The WORST episodes of Riptide (1984)
Every episode of Riptide (1984) ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Riptide (1984)!
Cody Allen and Nick Ryder, were two long-time friends who had served together in Vietnam, whose Private Investigation business was based on Cody's boat, The Riptide, in King Harbour, Los Angeles.
#1 - Smiles We Left Behind (1)
Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/25/1986
When only Danny Lee's luggage shows up for his cousin Lucy's wedding, Lucy turns to her friends at the Riptide Detective Agency to find out what happened. The guys accept the case and are soon on the Mimi heading for San Francisco, the last connection on Danny Lee's flight from China. Once in San Francisco, the guys meet up with Jerome Sedgewick, a wealthy friend of Murray's. Sedgewick then provides the guys with a base of operations on his yacht. Sedgewick also invites the guys to a party where Cody is reunited with Janet Ingram, his college girlfriend. Later, after Cody briefly catches up with Janet and learns that she is working as a government liaison, the guys distribute posters of Danny Lee and head to the site of a meeting that was marked on a map in Danny Lee's luggage. After someone tries to unsuccessfully kill the guys by shooting at them, the detectives stumble over a dead body. Unfortunately, as a result, the guys are temporarily detained and interrogated by government agen
#2 - The Pirate and the Princess
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 3/7/1986
"It was the Spring of 1676, when the pirate captain William Tyson came upon a fleet of Spanish treasure galleons somewhere in the Caribbean. Never one to let a fortune pass him by, Tyson set about doing the very thing he does best, he attacked! The battle raged for hours. Though the galleons bravely defended themselves, they were no match for Tyson's cannons nor his seamanship. Expecting to find a cargo of gold and silver, Tyson came across far more valuable, Princess Carlotta, of the order of the King himself. "And so began the legend of the Pirate and the Princess. Using the island of Martigua as their home port, they sailed the Caribbean, attacking the King's navy, plundering a vast amount of treasure..." In the present day, Cody, Nick and Murray arrive in Martigua on vacation to visit their oceanographer friend Angelo, who with daughter Giovanna and son Tony, is searching for Tyson's sunken treasure. But Angelo's expedition is being sabotaged, and soon the P.I.s are soon helpi
#3 - Robin and Marian
Season 3 - Episode 7 - Aired 12/3/1985
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) The trio are at a party on Pier 56 when one of the guests discovers that all of the boats in the harbour have been burgled. The guys assure the residents they'll find the taken things, but Murray goes frantic when he finds that the Roboz has been taken! They trace the Roboz's tracking signal to a woman named Marian's house, where Quinlan's men are removing the hoard of stolen items. The woman, begging not to be taken her away from her three foster children, insists that a man named Robin Loxley gave her all the items. The detectives are soon on the trail of Robin - an ice-cream vendor who sees himself as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the wealthy to give to the poor - who has bitten off more than he counted on when one of the items he stole was some counterfeit printing plates, and the crooks he took them for are determined to get them back at any cost...
#4 - Echoes
Season 3 - Episode 22 - Aired 4/22/1986
The guys are hired by a man named Warwick to find his son Nathan. Unfortunately, their client is actually Judd Thompson, the father of a girl that Nathan Warwick has been accused of raping and murdering. A gunfight ensues when Thompson sees Warwick. As a result, Cody is shot and Murray is forced to shoot Warwick. Regrettably, Murray kills Warwick in the process. After Cody is taken to a hospital to recover, Nick and Murray are shocked when Elaine Warwick, Nathan's sister, hires them to prove that her brother never raped Thompson's daughter. Feeling guilty over leading Thompson to Nathan, Nick accepts the case and he and Murray are soon heading to Cyprus Bay, the Warwick's hometown. Pretending to be writing a book about the Warwick-Thompson shooting, Nick and Murray begin to investigate Nathan's past. They therefore are left alone in the sheriff's office where they find a list of the townspeople with codes next to the names. Nick and Murray soon uncover the fact that the sheriff and his
#5 - If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em
Season 3 - Episode 21 - Aired 4/18/1986
The episode begins with Parisi arranging for the guys to serve as consultants for a television detective drama starring Rosalind Grant and Cary Russell (the Maddie Hayes and David Addison lookalikes). As a result, the guys allow Grant and Russell to follow them on a case for sleazy attorney Myron Bell. The guys begin their case when they meet with Myron and learn that Lenny, the attorney 's partner had stiffed Myron for $10,000. The case becomes more exciting for the two actors when someone unsuccessfully tries to shoot Myron. Although the shooter manages to escape, a little computer work soon turns up Lenny's location. Unfortunately, Lenny has already been killed by the time they get there. Later, the guys manage to bail Myron out of trouble when they stop a bookie named Kyle Ludwig from torturing the attorney. Afterwards, the detectives confront Myron and learn that although Ludwig is mad at the attorney, it is a racketeernamed Vince Sibriati who is trying to kill Myron. Myron furthe
#6 - The Frankie Kahana Show
Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired 2/11/1986
At Straightaway's club, Murray and his girlfriend Carla (who is not mentioned in any other episode) are trying to fix up a music teacher named Lisa with either Nick or Cody. However, the matchmaking is interrupted when some armed men arrive and unsuccessfully try to capture Frankie Kahana, the club's marginally talented Hawaiian singer. Carla, who is the club's manager, convinces the guys to find Kahana, who had fled the scene. The guys begin to investigate but, unfortunately, Cody is captured and brought to a mobster named Lemana. While Lemana tries to convince Cody to tell him where Kahana is, Nick and Boz go to speak to Parisi. Then, based on pictures some club customers had taken of Kahana's attackers, Parisi realizes that Lemana is involved. Murray and Nick go to Lemana's hotel only to end up in a car chase. Although Lemana's men escape, Nick and Murray do manage to rescue Cody. The guys soon locate Kahana (who Cody has learned is not an entertainer but was Lemana's bookkeeper) wh
#7 - Fuzzy Vision
Season 2 - Episode 20 - Aired 3/19/1985
Out at sea on a fishing trip, a blown armature on the Riptide brings the P.I.s vacation to a halt. They manage to make it to shore to a nearby small village, which is seems to be stuck in the 1950s, for help, where they meet an eccentric elderly lady who seems to be a clairvoyant and is expecting them! What's more, she warns them that her nephew will soon be murdered and that she will be arrested. The trio take her with a pinch of salt, but the more they are stuck in the village, the more the predictions come true. Helping to clear her of the murder which indeed does take place, the trio find themselves digging up an unsolved seven-year-old killing of a local beauty queen... The fact that locals mistake Cody for an infamous local trouble-maker whom he seems to resemble, does not exactly help matters...
#8 - Oil Bets Are Off
Season 2 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/12/1985
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) When an oil tycoon, an old friend of Murray's, is killed, the man's daughter is certain that it was murder, and asks the detectives to investigate. Their immediate suspect is the man's partner in the oil business, after the two had been arguing shortly before the death, but as they dig deeper, they pose as high rollers as investigations take them on-board a casino ship, and the killers are from a very unexpected quarter...
#9 - Mirage
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/30/1984
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Teaching a science class at a local collage, Murray falls for an attractive student who appears to be interested in him too. But when two thugs steal the girl's paper that Murray is marking, the detectives are shocked to learn that the girl is actually married, to a millionaire Arabian, who ordered the papers taken after becoming worried that Murray is having an affair with his wife. He warns him that in his culture, the punishment for committing adultery is death. But afterwards, the girl claims that her husband is abusing her and begs for Murray's help; unfortunately, everything is not as it seems about the girl, and Murray is unwittingly being set-up...
#10 - Still Goin' Steady
Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/19/1985
Murray is having a running winning streak on TV quiz show 'Brain Basher', and at a congratulatory gathering celebrating his winnings, an old friend from high-school, who Murray has a crush on, unexpectedly appears on the scene, asking for his help. After buying the rights to a solar powered car, which doesn't even work properly, she is receiving threats, a claim that is backed up when they are almost run down by a speeding car. Murray agrees to help both solve the car's problems and look into who is threatening her, but Nick and Cody aren't quite as convinced by her story and decide to check her out, only to find that she's not everything that she claims to be, and is in trouble with a dangerous loan-shark...
#11 - Chapel of Glass
Season 3 - Episode 20 - Aired 4/11/1986
rc: June Chadwick (Lt. Parisi) The detectives are investigating how an unqualified chemical company was able to win a disposal contract that led to a local beach being contaminated, when two phoney cops try to kill them. At the police station after the incident, they are reminded that Lt. Parisi is engaged to get married. As they investigate their assignment, they learn that the fake cops were employed by someone to keep them away from investigating the case, and also find that someone has been using their high-ranking position to illegally fix Government contract bids, and that person is none other than Lt. Parisi's fiance, Michael Todd! As they confront Todd and he claims he was blackmailed into the scam, they are torn whether and how to tell their friend Lt. Parisi...
#12 - Dead Men Don't Floss
Season 3 - Episode 19 - Aired 4/4/1986
rc: June Chadwick (Lt. Parisi) After a female reporter with the hots for Nick writes an article naming him as the primary force behind the Riptide Detective Agency, an argument ensues between himself, Cody, and Murray. Lt. Parisi tries to put a stop to the squabble by taking three help wanted ads from the newspaper and giving one to each of them, with the first to complete their individual task to be declared the best detective of the trio. Murray's case is to find a biker's estranged girlfriend; while Nick must find a short-tempered battleaxe's missing man; and a gifted young boy, unhappy at home, wants Cody to prove that he's adopted. Meanwhile, the boyfriend of the woman who penned the article behind all the trouble sees Nick as a threat, and sets out to kill him...
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#13 - Something Fishy
Season 1 - Episode 14 - Aired 5/22/1984
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Murray is excited about taking Cody and Nick to meet Jody, an attractive dolphin trainer who he's been conducting sonar experiments with, and whom he has a huge crush on. But the trio find themselves on another case when they learn that Jody's boss was recently killed when escaping from two thugs that had kidnapped him. The P.I.s investigate to try and find out what the thugs wanted with the man, and must make the connection between a gangster, a missing package of drugs, and the two dolphins. But matters take a strain when Jody, uninterested in Murray's advances, starts making moves on Nick, unbeknown to Murray, which results in severely testing the old friends' relationship...
#14 - The Wedding Bell Blues
Season 3 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/21/1986
rc: June Chadwick (Lt. Parisi) Cody, Nick and Murray take on one of their bizarrest cases when they are hired by an eccentric millionaire to find a model that he wants to marry, a girl that he has only seen in photos and has never met! But unbeknown to them, the girl's father is a crime lord, and their seemingly strange but simple case finds them walking into the middle of a fierce mob war that has restarted after the girl stood the son of another mobster up at the alter...
#15 - The Play's the Thing
Season 3 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/21/1986
The guys once again have a run-in with Gloria Burghoff (last seen in "Polly Want An Explanation") when the FBI agent wannabe turns to them for help. After reluctantly agreeing to help, the guys learn that someone has been following Gloria ever since she bought a trunk that had belonged to a man named Schellbach. Gloria also informs the guys that she believes that the recently deceased Schellbach had located a previously unknown Shakespeare manuscript. Disguised as painters, the guys search Schellbach's office but do not find any clues. However, they do catch a tabloid reporter named Mark Rothrnan following them. Later, while Cody, Murray, and Gloria search Schellbach's home, Nick searches Rothman's hotel room. Both parts of the investigation prove fruitful as Nick finds a check from Rothman to John Ashley, the local coroner, and the rest of the detectives find photocopies of the manuscript. Continuing their investigation, the detectives and Gloria rendezvous at the library. Unfortunate
#16 - Playing Hardball
Season 3 - Episode 17 - Aired 3/14/1986
The detectives are hired by sports-caster Hal Potter, the owner of a minor league baseball team, to go undercover as part of the team and prove or disprove his concerns that some on his team are drug users. Nick is excited about the case, but Cody, who is less of a baseball fan is rather less enthusiastic, but never-the-less the pair the join the team as new players, while Murray joins Hal as a sports commentator. They soon find that something is going on when a sniper takes a pot-shot at one of their fellow players, and they become suspicious of one of their team-mates, a practical joker who seems to have rather a lot of money for someone playing on a minor league team. But another member of the team, a drug addict, is being set-up by a mysterious, drug-supplying woman to take the fall in a planned murder...
#17 - Girls Night Out
Season 2 - Episode 17 - Aired 2/19/1985
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Cody is finding it hard to get rid of an unwanted girlfriend, who smothers him with affection, and who's hyperactive dog has a particular dislike for him. But that becomes the least of the P.I.s troubles when, after Murray has come into money from some book royalties, Quinlan accuses them of having got the money from robbing a number of local houses (where a copy of Murray's book was found at the scene of the latest robbery). Faced with having to cancel a planned fishing trip while Quinlan investigates his flimsy claims, the trio are determined to prove they are innocent by finding the real robbers - who are actually two sisters forced into making the robberies by a dangerous loan-shark they owe money to, in order to pay off their debts...
#18 - Beat the Box
Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/13/1984
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley), Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Nick and Cody are on the Riptide reluctantly helping Murray test out his new lie-detector game creation, "Beat The Box", when a television producer comes aboard to hire them to protect an upcoming guest on the show she works for - an author, who was nearly murdered when he arrived at the airport. But as they arrive to escort the man, he has seemingly gone insane and dives out of his high-rise window. As they investigate, they find themselves uncovering the slaughter of thirty soldiers in Vietnam years before, a case in which Murray's new game plays a key part in solving...
#19 - The Twisted Cross
Season 2 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/12/1985
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley), Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Walking through Chinatown, Cody, Nick and Murray see a gang of masked men trying to kidnap a teenage boy away from his father, and intervene. The next day, giving their report of the incident at the Police Station, Quinlan tells them that the boy's mother was brought in over suspicion of the attempted kidnap. But outside, admits to the P.I.s that she was behind the attempted kidnapping, explaining that her ex-husband Kyle, who has custody of her son Chad, is teaching him bad ways and preventing her from seeing him. Convinced by her story, the Private Detectives stop by Chad's school, only to find him in a fight with a black pupil, and carrying Nazi literature. Finding that the boy's father runs a local Boys Institute that is peddling the Nazi message to other youngsters too, they send Dooley undercover to see exactly what is taught at the Institute. The leader of a local Neo-Nazi party informs them that Kyle was thrown out for refusi
#20 - Catch of the Day
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/23/1984
An injured young woman appears out of the water to Arnie, a kind-hearted fisherman with learning disabilities, warning him that a ship named the Morning Rose needs help, before she sinks beneath the waves. Cody and Nick have agreed to allow an infamous reporter to come and do an article on the Riptide Detective Agency, much to the annoyance and upset of Murray, whom she has insulted in a previous article. The reporter is just beginning to get her claws into the trio, when a distressed Arnie arrives, telling them of the incident at sea. But when they report the incident to the Coast Guard, they are amazed and bemused to hear that Arnie claims the girl he saw was a mermaid; but believing Arnie's sincerity, the detective trio agree to investigate, much to the humour of the reporter. As they look into the case, they learn that the couple who were sailing on the Morning Rose were involved in some rather shady business, but exactly who or what did Arnie see that he believed to be a mermaid
#21 - The Bargain Department
Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/5/1985
With the Riptide Detective Agency in it's worse ever financial trouble, much to Nick's disagreement, Cody is considering an offer to sell the agency to corporate investigation company Tricor, who want to buy them out. After the Riptide is ransacked, adding further to the P.I.s problems, Murray and Cody accept jobs with Tricor, but Nick refuses, and opts instead to leave the agency. But when a friend of the trio, who had been working as a security guard on Pier 56, is murdered, it slowly begins to seem that Tricor is somehow involved, and the Riptide agency's recent financial troubles have been orchestrated by the same company, who are determined to get their hands of a letter left by the dead man to the trio before his death. The key to the whole mystery seems to lie on the unobtainable 13th floor of Tricor, where a secret super-computer is based, and the detectives intend to unlock the secrets held on that floor...
#22 - Thirty-Six Hours 'til Dawn
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/22/1985
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Through Lt. Quinlan, the Government hires the trio to go down to Mexico and bring out a model named Renee Sinclair, the estranged wife of underworld crime-lord Sonny Sinclair, who is prepared to testify against her husband in a case that is sure to send him down, after he murdered her brother. But after making contact with the woman, while Cody and Murray run a decoy, Nick and Renee come under heavy gun-fire, damaging the Screaming Mimi and forcing Nick to make an emergency landing in a canyon in the hills. As Cody and Murray try to goad the reluctant local authorities into helping them search, Nick and Renee find over-night refuge in a drug smuggler's den, and in their time together, they begin to fall in love, faced with the knowledge that Nick will never be able to see or hear from her again when she gets a new identity after the trial...
#23 - Be True to Your School
Season 2 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/27/1984
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley) Nick takes Cody and Murray with him as he attends his 15th year high-school reunion, but the nostalgic proceedings are suddenly interrupted when masked men with automatic rifles burst onto the scene and open fire, seemingly warning a group of the ex-classmates out of something. Afterwards, his old friends insist it was just guys from a rival high-school playing a prank, but the suspicious Private Investigators quickly spot that the bullets the masked men were firing were real. As Nick investigates, much to his upset he finds that his old high-school friends are mixed up in drug running, and worse still, have fallen foul of a mobster in doing so...
#24 - Arrivederci, Baby
Season 2 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/7/1985
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Murray takes Nick and Cody to a party where they meet famed oceanographer Angelo Guirilini and his attractive daughter Giovanna, but the festivities grind to a halt when Angelo's son Tony stumbles in, after being shot while on a dive. With Tony in hospital, they investigate and discover that someone is worried that Angelo's latest expedition will stumble on a batch of illegally dumped toxic waste...
#25 - Father's Day
Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/20/1984
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley), Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) When a troubled young woman named Cheryl leaves her baby at the local church, the priest, Father Bob, heads to the Riptide Detective Agency to ask the guys to investigate the trouble the girl is in, and also leaves the baby girl with the trio for safe keeping. The Father is sworn to confidentiality over what Cheryl had told him in confession, but as the detectives juggle investigating the case and trying to find Cheryl with trying to look after the young child, they find a superior Police Officer with connections with the Mob to be connected with the trouble that she is in. But solving the case is only half the problem as the three bachelors must learn how to take care of the young baby...