Starsky and Hutch must keep Junior, the son of a friend, from avenging his father’s death at the hands of a racist rookie cop.
Junior: Brian Whitley, Jackson Walters: J Jay Saunders, Dr. Sammie Mason: Sheila Frazier, Mrs. Walters: Dorothy Meyer, Maurice: Maurice Sneed, Officer Raymond T Andrews: WK Stratton, Vivian Fellers: Helen Martin, Dewey: Fuddle Bagley, Mrs. Hong: Shizuko Hoshi, Clayborne: Chuck Hicks. Script by: Rick Edelstein & Steve Fisher, Directed by: David Soul.
QUESTIONS AND NOTES:
This is a brilliant episode and in my top five, if I had a list. Fearless, angry, gentle and humane, it attempts to tackle huge subjects with grace and economy. It’s also one of those episodes (in fact, every episode that deals directly with race in America) that is a bitter reminder of how little has changed over the years. It’s with a sense of weariness and unease that we watch this episode, each anguish leading to the next, and the next. Inevitability makes this a tragedy in the classical sense; Starsky and Hutch can only make small alterations and corrections, trying their best against a boulder that is tumbling down a hill taking everything with it. The fact that they succeed even in these small ways is truly heroic in my books.
The harmonica soundtrack is courtesy of Andy Kulberg, Soul’s friend and bandleader.
The basketball game: surely one of the most joyous scenes in the entire series. All participants playing as hard as they can, the guys are especially good, with the physical grace actors often have. Notice how Hutch grabs Starsky around the waist to hold him – illegally – while the ball is in play. Notice too how it’s Starsky and Junior against Hutch and Jackson: the kids against the adults.
Soul’s direction always maintains a viewer’s interest. He has a very active, personable style, never bland or stodgy. The scene in which Andrews shoots Walters is thrillingly direct. The shocking events unfolding quickly, cleanly, with minimal editing. There’s no rushing here, the scene takes its time, and it’s easy to see this director has a fellow actor’s empathy with all the players.
Maurice’s actions in the beginning of this episode shows that often it’s stupidity rather than malice that creates so much suffering. Maurice Sneed’s performance is great, full of nuances so fresh and immediate it seems improvised. Look how he pretends to have a chauffeur as he pulls up, and blows an elaborate kiss to Mrs. Hong. He’s a fantasy rich man with the world at his feet, intoxicated as a way of muffling feelings of hopelessness, boredom and despair. He’s so rubbery and giggly he’s almost funny, but not quite – there’s more than a hint of cruelty and racism as he shuffles his way through the grocery store. I’m going to take a sidebar here and comment that racism is not the sole province of one group of people or another, everyone is afflicted by it to some degree, and here Maurice’s antagonistic and ignorant treatment of Mrs. Hong is evidence that this is a complicated, frustrating, and pernicious evil that knows no boundaries. And so, too, with the incendiary n-word which will later detonate in the tragic scene of murder; Maurice will later casually use it to his fellows at the bar he frequents, reminding us that language is racism’s handmaiden, benign to some and malevolent to others. Okay, let’s get back to the action, and oh-so-high Maurice’s stumbling takeover of the Chinese-owned corner store. And the victim of the car-jacking that leads to the terrible event? He’s drunk too! (The clueless Dewey, played by the marvelous – and marvelously named – Fuddle Bagley). Rather than wrong or right this whole situation is just plain sad. Dewey doesn’t realize his car was stolen. Maurice doesn’t even think he stole an actual car. Maurice uses the banana he stole as the “gun” in the robbery – absurdity piled upon absurdity.
Funny how Hutch introduces himself to Sammie as “Hutch”. Not Ken. He uses his nickname almost as a pseudonym, a way of disguising or reinventing himself. “David” is used way more often than “Ken” regardless of the speaker. It’s a stretch but not a long one to imagine Hutch is using this nickname to divest himself of his past, for whatever reason.
Jackson and Junior have a shouting match over the pills and it gets violent. Jackson makes the fatal mistake of not cooling down before accusing his son. Starsky pulls Jackson’s arm, says he’ll talk to Junior, and Jackson lets him. Allowing another man to father his son means he has a very high regard for Starsky. Is this because he fears his own temper, is really bad at the paternal dialogue thing, or does he trust Starsky that much?
Given the cultural and economic divide between Walters and Starsky, it’s likely they met while serving in the armed forces. Long boring hours in training, away from familiar territory, and for a uniting, if nebulous, cause, explains how two very different people become friends. They certainly didn’t meet recently. Starsky and Hutch don’t have a lot of time for friendships outside the job, and this one has a mature, complicated feel as if it has gone on for years.
Of the two, who’s closer to Jackson, Starsky or Hutch? Jackson talks to Hutch first about the drugs, but lets Starsky confront his son. My theory, without proof, is that Starsky is the social glue here. He knows about Sammie before Hutch does. He flirts with Mrs. Walters. He’s at home enough to insist, amusingly, on chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla. Junior’s insolent with him, which suggests a high degree of familiarity. And it’s Starsky who spends time with Mrs. Walters in the aftermath of the shooting, giving support.
There is some interesting early tagging on the wooden gate at the Walters place.
On his way to his ride, does Jackson call Starsky “Sarge” or “Starsk”? It sure sounds like Sarge, which would give credence to my met-in-the-service theory.
Note how the Jackson home is in the shadow of a giant industrial building. It gives a surreal in-between quality to the neighborhood, the impression that things are about to change, and not necessarily for the better, and that the Walters family are living on borrowed time. Nicely done, location scouts.
Andrews and his partner are “Apple Three” when responding to the car involved in the grocery rip-off: literally and figuratively they’re as far from “Zebra Three” as it’s possible to get.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the camera takes inventory of the ethnic, economic, and social diversity on the assembled faces, while showing how a blank, disbelieving horror has united them.
The confrontation between Starsky and Raymond Andrews, with its brutal and innovative twist, is a pivotal scene in this episode and metaphoric of the series as a whole. At the time of its initial airing, I had never before seen a man slap another man and I bet you hadn’t either. Slapping is much, much different than punching. For one thing it takes a shorter preparation, and seems more personal. It’s less about strength and more about emotional outrage. In a way, it’s a feminized act of violence, more social condemnation, or protest, than any other form of violence. A punch just stops you cold, a slap instructs. “The nigger’s lying,” Andrews says and Starsky slaps him BANG without any warning at all. Hutch looks shocked and puts his hand on Starsky’s inner arm, the other hand covering Starsky’s hand and starts to pull him away. “You,” Hutch says with undisguised hatred to Andrews, “You wait here.” And then puts his arm around Starsky’s waist and literally drags him from the scene, Starsky’s eyes shooting daggers the entire time.
When Starsky and Hutch load Jackson onto the ambulance, they turn around. Beautifully staged, Jackson’s hat is pitifully in the foreground. All the witnesses – a motley collection of down-and-outs, the disenfranchised, the poor and ignored – stare at them. Judged for their failure to prevent a social injustice, Starsky and Hutch exhibit no defensiveness. Rather, they shoulder the responsibility. “You gonna kill him too?” Mrs. Fellers says to Hutch as he leads Dewey away. Hutch humbly accepts the shot.
My interpretation of Andrews’ partner is that he is stolid and unimaginative but pretty decent, stuck mentoring a young officer with grave defects and determined to stick it out. He viciously kicks aside the impediment to his car as they prepare to leave the scene and my view is this anger is directed against Andrews, who has royally f–ed up his day and doomed them both to weeks of paperwork and desk duty. It’s a nice character study and worthy of note, even if it isn’t flashy, although other viewers may have a different take on the character.
Interestingly, neither Andrews nor his partner are seen again. They vanish into irrelevance as the story shifts to the consequence of the shooting. The episode makes its point about institutional racism and leaves it at that.
The patrol car honks at Starsky to get out of the way and he deliberately doesn’t. Look how long he waits before moving out of its range. It’s one final act of loyalty to Jackson Walters – Starsky is telling Andrews he is going to be an impediment for awhile yet – and quite touching in its simplicity.
Hutch is talking to Dobey. He says, sensibly, “unless Andrews is suspended, publicly – and I mean in the press and on the tube – you are going to have trouble on the streets.” An accurate observation, especially as of late, with the beleaguered LAPD suffering so many PR nightmares. Although Hutch is correct, Dobey is also convincing when he argues the other side.
Because David Soul is directing, the camera naturally focuses on Starsky. There are some lovely shots of him sleeping in the hospital while they wait for word on Jackson. The whole death scene is filmed without any words at all. When Starsky and Sam leave to go back to the house Hutch tells Starsky he’ll talk to Andrews, and Starsky does an incredible thing. He touches Hutch on the back of the head, his neck, ruffling his hair. This is not a gesture people normally make, not even very good friends. As with many scenes in this episode, it’s in no rush to conclude, lingering as Hutch stands alone with the shadow of the swinging door on the wall.
The whole show is filmed in the midst of junk, slapped-together fences, broken appliances, old couches. Big rigs and skyscrapers, and Halloween jack-o-lanterns strung up on spindly trees.
When Mrs. Walters sees Starsky and Sammie on the porch, she says cannily, “have you two been out on the town?” and you can tell she has harbored a fantasy of the two of them getting together, which makes the whole scene even more poignant. Sammie is an interesting character: educated, driven, polished. Even though she calls Mrs. Walters “Mama”, she isn’t a relative, as evidenced by Maurice calling her “that lady” who “rents a room” in Junior’s house.
Hutch has a very funny silent-movie scene with the pushy Mrs. Fellers looking over his shoulder as he types the report.
When Mrs. Fellers attacks Dobey for propping up the white man when he insists justice will be done, one can see the continual difficulty Dobey is in, stuck between black culture and the mostly white world of management. He’s uncomfortable but not especially good at dealing with his discomfort, tending to bluster, lose his cool.
Maurice does a repeat of his garrulous, loose performance when he saunters into the local bar: laughing, wobbling, trying to steal a beer. He can’t possibly know his part in the death of Junior’s father when he sees Junior there – he’s inept and maybe tragically foolish but he’s not a psychopath, and if he knew he was involved, even peripherally, he’d go into hiding or at least avoid Junior. There must have been a lot of gossip in the neighborhood, the murder of a good man at the hands of a racist cop, but no names, no specifics, and so Maurice doesn’t even think he’s part of the equation.
Strikingly, as Maurice does his complex moves through the bar, he casually uses the dreaded n-word as he greets his cronies. It’s slipped into the dark, jumbled atmosphere like a little moth, seeming to belong even if it causes (in me, anyway) a frisson of unease. This is indicative of the ambitions of this episode: it means for us to think hard about how language shapes culture, how it frees and imprisons, how it wounds and who is in power and who isn’t.
There’s Ollie the teddy bear, rented out for this scene and sitting in judgment in Sammie’s room when Junior steals her keys. His right arm is raised, as in alarm.
“When your daddy dies,” says Starsky, “it’s awfully hard to see straight.” This from a cop about to bust someone for stealing drugs – a very sympathetic view and not necessarily shared by other cops. Later, he asks Sammie not to phone the authorities when they go in, another gesture of solidarity with the Walters family.
There is no tag in the traditional sense in this episode. It ends with a meeting with Junior, who is told Andrews has been sentenced to 90 days suspension without pay for the shooting death of Jackson. That means the police board found him innocent on the most serious charges, probably charging him with minor procedural irregularity. Despite numerous witnesses, he got away with it. “That’s jive,” Junior says quietly, which is an understatement.
Clothing notes: Starsky wears his great orange shirt with the white placket. Hutch wears his moon and star necklace, plus the green t-shirt and green leather from Gillian, and worn throughout the second and third series.