Ultimately, the worst thing that happens to these men—between seemingly inconsequential confrontations with Kurtz—is that women constantly fling themselves at them. This could be funny if the film's characters seemed to be in on the joke, but they usually exhibit the same insecurities they're supposedly sending up. In a scene that's prominently featured in the film's trailer, Ponch falls face-first into Baker's naked crotch while he tries to bring his then-incapacitated partner to his bathtub for a soak. This scene is supposed to be the tipping point for the two characters: Ponch can't possibly be homophobic, because he and Baker bond over the absurdity of making face-junk contact.
Unfortunately, there's nothing funny about the parade of bare breasts and over-sexed, under-developed female characters that Shepard uses to perpetually re-affirm Ponch and Baker's heterosexuality. These guys may worry about each other's sexual preferences, as we see in the scene where Ponch gasps at the sight of Baker and his colleague's fully-clothed genitals touching each other when they embrace in the men's changing room. But Baker is almost immediately pounced on by Ava (Rosa Salazar), a fellow cop who just happens to be a motorcycle buff. Ponch is similarly sized up and treated to nude photos three times throughout the film, a running gag that climaxes as poorly as it begins. The fact that these guys have attractive women practically begging to strip and/or pose for them would be funny if Shepard actually did something with Ponch's sex addiction or Baker's timidity.
But more often than not, Shepard uses his characters' neuroses as hooks on which to hang lame sex jokes. These jokes, collectively, make "CHiPS" look like a broad comedy about one thing: straight men who can't bear the thought of being presumed homosexual. There's the out-of-nowhere joke where two Spanish-speaking car mechanics joke about Baker's presumably small penis while Ponch translates everything they say into disingenuously complimentary English. And there's the gag about Ponch getting a woman to perform anilingus on him, a joke that backfires immediately because Ponch insists that he likes to give as well as receive, since all modern couples do it. And, as if that joke's unpleasant reliance on the juvenile assumption that being kinky must be icky, there's also the out-of-context scene where Ponch and Baker are ogled by Ava, fellow lady motorcycle cop Lindsey (Jessica McNamee), and by a gay cop who is in barely any scenes but is exclusively identified as gay.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46cn6Koo2J%2FcX2W