Strange Justice

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S4 (Strange Justice)

A sad story, that shows what can happen when summary justice is, literally executed on those that may deserve it, but won’t get such a punishment in this life.

Slate was a great character and it’s a shame to see such a well drawn role used up in one episode as I could imagine the guy being a good regular.

One thing this series could improve on was having familiar people pop up from time to time, but it was made in a time when people would tune in for individual episodes rather than an arc, so who can blame them. And sometimes they do bring back a character. I felt sure the guy who played Marcellus Cobb had been in it before, in fact.

Good to see Huggy, and for once Captain Dobey gets in on the action. But it’s really a downer, showing such terrible behaviour on both sides of the law, without giving a deeper look at the psyches behind it. But it was a series that tended to lighter entertainment.

Another mixed message is in the form of one girl’s rail against the women as objects and violence in culture, leading to rape and such like, while Starsky and Hutch both are guilty of negative behaviour, (eg: on seeing Huggy’s girl they say ‘what’s ‘that'?’, or the way they treat the meter maid in this episode!), so the series isn’t really practicing what it preaches. To be fair it was one character’s view and they didn’t share it, having seen so many rape cases, but it does raise questions, so I suppose that’s good.

It also seemed a very professional episode somehow, and I love the way they always happen to be driving the wrong way when a call comes in on the radio. Right, now we have to spin round, narrowly missing honking vehicles and angry pedestrians, tyres screeching as we go! Unfortunately the episode is still fairly depressing and you don’t come out of it thinking well or happily.

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