Character Studies 9: Hutch

So much of what we really understand about Hutch we glean through a briefly-glimpsed shadow side, choices the actor makes with body language and tone of voice. These ineffable moments can be more informative, often, than script or situation. Often Hutch is snappish or abrupt and just as often he is gentle and empathetic; often he is clumsy and sometimes exceptionally graceful. Very often in Season Four he works alone, very often he is the one to make the rational decision rather than the instinctual one. He likes to mar his beauty with brash undercover personas and grotesque disguises while his partner emphasizes his with cartoonishly magnified romanticism. He expresses an interest in computers, he is witty, he is emotionally variable. He is a Midwestern boy with a Swedish heritage, athletic, musical and smart. He has married and divorced (like parts of Starsky’s biography, this detail is not clear; I’m guessing twice). He really likes houseplants. These things we know. What we do not know, what is never told to us, is how he came to be here, in dusty, gritty Bay City, and why a man with his extraordinary good looks, intelligence and professional success is so angry so much of the time, and why has someone with so many markers for introversion let himself to be so inextricably linked, in life and career, to his colleague, partner, and friend David Starsky, as well as to a deeply tribal community of the badge itself. And it’s these whys and hows I’ll attempt to answer here. My observations are built on quicksand, and that is both the joy and the frustration of it. I’m guessing, pure and simple, falling into the unknowable waters of the intemperate, brave, resolute and complicated Kenneth Hutchinson.

Calm, controlled, disciplined, serious by nature and predominantly conflicted. Easily hurt, quick to anger. The child of possibly upper-middle-class parents (there is something patrician about Hutch that no serape, rubber nose or dented Ford can quite disguise), with a sister. A conspicuous risk-taker (cub scouts, sea scouts, lifeguard, first aid, wrestling, championship dart-playing, and all manner of daredevil sports) and a preoccupation with self-reliance that does much to build a portrait of a man who is trying to stabilize or even reform himself. Doesn’t like being on his own, and yet finds difficulty in forming bonds. Is prone to saying and doing things without completely understanding his own motivations, such as the perennial teasing of Starsky which verges on cruelty but which is actually a mechanism to keep himself safe. Likes to play the superiority card, which is both a distancing tactic, a test of fidelity and an unconscious ploy to be relied upon or needed. Has difficulty getting close to people – continually questioning those who profess to like him – and may be more invested in this partnership/friendship than Starsky is, if only because he feels he has fewer options. It’s possible what he dislikes most about himself is his own dependence on Starsky, believing it makes him vulnerable to hurt, to an inevitable let down, and in low moments wonders if he’d be better off alone. Hides the depth of his feelings through condescension, the opposite of Starsky, who hides his through banality. When relaxed can be wonderfully self-deprecating, but when pressured becomes proud and unapproachable. High intelligence and imagination makes him a great undercover cop. It’s all fabricated, to a large extent: the superiority, the cavalier attitude, the arrogance, the pushiness, body armor he wears every day to protect his sensitive core. Used to being the best-looking guy in every room, which is both a bane and a source of pride. Thinks it might be the only true and good thing about him, his only marketable product (as he himself would put it), which may explain the strict diet, the jogging, the tidy and occasionally flashy sartorial choices, the often-expressed cynicism about society’s superficiality. Has an affinity for the Woody Guthrie-esque wrong side of the tracks, the lowlifes and country music bars and the open road, places he feels he can be his true self, a wilder, earthier – and funnier – version of the man he presents to the world. And yet at the same time professes strict adherence to table manners, proper silverware, fine wine and other picayune class-conscious traditions that cause us to celebrate this contradictory human being (these insistences of his, it should be noted, are all served up with a healthy dose of irony: this is someone who knows his manners and can display them when he wants to, while understanding how silly this social scaffolding can be). Has an obsession with concepts of truth and authenticity because of a (persistent and unwarranted) feeling of inauthenticity and alienation. Who he is truly is, intelligent, perceptive, creative, honorable, loyal and brave, is not who he thinks he is, or fears he is. Throughout the four years we are fortunate enough to know him, he travels from the same path as Starsky: the path of self-knowledge, which rightly ends with himself as hero and savior, his fullest and best self revealed.

Tags: David Soul, Paul Michael Glaser, Starsky and Hutch