Twenty years after its DVD release, this 1984 TV series has finally made its way to Blu-ray. The short-lived adaptation of the film was cancelled after just 11 episodes, but all of the episodes are entirely self-contained, so no plot threads were left unresolved. Aside from the cool helicopter, the most notable aspect of the series is its inclusion of Dana Carvey as the second-billed cast member two years before he joined Saturday Night Live.
Buy Blue Thunder: The Complete Series from MovieZyngThe series follows a similar setup to the film, without ever acknowledging its existence, with a shadowy government organization called APEX sending operatives to patrol L.A. skies in a high-tech, heavily armed helicopter. The APEX air team consists of pilot Frank Chaney (James Farentino) and newbie tech wiz JAFO in the back seat (Dana Carvey), seemingly along for the ride just to give Frank somebody to talk to. Ex-NFL stars Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith play ex-NFL stars Richard “Ski” Butowski and Bubba Kelsey, somehow recruited into APEX after their football careers and now tasked with providing ground tactical support for the copter crew. Aside from the rarely seen LAPD Captain Braddock (Sandy McPeak), that’s the entire cast, padded out by the weekly guest stars brought in for whatever nonsensical plot the writers hammer out each episode.
The writing is incredibly lazy even by ‘80s standards, to the point that even at the end we barely know anything about any of the one-dimensional characters. It’s a shock when we learn that the captain has an adult daughter in episode 9, winningly played by Kelly Preston, but no other characters get any kind of development. The whole relationship between APEX and LAPD is murky, especially when Frank gets in trouble in episode 7 and is somehow busted down to LAPD street patrol in uniform despite presumably having no police training. Apparently all we really need to know is that tough guys (and Carvey) are going to occasionally use a sweet helicopter to battle baddies.
The pilot episode recycles aerial stunt footage from the film, but the rest of the series seems to generate its own content. Different bad guys utilize different aircraft to face off against Blue Thunder, and the writers luck into the prescient inclusion of drone warfare in episode 3 and commercial space flight and laser weaponry in episode 8. A favorite camera trick appearing in seemingly every other episode is a missile-eye view in hot pursuit of Blue Thunder, literally just a cheap prop stuck in front of the film crew aircraft camera. There is some fun aerial combat footage sprinkled throughout the series, but not nearly enough, making the surprisingly robust action in the final episode a tantalizing taste of what might have been.
Even the guest stars are lackluster, with Preston easily the most impressive get. Tracy Scoggins drops by in episode 6 for a much-needed jolt of sex appeal, while Kurtwood Smith (That ‘70s Show) and George Gaynes (Punky Brewster, Police Academy) are the only other recognizable talent. That leaves most of the acting burden to the principal cast, which again is half comprised of football players. Farentino plays it straight, a boring alpha male, and while young Carvey mostly stays in his dramatic lane, he briefly wheels out some impressions in episode 3 and adds in a bit of snark here and there. Butkus and Smith are exactly as expected, mostly just wandering around in the background and bickering with each other, although they milk a bit of comedy out of an episode undercover in prison and a hair-raising skydiving episode.
I was a teen when this show aired, and was fully aware of the film, and yet I have no recollection of the network series. Maybe it was poorly marketed or scheduled against better competition, but it’s hard to imagine that I overlooked something like this when I gladly searched out other dopey futuristic vehicular action series like Automan, Knight Rider, and even a bit of Airwolf. Now that I’ve finally caught up on the show, it’s clear I didn’t miss out on much, but it’s harmless enough for a mindless weekend binge.
Buy Blue Thunder: The Complete Series from AmazonThe Blu-ray set spreads the 11 episodes across three discs housed in a standard-size case. Images are surprisingly crisp and clear of debris, if a bit washed out, while the original mono sound is presented in efficient 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio.
