"S.W.A.T. doesn't make mistakes" - Steve Forrest as Lt. Dan "Hondo" Harrelson
S.W.A.T.: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
Lt. Hondo Harrelson (Steve Forrest) is one tough cop. He's so tough that after being grazed with a bullet, he stoically returns to his desk to complete routine paperwork rather than allowing his doctor to run medical tests. That's why he's the head of the elite Strategic Weapons and Tactics squad - S.W.A.T. for short. This special division is called in to assist with violent situations - sniper attacks, hostage situations - that the regular police cannot handle.
Together with Sergeant David "Deacon" Kay (Rod Perry), Harrelson handpicks his small but talented team. Officer Jim Street (Robert Urich) is recruited after his partner is killed in an ambush. Officer Dominic Luca (Mark Shera) brings his street smarts and his irreverent attitude to the team. Officer T.J. McCabe (James Coleman) is the team's expert marksman.
S.W.A.T. takes on a wide variety of assignments. In "Coven of Killers," they are charged with tracking down Joey Hopper, a Charles Manson clone who is broken out of jail by members of his "family." Sal Mineo plays the sexy, swaggering Hopper in this early episode. In "The Bravo Enigma," they must find a hired assassin code named Bravo (Christopher George) before he kills his mark and also inadvertently spreads the pneumonic plague that he picked up while on a hit in India. This SARS-like storyline is especially relevant today, if SARS happened to be spread by a globetrotting assassin.
In "The Steel Plated Security Blanket," a pre-Charlie's Angels Farrah Fawcett-Majors guest stars as Miss New Mexico, a participant in the Miss American Beauty Pageant. The episode takes a bizarre turn involving a fake diamond tiara and a hostage situation in an armored car. Farrah tells a heart-wrenching tale of hating Tucumcari, but luckily she wins the contest and survives her capture. A pre-bleached Loni Anderson also appears as Miss Texas.
The S.W.A.T. team races toward crime scenes in their lumbering oversized van. Veteran subway riders know that it is next to impossible to simply stand unaided in a moving vehicle, even one on a set track, much less get dressed in one that is careening down California freeways. Nothing is impossible for the men of S.W.A.T., though.
The guys do not seem to be crack shots - usually hundreds of rounds are fired before they finally get the bad guy. They make up for this in response time, though. When a hooker starts running away from a robbery gone bad, S.W.A.T. is on the scene before she can even cross the street. Police also show up before a security guard's finger is even able to leave the silent alarm he has just pressed.
It is oddly appropriate that of all the S.W.A.T. members, viewers are only allowed to see Harrelson's home life. This helps to humanize what would otherwise have been a one dimensional character. Even when joking with his young charges, Forrest's Hondo looks as if he is about to pounce. He plays the role with the type of grave seriousness that the Police Squad and Airplane! gang successfully sent up a few years later. Still, you cannot help but like the lug.
The remaining cast mostly stays in the background. Mark Shera brings a sense of humor to Luca, but this only comes through in scenes set at the precinct. In "Death Carrier," Robert Urich steps to the fore and displays the easygoing charm that made him TV hit catnip.
In an attempt to lighten the show up, Rose Marie occasionally shows up as Hilda, a woman who sells decrepit sandwiches at the station. This one joke is stretched dangerously thin, but her appearances are, for the most part, mercifully brief.
The thirteen episodes that make up season one are divided onto three discs. The simple menus allow for all of the discs' episodes to be played at once, or for individual episodes to be selected. As usual in Columbia/TriStar TV DVD releases, the episodes do not have chapter stops.
