"When you got it, flaunt it, boy." - Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) to his (dance) partner Ken Hutchinson (David Soul)
Starsky & Hutch: The Complete Second Season DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Undercover officers Ken Hutchinson (David Soul) and Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) gas up their Gran Torino to keep the streets of Bay City free of dangerous criminals in the second season of Starsky & Hutch. While the second season does contain a handful of episodes that are as riveting as those in the first, the series does show signs of being in a "sophomore slump." Whatever the reason, some of the magic is gone from Starsky & Hutch: The Complete Second Season.
This is evident from the season's first episode, "The Las Vegas Strangler." Originally aired as a two hour movie, the episode is here divided into two parts. With a strangler preying on showgirls, the Las Vegas P.D. requests the aid of Starsky and Hutch. It turns out that Hutch's college roommate is a main suspect, and Las Vegas officials hope that he will be able to flush the guy out. This episode is obviously meant to open the season with a bang: an exotic locale (many great establishing shots of 70s era Vegas, along with scenes filmed inside Circus Circus), high-wattage guest stars (Wonder Woman's Lynda Carter, Jayne Kennedy, Joan Blondell, and even Foster Brooks, whose fleeting cameo seems to suggest that he accidentally wandered into the frame while heading to the casino's bar), and a longer running time. There are some laughs to be had, especially the sight of Starsky and Hutch duded up as '40s gangsters in a red and white convertible, but ultimately the episode disappoints. This is mostly due to the fact that the Starsky & Hutch elements that we have come to know and love - Starsky's beloved Gran Torino, superfly informant Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas), gruff Captain Dobey (Bernie Hamilton) - are almost entirely absent from the episode. Imagine an episode of Knight Rider where David Hasselhoff travels to Europe to solve a case, leaves KITT behind, and rents a Yugo instead. Not quite the same show, right?
A few episodes later, the partners head to sea in another disappointing double-length episode, "Murder at Sea." This time out, they disguise themselves as "Hack 'N' Zack," the entertainment directors to investigate a series of murders on a cut rate cruise ship. Guest starring The Waltons' Will Geer as the ship's salty owner and St. Elsewhere's Ed Begley, Jr. as a member of the Bayside Singles Club, this episode seems to try too hard for laughs. Admittedly, the two detectives' entertainment director disguises (Starsky wears a powder blue frilly shirt and a tight black jacket seemingly borrowed from the Wizard of Oz's flying monkeys while Hutch models a black shirt, white ascot, and white jacket that even Fantasy Island's Mr. Roarke would have rejected as being too ridiculous) are amusing, but much of the humor is strained. It also doesn't help that the climactic scene was later reused on an episode of Charlie's Angels.
While "Murder at Sea" suffers from being too jokey, the producers had the nerve to do a show about a vampire and treat the situation seriously. In the imaginatively titled "Vampire," guest star John Saxon plays a ballet instructor who fancies himself a vampire. Three's Company star Suzanne Somers makes her second Starsky & Hutch appearance in this episode, this time playing a pothead stripper at a dive called Slave's Cave. This episode plays like the Italian horror flick Suspiria as remade by Roger Corman. It isn't terrible, but what were they thinking?
As the season progresses, however, the quality of the episodes begins to rise. The two-part "The Set-Up" is one of the season's best. This standout episode is an intriguing riff on The Manchurian Candidate, but to say any more about it would give away too many of this nifty suspenser's secrets. The Love Boat's Lauren Tewes gives a coolly funny performance in "Starsky and Hutch are Guilty," an episode in which two imposters - complete with a faux Gran Torino - set out to frame the partners. (The mastermind of the imposter scheme utters the memorable line "Have you seen the way those clowns dress? I had to hit every thrift shop in this city to get the right clothes for those guys.")
The best episodes remain those that mix hard action with the two stars' congenial fraternization. In "Gillian," even a prostitute can't help remarking on how lucky Hutch is to have someone love him as much as Starsky does. That prostitute, incidentally, is played by Soul's then-wife, Karen Carlson. (And you thought romance is dead.) And who can resist the sight of a too-enthusiastic Starsky teaching a reluctant Hutch to dance in "Tap Dancing Her Way Right Back Into Your Heart"?
Glaser branched out into directing with "Bloodbath," an episode centering on a Manson-esque cult leader. Even though this material feels a bit too familiar, he does manage to craft a suspenseful, compulsively watchable tale. Soul, too, tries his hand at directing with "Survival."
If only poor Antonio Fargas had been allowed to direct a show or two - it's not like he was doing anything else. When Huggy Bear makes his occasional appearance during this season, Fargas is often forced to do embarrassingly stupid things. In "Murder at Sea," for example, Huggy is minding a magic shop for an out of town "cousin," thus giving Huggy the chance to fail at several slapstick-heavy magic tricks. The producers tried to spin the character off into his own series with the episode "Huggy Bear and the Turkey." In keeping with poor Huggy's bad luck, the pilot is so terrible it's painful to watch.
Other season two guest stars include Kristy McNichol, Jose Ferrer, WKRP in Cincinnati's Gary Sandy, Miami Vice's Edward James Olmos, Rocky's Carl Weathers, Mommie Dearest's Diana Scarwid, Sanford & Son's LaWanda "Aunt Esther" Page, country singer Lynn "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" Anderson, Scatman Crothers, Sylvia Sidney, and Soap's Diana Canova.
The twenty-five episodes that make up season two are are divided onto five discs. The discs are housed in a digipak featuring headshots of the series' characters on each panel. An episode guide housed in a folder panel contains episode numbers, titles, and brief episode synopses. The discs themselves feature multi-angle shots Gran Torino. The digipak slides into a cardboard sleeve.
When the DVDs are loaded, ever-shifting vertical red stripes presenting various shots from the series slide across the screen to the strains of season two's funkier theme song. The actual menus then appear, featuring static images of the cast. Viewers can choose to play all episodes or view individual episodes. All of the episodes in this DVD are presented in production order rather than airdate order, which explains why the second episode included here has a Christmas theme. The episodes are divided into chapters.
