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 (2)
Season 3 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/25/1986
The guys then go to see a man named Parker who had called in response to one of the Danny Lee posters. The guys learn that Parker originally saw Danny Lee with a briefcase handcuffed to his hand, however, when Parker later saw Lee, the handcuff was hanging loose. Unfortunately, Parker is killed before the detectives can learn anymore. The guys then pay a visit on Janet, who reveals that her government branch has been working with a man named Danny Lee for over 10 years. Janet further explains that Lee, who had been providing information about China's nuclear arms development, had been scheduled to come to San Francisco to meet with the U.S. government. The guys, piecing together the clues, realize that a Chinese spy has killed Danny Lee and is taking his place for the San Francisco meetings. Janet then tells the guys about the next scheduled meeting. The guys proceed to the meeting site only to find a murdered government agent. Later, after Lucy arrives in town and confirms that the ha
#2 - Pilot (2)
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/3/1984
Conclusion. Nick and Cody try to raise the sunken hull of the yacht to find out why anyone would sink it.
#3 - It's a Vial Sort of Business
Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/4/1984
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley) Cody and Nick's patience is being tested with Dooley's singing while working off some debts and Murray causing chaos with the Riptide's electricity, when the agency's latest clients arrive, a couple with the seemingly straightforward task of asking them to find their missing son William, who has disappeared since dropping out of University. But things suddenly get more serious when they come under attack from thugs who try and grab William's suitcase from his parents. The detectives presume that William is in some kind of trouble and the thugs were after him, but unbeknown to them, Dooley also has people after him! It seems that Dooley has been making off-the-record visits to a local race-track, and has got his hands on a vial that some bad guys want, but unfortunately for the missing William, who is merly pursuing his dream of becoming an actor, both the Riptide detectives and the thugs presume him to be mixed up in the trouble...
#4 - Peter Pan Is Alive and Well
Season 2 - Episode 9 - Aired 12/11/1984
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley) The trio are hired by the manager of a local beach club to investigate a series of valuables being stolen on the beach, and while there, Cody is pleased to find that an old room-mate, Byron Monk, is working as lifeguard at the club, and seems to be romancing a number of the club's female members. As they investigate the missing valuables, they find themselves uncovering a plot to both blackmail and kill Byron, but they more they investigate, the more it becomes apparent that he may be just asking for trouble with his attitude towards his relationships with women... The case is made more light-hearted by Murray's experimenting with taking on a tough guy image...
#5 - Catch a Fallen Star
Season 2 - Episode 10 - Aired 12/18/1984
The trio come to the rescue of an elderly lady vagrant who is being grabbed by two thugs, only to learn that she is none other than a once-famous actress who vanished fifty years previously. It turns out she had been placed in a sanitarium by a man connected with the Mob that she was having an affair with after she refused to marry him, and what's more, she owns the deeds to Pier 56. The thugs were sent out by the man's son, who, determined to finish what his father has started, is determined to get his hands on the deed, the one last possession of the woman's that his father never took from her, even if it's against his father's wishes...
#6 - Gams People Play
Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/8/1985
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley)* see note, Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) When Nick returns from National Guard duty, he thinks Cody and Murray are playing a trick on him when they tell him they've been hired to over-watch a beauty contest. But sure enough, it's true, they've been hired when one of the contestants, Charlene West, receives threatening phone calls. Their immediate suspect is a big-headed, womanising Game Show host who is the M.C. for the pageant, but when he is killed, they must dig deeper to find the true culprit...
#7 - Prisoner of War
Season 2 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/15/1985
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Things are getting serious between Nick and his new girlfriend Peggy. But returning from a date on the beach, they witness an accident in which a young serviceman is fatally hit by a car, which triggers a strange reaction in the woman, who promptly races off in Nick's Corvette. After being notified by Lt. Quinlan, the Riptide detectives find the ‘Vette abandoned in a red light district, with no sign of Peggy. It emerges that Peggy served as a Nurse in Vietnam, and the soldier's death triggered off delayed stress syndrome in her, but her confused state which drives her to the red light district sees both her and the P.I.s walking into the middle of a turf war between two pimps...
#8 - Baxter and Boz
Season 2 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/22/1985
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley) *see note After meeting a down-and-out who is also a fellow inventor, and helping him iron out a kink in his latest creation, Murray learns that the man is actually reclusive billionaire Baxter Bernard. In gratitude for his help, Baxter gives Murray a Baxtercraft 1000, a sophisticated new helicopter, as thanks. But the detectives end up helping the billionaire to stop the corrupt men who now control Baxter Aviation, who are willing to sell a flawed new helicopter to the Government no matter how many lives it costs...
#9 - Curse of the Mary Aberdeen
Season 2 - Episode 14 - Aired 1/29/1985
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley), Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Late one evening during a fierce thunderstorm, Murray is alone on the Riptide when a mysterious character suddenly appears seemingly out of nowhere, and pays $1000 cash for the Riptide Detective Agency to find the Mary Aberdeen, a supposedly cursed boat who's former owners have all been killed, before she kills again. Finding Murray's story of the incident hard to believe, Cody and Nick are certain that someone, probably Lt. Quinlan, is playing a joke on them, when the phone number on the business card that the man left turns out to be for the local cemetery. They visit the original owner of the Aberdeen, only to have him hire them, with $5000 in cash, to find the boat as well. As they look into the case, they are surprised, and worried, to find that what was the Mary Aberdeen is now the Riptide! What's more, somebody seems determined to stop them investigating, and is the Riptide really cursed and haunted, or is there a more logic
#10 - Boz Busters
Season 2 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/5/1985
rc: Ken Olant (Dooley), Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Realising that something is bothering their friend, Cody and Nick try to find out what's troubling Murray, only to learn that he has been offered an unmissable job position to work at a cutting edge robotics company. Sadly leaving his friends, Murray decides to take the job. Missing their friend almost as soon as he's gone, Cody and Nick decide to deliver the rest of his belongings personally, but upon arrival find that the supposed company that he's gone to work for doesn't exist. As they investigate, they remember how they first met Boz in the Army, assigned to escort him to prison after he had punched a Colonel in the nose, the same man who is now intending to sell him to the Soviets for his electronic skills...
#11 - Harmony and Grits
Season 2 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/14/1985
rc: Jack Ging (Lt. Quinlan) Cody and Nick are loath when Murray drags them to a "harmonising" seminar, an event that ends in a punch up. But afterwards, a woman, having heard them introduce themselves as Private Detectives, hires the trio to check out her husband Chris, who she believes is having an affair. However, when the P.I.s set about following the man, they find that, instead of having an affair, he is involved with something much more sinister, but as they watch the man, they witness to the husband's distress - the shooting of a man involved with the shady operation. The next day, Quinlan tells them that the body has disappeared and the investigation has been dropped – leaving the P.I.s even more certain that there is something big to investigate, something to do with the sale of a top secret project, and set about finding out just what the woman's husband is mixed up in... Meanwhile, all the way through the investigation, the detectives toy with the "honesty" methods they h
#12 - Who Really Watches the Sunset
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/12/1985
After reporter Marlene Lewis learns she in dying, she hires the guys to find out who infected her with an incurable disease. The guys accept the case and soon learn that Marlene had been working on a story with a man named Don Orley. However, Orley had died of a heart attack before she could discover more. Fortunately, the guys get a lead when Marlene receives a phone message from a man named Jeff Rockwell. Unfortunately, the guys arrive at Rockwell's house only to find that he has apparently hung himself. Searching Rockwell's house, the guys learn that Rockwell worked for the F.D.A. Since Orley, a food engineer working on APS (a food enhancer), would have needed F.D.A. approval, the guys realize the connection between the two dead men. Checking into records on APS, the guys discover that Robert Stockwood is the only member of the AP. research team that has not been killed. Therefore, the guys decide to protect Stockwood. Then, at Orley's funeral, Stockwood disappears after a nearby ca
#13 - 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...
#14 - 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...
#15 - 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...
#16 - Requiem for Icarus
Season 3 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/10/1985
At a party, the guys run into Cathy Skinner, an old friend of Nick's. Nick explains that when he was a cargo pilot, he used to "crash" at the home of Doug Skinner, Cathy's father. While catching up on old times, Nick learns that Cathy is worried about the fact that Doug has been acting very strangely lately. In response to Cathy's concerns, the guys go to see Doug. An ungrateful Doug responds by telling the Riptide Detectives to leave him alone. That night, Doug calls Cathy and tells her that he will be leaving town for a while. Alarmed, Cathy and the guys go to Doug's home. Once there, the guys end up in a shoot out with some men looking for Doug. Unfortunately, the guys are mistakenly arrested by the police. After getting out of jail, the guys trace some pills that they had found in Doug's home. They then learn that Doug has been suffering from delayed stress as a result of an airplane accident that occurred when he was an air traffic controller. (Doug suffered despite the fact that
#17 - Home for Christmas
Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 12/17/1985
Nick, who has never particularly enjoyed the holiday season, decides to accept an assignment from Colonel Ryan, his Army Reserve commander. Thereby, Captain Nick Ryder is assigned to transport the remains of Private Ricky Wilkenson, a soldier who died in a training accident. However, when he arrives in Wyoming, Nick learns from the funeral home that the body he transported is not Ricky. (Unlike Ricky who had permanently injured his foot when he was a kid, the corpse has a complete set of toes.) After Colonel Ryan denies there was a mistake and a Congressman tries to dismiss the concerns of Ben Wilkenson, Ricky's father, Cody and Murray decide to help their partner investigate the situation. Murray accesses the army's computer system and is surprised when he finds Ricky's records kept with Vietnam files. Once back in California, Nick joins Cody in an attempt to sneak onto the army base for more information. Unfortunately, Lieutenant Walker, one of Ryan's aids, catches the guys. Ryan the
#18 - Lady Killer
Season 3 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/7/1986
rc: June Chadwick (Lt. Parisi) Nick and Cody manage to make fools of themselves when they both unsuccessfully try to hit on an attractive woman while shopping in a grocery store. After the latest in a string of serial killings, the Agency is hired by a man who claims to have reason to believe that his elusive roommate might be the murderer. The detectives find to their surprise that the woman from the store is none other than their new Police contact; but as they investigate their case, there is a twist they don't expect, as they hunt for a killer with a hatred for engaged women...
#19 - A Matter of Policy
Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/14/1986
rc: June Chadwick (Lt. Parisi) Cody returns from a visit to his mother only to find that his boat is gone, being repaired after Nick damaged it in an accident. But the pair's minds are soon taken off the incident when Nick is informed that the father of a man he once tried to save in Vietnam has recently been killed, and has left Nick a substantial amount of money in his will. With Murray away at a computer convention, Nick and Cody attend the reading of the will, and whilst there, the man's niece, upon learning that they are private investigators, confides that she thinks her uncle was murdered. As they investigate, they uncover what seems to be a huge insurance scam, and meet resistance and hostility from the insurance investigator who is overlooking the legal proceedings...
#20 - 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...
#21 - 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
#22 - 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
#23 - 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
#24 - 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...
#25 - 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