I love this series, watched it as a teen when it first aired. Just watched this episode again last night and had to come on here and cheer the actors. This episode was hard-hitting for 70s television - probably one of the reasons many nanny groups tried to ban this show and eventually managed to get the producers to tone down the violence and turn it into farce. But I digress! This episode features wonderful performances from David and Paul - that scene in the diner where Chaco grabs the waitress and Starsky & Hutch tell him no way he's walking out of there with a woman - that's Dirty Harry movie quality. And the two bad guys ooze slime! What performances. But the hands-down best performance is by Ann Weldon as Angel. She turns a small role into a tour-de-force Oscar-worthy performance.
4 Reviews
Giving Heroin Addicts a Bad Name!
therealjohnhood30 May 2023
Talk about character! The ever easy-going Med Flory as the titular Texas Longhorn, the ever-smarmy Michael Lerner as Fat Rolly and an angel-voiced Ann Weldon as - what else?- Angel, this episode reaps great character. Throw in the very bad bad guys (including evil-doing stalwart George Loros) and a couple ace turns from both Starsky and Hutch and you've got one kicking episode.
No wonder Michael Mann still raves about this series - it proved to be an excellent source of consistently keen entertainment.
Now if only we could still revisit Pike's Amusement Park to revise some of our favorite LA TV memories...
No wonder Michael Mann still raves about this series - it proved to be an excellent source of consistently keen entertainment.
Now if only we could still revisit Pike's Amusement Park to revise some of our favorite LA TV memories...
Proper Cop series
paulking-25 April 2024
Warning: Spoilers
I was 12 when Starsky and Hutch first aired in England and I was hooked from the get go. Fast forward to the present day, and now I have the entire seasons on DVD. How refreshing to see tv violence, where the viewer is given the responsibility of his or her discretion. What a car! When it rolled up at the side of the phone booths, the sheer class of the Ford Torino! Seeing two cops using a payphone is entertainment in itself. The action has a realistic rawness to it. So sad that we lost David Soul...aka Hutch, this year. He, Starsky and all the others have left the TV world with some classic tv movies.
Bad guest
monomerd22 July 2016
Warning: Spoilers
A man and wife are attacked while out for the evening. The man (Zack) is incapacitated and the wife is raped and killed. Starsky and Hutch are assigned to solve the crime.
This episode suffers greatly from the passionless acting of the man playing Zack. I suppose he was directed to be a stoic victim, but it went beyond stoic to barely there. For example, when Starksy tells the guy that his wife was raped before being murdered, he basically says, Yeah, I figured. Just no emotion at all. The guys are good with their parts, going from place to place following leads to get the villains. I like seeing their various interactions with informants of all kinds. They show far more emotion than the victim's husband. At one point, Starsky and Hutch just sit and you get the message that they are thinking that the whole situation is a tragedy. You get more emotion from their silence than you get from the husband's dialog!
There are some plot points that don't track. The worst one is the arrest of one of the suspects (Chaco) but having to release him because the husband won't identify him. But, wait, you can't hold him for holding a hostage at knife-point when you went to arrest him? I think you probably could.
The ending scene of the husband dying has him sharing a weird story to explain his actions. But it doesn't really fit very well. It's like some writer thought that story was worth using and tried to fit it into the dialog because he liked it, even though it didn't quite work. So even though PMG and David Soul did good work, these other issues brought the episode down.
This episode suffers greatly from the passionless acting of the man playing Zack. I suppose he was directed to be a stoic victim, but it went beyond stoic to barely there. For example, when Starksy tells the guy that his wife was raped before being murdered, he basically says, Yeah, I figured. Just no emotion at all. The guys are good with their parts, going from place to place following leads to get the villains. I like seeing their various interactions with informants of all kinds. They show far more emotion than the victim's husband. At one point, Starsky and Hutch just sit and you get the message that they are thinking that the whole situation is a tragedy. You get more emotion from their silence than you get from the husband's dialog!
There are some plot points that don't track. The worst one is the arrest of one of the suspects (Chaco) but having to release him because the husband won't identify him. But, wait, you can't hold him for holding a hostage at knife-point when you went to arrest him? I think you probably could.
The ending scene of the husband dying has him sharing a weird story to explain his actions. But it doesn't really fit very well. It's like some writer thought that story was worth using and tried to fit it into the dialog because he liked it, even though it didn't quite work. So even though PMG and David Soul did good work, these other issues brought the episode down.
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