worse by the fact that Cory is third generation in blue and the ""first shoot"" has to be a clean one (a police tradition and superstition).  Cory must deal with a disapproving cop father, the gangbanger on the loose, the threat of a sleazy lawsuit against the department, and her potential for lack of nerve on the street.

A brash trouble-making young star comes to the beach to shoot a portion of his feature film, and members of the bike patrol are assigned as liaisons.  Once a sexy idol in the eyes of Chris Kelly, he soon proves his arrogant, wild-man reputation is well earned.  Victor, no fan of the actor, is charmed into playing a small part in the film.

A band of rollerskating pickpockets are working the boardwalk, their spot, dip, h

First Shoot

While teaching del Torro to surf, T.C. encounters a band of highly territorial Surf Nazis bullying a Hispanic surfer on the beach.  Operating out of a beach bar decorated with Nazi symbols, the leader of this gang went to law school and is well vested in his rights.  T.C. and Victor, who is Hispanic but doesn't look it, are both goaded into a confrontation that results in T.C.'s suspension.

Cory and Victor chase and arrest an irrepressible sixteen-year-old black ""tagger"" who hits everything from tunnels to buildings to Victor's bicycle seat and the side of the firehouse.  After seeing his home and works of art, Cory realizes the tagger is truly talented and acting out using his painting skills.  Unfortunately, after an encounter in the firehouse cell with the leader of the Surf Nazis, the tagger becomes a target for their terror and must ultimately be saved by our officers.

""The Cove"" has long been an illegal nude beach, but election day is fast approaching and a ballot measure may mak

No Man's Land

After discovering an old best friend, a guy T.C. felt he let down, has died in a suspicious skydiving accident, T.C. insinuates himself into a group of extreme-sport thrill seekers that he believes are behind the ""accident"".  With T.C. seeking redemption in the world of adrenaline junkies caught up in underwater challenges and mountain bike racing, Lt. Palermo and Chris Kelly are worried just how far T.C. will risk himself to find the killer.  Ultimately T.C. comes to grips with the reality of his own limitations, and brings down the extreme group who are using their mountain bikes to pull off the daredevil robbery of an armored car.

A purse snatching dog is nailing patron after patron on the Venice Boardwalk. The pooch runs up behind women, grabs their purse in his teeth and then flees through alleys and under fences.

Over the Edge

When a dead woman's body turns up on the beach with an origami angel on her chest, Palermo realizes that the serial killer who left him with a permanent leg injury has returned to the area.  Obsessed with finding the killer, he stays his vacation and bends all the rules to bring down the Angel of Death before he kills again.

There's been a string of cat burglaries at an upscale hotel that caters to couples having affairs.  Unable to catch the thief by conventional means, T.C. and Chris have to pose as lovers the to catch the elusive bandit.

Mariah, the bicyclist who rides faster than the wind, becomes a challenge to T.C. and Victor's egos as neither one of them can catch him after several high speed attempts.

Out of the Past

While the unit is on the trail of a trio of heavily armed takedown robbers, T.C. finds himself face to face with one of the perps on the roof of a liquor store.  After being ordered to shoot T.C., the young gunman has cold feet and flees.  T.C., realizing his own mortality, becomes obsessed with the case as he spirals into self destructive behavior.  In the final act, our officers get into a high tension situation as two of the heavies try to take a young girl hostage in yet another market.  When T.C. finds himself again confronted by the same young gunman, he has to talk him out of killing a wounded Tony Palermo.

Victor is shocked to discover that the skinny, awkward girl he took to the high school prom and later dumped, has just appeared as the centerfold in a Playboy-like magazine.  He embarks on a personal (and funny) quest to relocate and connect with his old high school sweetheart.

After a series of failed relationships, Chris finally meets a man who can deal with the fact that s

Takedown

A scorching heatwave has descended on the beach and is making everyone crazy.  Palermo has three problems at once:

K.C.B.H. radio is transmitting their summer afternoon show from a storefront on the crowded boardwalk we patrol.  After striking up a friendship with the sexy sex-talk lady D.J., T.C. learns she's being stalked by a crazed listener bent on eliminating men he believes are part of the D.J.'s life.  At odds with the city detective assigned to the case, T.C. ultimately uses himself as a lure (posing as a romantic interest in the D.J.'s life) to capture the bad guy.

Cory and Victor are on the trail of the ""topless bandit"".  Two young women enter banks and jewelry stores at the beach, begin dancing and stripping, while an accomplice commits armed robbery.  No witnesses to the crime can give any description of the robber.

Elvis is convinced that a strange series of holes that have appeared at the shore line are the result of aliens trying to make contact with Southern Californian

Heatwave

A waitress at Sheila's restaurant, who is also a body builder, seems to be hooked on steroids as she tries to bulk up for competition.  The seller is a vicious body builder himself, out of control due to frequent use of his own product.

An old Navy buddy of Chris' comes to visit after serving as a fighter pilot in the war in Bosnia.  Their friendship turns to romance, but Chris is disappointed to discover that this officer is not a gentleman.

There's a battle on the boardwalk between a Korean t-shirt shop owner and the weird homeless man who plays sax in front of his store all day long and only knows one song.

Burnout

T.C. hooks up with an old flame after the boardwalk cafe where she's working is robbed by a till tapper on rollerblades.Shortly after rekindling their romance, she becomes a witness to a late-night shooting by a mysterious figure in the same cafe. After insisting that only T.C. could be assigned to protect her, the couple have to flee another attempt on her life. When too many loose ends don't add up, Chris becomes suspicious about the young woman's intentions and starts to follow her much to T.C.'s anger. She finally reveals to T.C. that the man trying to kill her is a boyfriend from back east, a criminal who recently committed a large diamond robbery with information he forced her to reveal from her old place of employment. In the end T.C. is shocked to discover that she is not the victim, but rather the co-conspirator in the crime and was using T.C. all along to kill her ex-partner and lover.

After Tony Palermo is challenged by obnoxious lifeguard captain Mackie Smith he asks Victor

Moving Target

T.C. and Cory find themselves pinned into a bank when a robbery goes wrong and turns into a hostage situation.  Palermo, Victor and Chris arrive on the scene, then must search the beach for an eccentric computer genius who dropped out of this high-tech world and is living in a highly decorated rickshaw on the beach.  Inside the bank, Cory, who is in no hurry to have children herself, must deliver a baby when the hostage takers refuse to release a woman nine months pregnant.

Captive Audience

An arsonist believed to have perished years ago has reappeared in the Venice area.  While working with T.C. on the case, Chris must confront her own childhood memories of terror at having been caught in a fiery situation.  The two must also enlist the aid of an eccentric arsonist doing a long stretch in prison for details on how to catch the Phoenix.

Cory has to continually chase the ""Snakeman"", the last unlicensed vendor on the Venice Boardwalk.  At one point, she nearly traps him running through a wet t-shirt contest where she's thrown on stage, dumped on, and pronounced the winner.

The precinct is menaced by a rat that's eaten its way into the evidence lock-up and made off with a large portion of speed, making the rodent nearly impossible to catch.  Rat Man and Rat Boy, a father-son exterminating team, are brought in to catch the creature.

A wily bandit on a mountain bike is robbing people stuck in traffic jams at gunpoint and escaping through narrow passage ways on the streets near the beach.

Chris and Cory are assigned undercover duty as high priced call girls in order to find an elusive South American gun dealer with a distinctive tattoo on his rear end. To complicate matters, Cory's new boyfriend's upper class parents are staying in the same hotel and the boyfriend has not revealed to them what Cory does for a living.

Elvis has a crush on a young woman that works at Helen's Bike Shop and keeps ordering unneeded replacement parts in order to keep seeing her. His hangup is his inability to communicate well in English, so he enlists the aid of T.C. Callaway at the other end of a computer terminal. His dream turns to horror as he finds he can't keep up with the young lover he so desperately pursued.

Filmed on location at Santa Monica and Venice Beach, this series focuses on an elite bike cop unit of the LAPD.

The Big Spin

Seasons5

Season 1 Episodes13

Cast6

Discussion

Episode Summary