Iron Mike

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S2 (Iron Mike)

'Iron' Mike Ferguson, that's who this episode is about, and this time there's no confusion from the title! Mike is a police Captain, so… that would make him the same rank as Dobey, right? So why is Dobey in charge of the police in this city, or have I got the wrong end of the stick, and Dobey's actually only head of a department in which S&H serve? I don't understand how American police forces work, but Iron Mike coming onto the scene didn't help me! If Mike's a Captain (he is), and has carried out his own methods (he has), while being part of the city's force, why do S&H say they haven't seen him in a year? If he was so well known you'd think they'd always be bumping into him, unless he was working in a different city, but then that wouldn't make sense as he then wouldn't have much use for the intelligence of Matt Coyle. Unless Coyle had recently moved from another city, too, which doesn't appear to be the case or it would have been mentioned. I was interested that S&H say they haven't seen him in a year, and then to find that Michael Conrad who played Mike, had been in Season 1. Not only that, but he was in the pilot episode, though I couldn't remember if he'd played the same character as it wasn't named in the credits. Going back to that episode I discovered he didn't play Iron Mike, which would have been some great continuity, but one of the two assassins - in fact he was the first actor to speak on the series!

Iron Mike is set up quite well in this episode as a tough cop with a hands-on approach. It's never explained why he gets his hands dirty when he could be sitting behind a desk like Dobey, but maybe it's each Captain's prerogative how much they get involved physically, as we've seen Dobey out of the office a number of times, generally on important busts. What was really lacking from the episode was confirmation of Mike and Dobey's friendship, which puts a damper on S&H's suspicions about the man - if we could have heard about Mike before, as we did Dobey's partner in another episode, or had more of a sense of that friendship, the episode would have had a stronger central premise. Dobey stands up for Mike and his methods over his men's words, even saying he was his best friend. And once Mike knows S&H are suspicious of him the tension goes up, especially when he jokingly (if sinisterly), asks if they think he's setting them up when they have orders to round up the escapees from the Darcy's department store holdup. If only that feeling of danger could have been better integrated into the story, along with Dobey's staunch defence, this could have been a much improved episode.

As it is, it may as well have been called 'Irish Matt Coyle,' since Iron Mike is offed unceremoniously about halfway through, and it becomes all about the slimy and villainous Coyle. Why build up this Mike as so important, and then kill him off, especially when it doesn't lead to more trouble for S&H, they just move on to the real villain. I felt Mike was wasted, and was a character worth exploring more (even if he didn't look so threatening in a cardigan!). Coyle was an interesting opponent, and S&H's infiltration of his organisation was clever, working it so that Johnny Lonigan, Coyle's righthand man, would be thrown to them in exchange for their taking the place of Iron Mike in supposedly being on Coyle's side, allowing him to operate unhindered. There was a good theme to be explored in Coyle's (and presumably Mike's), belief that allowing Coyle to do what he wanted was acceptable if he gave them the 'low-life' criminals, rapists, and violent men whose removal from the streets would make the city better. Coyle is allowed to think he's above the law, as long as he does his part in keeping the streets clean. But S&H don't play God with that law: Coyle's as guilty as the other offenders, and the injustice of him being able to get away with all kinds of things is what spurs S&H to get him.

Coyle is shown to be a complete fraud. He spins a sorry tale of a difficult life in Ireland, but in fact the accent is complete affectation; he's playing a role. He has no qualms about courting Johnny's wife, and when she shows some intimations of threatening him to get herself a bracelet, he's quick to inflict pain: no one pushes Coyle around and gets away with it. A complex villain is good for a story, and Coyle was one worth coming back for - even at the end when a prison sentence is inevitable, he's threatening that he'll be out one day. He just can't accept things not going his way, and thanks to people like Mike, he's been spoiled. Not that Mike liked him, he was as unhappy with the position he was in as anyone, but felt it necessary to get results, which he did. S&H also get results after following a tipoff from Coyle, leading Dobey to suggest they could be up for promotions, though it doesn't happen in the end. It shows them being heroic in a different way, because the temptation could have been strong for them to take Mike's lead and carry on using Coyle to improve their careers, as he had done. If it was good enough for him, they could argue… But when it comes to justice, S&H are pure, and they hate wrongdoers. They were never going to give in to something like that when they know that they work hard and well together.

That statement that they can always depend on each other is one of the things that makes me side more on the 'negative' view of the city for this one. It goes right back to the pilot in that regard, when they said they could only trust each other, and has been spoken a few times, and unspoken many others. It's not that the episode tended to deal with the gutter of the city, although we see back streets and rough areas, crooked opulence is as much in evidence thanks to Coyle's office (which looks strikingly like most of the other bad guy offices we've seen before, though the carpet was orange this time, not red!), and the glamourous apartment. Despite the impression I had that this episode was closer to the negative, it was funnier than I remembered, beginning with a slapstick, and, er… slap-voice (?) scene. I don't know any other way to describe this style of chaos that's produced sometimes on the series, in this case Starsky shouting at a Chinese chef called Harry at this restaurant, as Hutch gets bustled around the kitchen, the waiters shouting orders, Harry shouting who knows what, until the cacophony of noise turns into S&H getting bundled over to the door. It's crazy and manic, but it's nothing compared to the moment Starsky gets pushed out into the restaurant to collide with a waiter carrying, as expected, a full tray of food (maybe something else I should add to the usual list of observations since it happens so often!), Hutch hurriedly dragging him back in by the leg, as waiters force their way out amid continuous noise (I'd love to know what the waiter said to Coyle in Chinese when he asks what the commotion was about)!

Or the moment Hutch has to stand on Starsky in order to peer over a high fence at Mike meeting Matt in a car park. The final scene also features great comedy as Starsky beats Hutch at chess having just learned to play, the punchline being his strategy, which was similar to Ferguson's Law ('give a little, get a lot'), although Starsky's Law is 'talk a little, win a lot.' That last scene, as good as it was (and it was good), showed up another of the episode's flaws on top of Mike not being well enough explored, Dobey's friendship not made more of, and the episode being about Coyle: it's a flippant conclusion to some serious subjects that doesn't satisfy our questions. Did Coyle get a long sentence? How did Dobey react to what had happened? Did he still refuse to point the finger at Mike, or was there going to be some kind of investigation? These questions and more should have been given the time they needed, even if it was just a scene of reconciliation between S&H and Dobey. What we get is a lighthearted, offhand conversation that maybe Mike wasn't so bad. He was accepting bribes, even if it was information, not dollars!

If Dobey's role in the episode could, and should have been expanded, Huggy did get to be in it, at least. He may have been wearing an inadvisable denim jacket with a swastika on it (presumably the kind of radical outfit bikers of the time wore - I can't think of any other reason something like that would be used), and trying to attract young ladies with a beaten up old bike, but he is useful in giving us solid proof that Mike is actually averse to bribes of the money kind ("mean, clean, and allergic to green…"). The issue of whether S&H are guilty of the same kind of tactics of bending the law as Iron Mike also comes up when Dobey suggests they would do that for Huggy, but as they reply, Hug's not a monster, and bending the law isn't the same as breaking it' (although I'm sure there are instances when they've allowed him to get away with dodgy stuff, though whenever it's been serious or he's not been truthful with them, things have gone badly between them).

One of the nitpicks of the episode happens under Huggy's watch - he has a folded up photo of Mrs. Lonigan, Johnny's wife, which he passes to S&H, but when the camera shows us the view it's of an uncreased photo. There's also the glaring contradiction (or simple mistake), of where Matt Coyle's phone number is in Iron Mike's snitch book - Mike claims it's on the back page, and we see that to be the case when they flick through, but then Starsky tells Johnny that Coyle's number is on the front page. It could have been just for emphasis, and if you open the book from the back it would be the front page, I suppose… The other possible flub I noticed was when the man dressed as a woman (yes, another one!), at Darcy's is being chased (they like their department store chases!), he throws down some containers of balls which looked like they were supposed to scatter, and didn't, with about one bouncing out! Starsky's old trait of taking his partner to rundown, slightly dodgy or odd eating places that he loves and Hutch doesn't want to visit, continues with this episode, as does Starsky banging a dispensing machine to get a free bar of chocolate (well, it makes up for the one he lost out on in 'Texas Longhorn' last season, even if it is stealing!). You could say they go undercover again in the department store sting, although it's the extent of a hat for Hutch and an odd interest in women's clothing for Starsky! Hutch's place is the location for the game of chess at the end, and Mandalay Heights Airfield I think had been spoken of and visited before (possibly 'Captain Dobey, You're Dead!').

On the list of references we get several: a surprise mention of James Bond (Hutch says the last time he saw a place like the Chinese restaurant was in one of those films!); Hutch says Ferguson has "the greatest arrest record since Wyatt Earp"; and "Skinny" Momo Mantell admits his former employer, Coyle "ain't no Snow White." Actually I felt that Coyle was a bit like Garak from 'DS9' in some ways - he could be ruthless, he was happy confusing the issue with false impressions of himself, and you never knew what he might do next, as well as lines like his lie having more colour than their grey truth. This is pertinent because we have a real Cardassian in the episode: Momo, who was played by Marc Alaimo (Gul Dukat on 'DS9'). He'd previously been in Season 1's 'The Bait,' and I believe he would return as a third character in one other episode, possibly this season. Michael Conrad wasn't the only returning actor (like Alaimo), or the only one from the pilot - Buddy Lester who played Lucky Lester in this (no, I don't remember that character), was also Coley in that first episode.

As I was watching this I felt it was better than I'd thought, perhaps because I was thinking more in terms of the lesser episodes of Season 1 than the generally better quality of Season 2. While it wasn't boring, I've already pointed out its flaws, and it didn't reach the potential the story had, or use all the characters effectively enough, which is why I rate it as I did. If it was a choice of this or a similarly low-ranked episode from Season 1, I'd go for this because it does at least show promise, but watching these episodes as I do, on full alert, paying attention to everything because I know I'm going to be writing a review, I enjoyed it more, whereas just viewing for the sake of viewing might not be as enjoyable.

**