Tap Dancing Her Way Right Back Into Your Heart

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S2 (Tap Dancing Her Way Right Back Into Your Heart)

An unmemorable story, and not just because of the outstandingly long title (the longest of the entire series, unsurprisingly), but its sloppiness in the area of plot, and the sloppiness of the cops. I'm starting to sound like Captain Dobey, rhyming my sentences, and why not start with the good Captain? His role is one of the 'goods' about the episode, once again allowing him out of the office for some on-location policing. You can gripe that it doesn't make sense for the Captain of the force to be out supporting his men like that when he's usually liaising with important folk and co-ordinating operations from his desk, but I like that over the first half of this season Dobey's been given incrementally more to do. Not to the extent of Season 1, when he got his own episode, but at least he's a real character instead of being stripped of his role as Huggy so often has been. Back to his rhyming, or rapping: it comes when S&H dash off to save Marianne Tustin, leaving Starger and his goon in a tow truck that's been forklifted into the air over open sea, threatening them with a dunking if they don't cave and tell them what happened to Miss Tustin. Off camera you can hear Dobey spout the phrase, "All right you men, come down from there, and when you hit the ground, put your hands in the air. Come on!" Made me smile, anyway.

I picked out some other good little lines, all from Hutch, though the first one was him out of his Texan cowboy character when foiling a drugstore holdup: "Everybody get down or get out," which I thought was quite good, though I may be reading into things that aren't there when it starts to sound like there was the intention of dance-related words and phrases (everybody get down/ come on) - even Hutch's Texan wooing ("I got me a pocket full o' money and a heart full o' empty"), sounds like a line from some old country song. I also learnt a new word, Terpsichore, which is Greek for 'delighting in dancing,' which isn't something you can say every episode (learning a new word, not saying that actual word…), and while we're still rootling out the good points, I was surprised and impressed with the action sequence. You know the one, it's practically the only action in the episode, aside from the holdup, and features the shock shunting attack of a tow truck into the side of… no, not the Torino, or even Hutch's battered old motor, but a taxi cab that provides the 'cover' for the setup whereby Hutch is pretending to drop off the blackmail dough at the docks.

The attack comes out of nowhere, although I suppose we should have been expecting some kind of attempt to take out S&H since Starger knew who they were by then. Even so, it was a nice surprise and quite a punchy scene with the cars speeding around in the confined space and Hutch jumping out to better take a shot at the attackers (though I admit, I wanted him to roll out the door mid-motion). I think it stood out more because the rest of the episode had been so sedate and talky, especially for this series, but they do seem to have something for dancing. There are so many episodes either about it, or featuring it in the background when they go to clubs, and it's usually overdone, taking up more screen time than should have been allowed. This is so once again, with the ballroom dancing dragging on. In this case it had to be part of the story since they were going undercover in a dance studio, but even with that it wasn't necessary to have so much of it, as amusing as Hutch's efforts and Starsky's florid manner are.

It seems we've crossed over into the multitudinous mistakes or slip-ups that stop the episode from being one I remember and look forward to seeing again, so let us continue down that path, right back into your heart. That sentence didn't make a lot of sense, except to illustrate that the title is meaningless. I'm all for the occasional long and creative ones, but only if they're narratively defined. Yes, it mentions dancing, but there wasn't any tap dancing (unless you count Starsky in his guise of Argentinian Ramon as he walks past the getaway car on the way in to foil the robbery - did the driver not think to take note of these potential customers who might go in and spoil the action?), and from that title it suggests the tap dancer was female, tap dancing her way right back into your heart. It could be a reference to the former film star, Ginger Evans, whose dance studio this all takes place in, but the connection is tenuous; it could mean Marsha whom Hutch pretends to be attracted to, except she's really only a minor character; so are we to assume the 'Her' of the title is Marianne Tustin?

This doesn't really work either, since S&H meet her for the first time during the episode, and there's only the shortest suggestion that Starsky had bonded with her, when she pulls him into the boot of the car to give him a big kiss - but that was understandable in the context he having just saved her from kidnapping and possible death. She does attend the dance studio, but never tap dances and whether in or out of Starsky's heart, she wasn't returning, so none of the candidates measure up, forcing us to assume the title had as little thought into its necessity of communicating the story as the actual plotting itself seemed to have had. In regard to that, earlier I said it was sloppy, and here's why: aside from the title, the story develops in an ill thought-out way, firstly not telling us why S&H are dressed up in costume and behaving out of character (which I'll give them, it does make for an intriguing opening), and then, when we do learn the reason behind it, this story about some woman's brother (Teddy Tustin), who visited the city and ended up dead after getting involved in the dance studio, he's just a name. So we have no connection to him, and his sister, Marianne, takes all the limelight.

That was another problem I had, the way S&H, and even the irrepressible Captain Dobey, couldn't stand up to her, weakly accepting whatever she said or did. He's in charge of police, he should have slapped an injunction on her to stop her interferences in their investigation, and S&H are usually so forceful in explaining the situation to civilians that are intent on becoming either vigilantes or unwanted invaders into their police business. I know that Dobey has a history of politeness to women (especially when he gets bashful at the pretty ones), and maybe S&H were so caught up in their characters they didn't have the usual force of personality and dignity to back up their point, but when Marianne shows displeasure that they haven't any leads on her brother's death, or she turns up out of the blue to make her own undercover investigation into the dance studio, or demands Starsky introduce her to Starger, they always get bowled over by her personality. There might be a little compassion for her having recently lost a brother (though she never shows any mourning or sadness), but her role seems to exist to throw in another glamourous gal for the viewers without much thought to story, as well as creating a false deadline by which S&H have to solve the case, before her 'dignity' is undermined.

S&H, though they were fun in their personas of Texan cowboy Charlie McCabe (Hutch), and accented, moustache-toting Ramon (Starsky), were also another step along on the road to 'Dandruff,' the ultimate destination of parody and farce, and while I can (and did), enjoy their character acting, I always question how two detectives are so accomplished at acting! Sloppiness in the construction of the story is further evidenced when they abandon their carefully crafted cover by responding to the holdup near the beginning. The way they were talking, saying about their cover possibly being blown, I thought they were about to go to the dance studio, and casually not seeming to mind, but it turned out it was just a drugstore raid. I think perhaps Hutch just wanted to play out his dream of being a cowboy, which is why he was so unconcerned about their cover by getting involved in averting another crime, but the sloppiness doesn't just extend to the story: S&H are seen meeting on top of a bridge over a busy road! Just being seen together, the Argentinian dance instructor and the Texan cowboy from that dance studio, would have been enough to threaten the operation!

It gets worse. The holdup was just that: a holdup in the story! It had nothing to do with anything except to add much-needed action away from the slower dancing scenes (admittedly quite funny when the storeowner tells the police the handcuffed goons were left by a 'blond cowboy and an Arab with funny shoes,' - it struck me they were acting like superheroes, Batman or Spiderman might have left them tied up for the cops to collect after beating them in undercover persona!). It's the same as Miss Tustin being thrown in there for no good reason, or that Ginger shows up at the end, in case you'd forgotten her, to explain she was cleared of all charges and never knew what was going on. That does tie up the loose end of what her involvement was, but it was so tacked on and forced.

The worst sloppiness comes from S&H and Dobey, however. They'd met on a busy bridge, then at the dance studio they both show surprise and attention in Miss Tustin, Starsky even hurrying over to grab her by the arm. Anyone watching would have assumed they knew each other, and if they were close enough they'd have heard him speak in his normal voice. You can get past it by suggesting that Ramon was living up to his impetuous foreign nature, and boldly confronting this woman that had walked in, but how do you explain S&H and Dobey meeting up ON TOP OF A HILL? In full view, they choose the most public spot to meet, and lo and behold, Starger sees them and recognises the Captain. How he would recognise Dobey and not know S&H, the two most famous detectives in the force, I don't know, but file it in the same section as the accepted notion of driving around in a bright red, white-striped Torino rarely being recognised by crooks! I also had a problem with Hutch taking his job so far as to actually get himself into a position to be blackmailed after spending the night with Marsha, something that was going too far for the series.

A few other problems: Starger and his tough bodyguard guy look visibly worried when they've been hefted up in the tow truck. S&H hang them over water and they look even more worried, but why? Can't they swim? It wasn't even a long drop, and Dobey was in the background telling his men to stop so they were never going to do something to them in those circumstances! I also felt that from what we saw of Chambers' and Starger's operation, it was slick and small enough not to be noticed. This was why they could get away with pulling the same trick of blackmailing wealthy clients on a continual basis - they charged them enough to make a fast buck, but not so much that they couldn't pay it, so they had no need to kill anyone. It is explained that Teddy Tustin had a temper, and this is what likely got him killed (I liked Hutch's playing up to his cowboy persona by agreeing to pay the blackmail money one time, but if they ever tried to get him to pay again he threatens Chambers, as a wealthy and independent cattle baron might). And what about Starsky's moustache? Was it real, grown for the episode, or, as I suppose is more likely, a stick-on variety - he appears hairless when pretending to be a taxi driver for McCabe.

There were few of the regular things to look out for, but a couple of references were 'Frank' Astaire, McCabe showing his ignorance (although you could say that the series takes place in a different universe to our own, and in that, maybe Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were actually Frank Astaire and Ginger Evans!), and Dobey calls Starsky Mr. Valentino (probably after the famous romantic actor, Rudolph). There's also the pair of them playing roles undercover, something they've done many times, and a hint of the 'food thing' going on when Hutch agrees to hold Starsky's hotdog because he has to drive, though we don't get the usual followup of Hutch eating it and Starsky getting irritated, as it cuts straight to their arrival at the holdup. Marsha's place with the fireplace could be another reuse of that fireplace set, and the docks shown in this one look more like dock settings we've seen previously rather than the huge ship facilities of earlier this season.

There's a clip that would later be used in the credits - the final scene where Starsky teaches Hutch how to dance and performs the dip, much to his partner's surprise. And Huggy, although hardly integral to the story, does have one scene where he's back to his old games of mice racing at 'mouse downs' (previously called 'Rodent Downs'), seen before in 'The Omaha Tiger.' No, literally seen before, as they reuse the footage of the mice running from that episode, actually quite cleverly integrated into a new sequence - you never see Huggy in the same shot as the mice, he's behind a crowd, as is Hutch and Marsha, so they pull it off nicely. The names of the mice are even the same (Little Minnie and Little Lil join the previous entries of Cheesebiscuit, Mouse of War, and The Cat's Meow). And finally, when Starsky dances out of Dobey's office did he deliberately miss the door handle, or was it a mistake that they kept in? None of the story is so bad that it's dull, and the wacky characters S&H become are the highlight (in response we don't get any crazy characters opposite them), but the lack of logic or successful production of a story, coupled with a dip in excitement and too much innuendo, means I'm quite happy to see this episode dance off into the sunset, right out of my heart.

**