Long Walk Down A Short Dirt Road

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S2 (Long Walk Down A Short Dirt Road)

I got the impression, perhaps from a small guest cast, that they'd spent all their money on the two main guest stars, country singer Lynn Anderson and actor Scatman Crothers, though they did get a large number of extras together (including the Buddha-like old man that played the 'derelict' as Hutch described him, who gets shot by Jerry in an alley - I'm sure he was the guy sitting on the steps near Lady Bessie's in 'Huggy Bear and The Turkey'), especially in the Saddle-Bar scenes where there appears to be a full house (though you could still tell they'd duplicated the cheering to sound like more!). Whether this was the case or they only needed a few characters, I don't know, just as I don't know how famous Anderson (or Crothers, for that matter), were at the time. It says something about Anderson's ability to act that I'm never sure whether she's a real country singer or an actor playing a role until I get to the end credits and see her credited not only for playing Sue Ann Grainger, but also getting a 'songs by' credit, (plus in the DVD insert it mentions she was a country singer), that I'm sure she really was. Not to say her singing didn't seem professional, rather she convinced in the role as well.

The signs are there, mainly because the series didn't generally give over so much of its time to playing full songs, and while I was quite happy for them to do that, especially as it wasn't like a concert, you had S&H arguing or playing against each other, you know they wouldn't allow for such things unless it was part of a deal with the guest actor to show off her music. It's strange then that they didn't credit her as a 'Special Guest Star,' with Scatman Crothers getting that accolade even though he only has one little scene as 'Fireball,' a friend of Huggy's who 'sees things like nobody else does'! It was such a small, inconsequential part in the episode that it could only have been to squeeze in a cameo - perhaps the actor asked to be on the series, who knows? I wish there was this kind of detailed behind the scenes information out there and accessible, as I'd love to read a book about the series.

The story is really all about Sue Ann, a friendly, innocent young lady that loves what she does so much, yet because of that (as Hutch notes), feels guilty at her happiness and good fortune in a world where others suffer. She's not a bad character, but she does seem naive (thinking her mystery blackmailer will let her off the hook if she gives him $10,000), weak (the way she melts down when Jerry appears at the recording studio and threatens her in person), and foolhardy (obeying his instructions to meet at an abandoned building without the police). But we also see her good qualities too, being a compassionate person that cares about others, shocked when two people have been killed because the police were involved against the blackmailer's explicit instructions, leading her to her best moment - the courage to face Jerry alone, even after being put in such fear of him before. Her desire that no one else will get hurt, including him, means she puts herself in danger. I'm not sure how S&H were able to track her down to that building since she left no clue as to where she was supposed to meet Jerry, but Cal, her manager, would no doubt have immediately informed Dobey and they would have known what car she was driving, so maybe they had sightings of her to trace?

Jerry Tabor is in stark contrast to Sue Ann, both in professional life and personal qualities - he's bold, dangerous, and feeding off the fixation in which he believes all his problems stem from her. He's deluded and bitter, but you don't get the sense that he was ever particularly well-adjusted. He got the notion into his head when back home with the only radio station in town that if he helped Sue Ann by playing her records all the time she would somehow help him in his career! Then he blames her for the scar in his throat from where he was knifed by a man that took against his continual playing of Sue Ann's music on the local bar's jukebox (everyone's a music critic, right?), enough to stab him and damage his voice, losing him his job on the station. I'll admit it's a little extreme for someone to take that much offence at some music, but Jerry's such an unpleasant fellow he was probably looking for trouble and quick to anger people. It was his own stupidity that got him the scar (a magical scar, changing from straight in normal shot, to 'S'-shaped in closeup), and irritating people in the bar by playing the same tunes over and over to improve Sue Ann's reputation there, shows just how deluded he was!

That's about it as the story goes. Interspersed between musical numbers Jerry kills first one, then another person, continually threatening Sue Ann on the phone, turning up at the recording studio, then an exciting, if short, chase, S&H decked out in stylish seventies sportswear to play tennis in the park where Jerry's to pick up the money (a yellow, sorry, gold, and dark blue tracksuit for Hutch, not as garish as his yellow and green one from 'Starsky's Lady,' but close, and small white shorts and a red and dark blue tracksuit top for Starsky!). As the series has gone on it's gotten easier to recognise David Soul's double, and it was so this time - you can tell it's him by the way he runs after the truck Jerry's escaping in, and the hair is longer or straighter than Soul's. Picerni's also clear as the one to leap onto the back of it, as well as doing two trademark leaps in the episode: one in the bar fight (the quiet one of the three thugs there was another stuntman that has multiple roles on the series, such as the husband in 'The Las Vegas Strangler' who gets pushed into the pool), leaping over a table, and then, more traditionally, using the Torino as springboard to take down Jerry. It may be the only episode where both Starsky and Hutch are seen on top of the Torino, as Hutch leaps onto the roof when Jerry tries to make his getaway in Starsky's prized motor (again, you can tell it was the double, though Sue Ann's presumed double looked so much like her it could almost have been her when she gets pulled out of the moving vehicle!).

It was all up for Jerry once he tried to nick off with Starsky's pride and joy - murder is one thing, but nobody takes the Torino! Jerry was a good villain, though, his life a mirror of Sue Ann's, even down to the hotels they frequent: he stays at the sparse, cheap Hotel Adams (though I must give credit to the Hotel Clerk who's far more helpful than most of them usually are - assisting the police, if slightly reluctantly, rather than contacting the bad guy and filling him in on what the police are doing, as so often happens - maybe Adams was a middle of the road hotel, not as rundown as most we've seen?), while Sue Ann's surroundings are far more opulent (it may have been called the Quincy, as that's the name Jerry gives to make phone contact). He was clearly not mentally stable, having allowed his fixation on Sue Ann as the only answer to his problems, and the cause in his own mind, as well as bitterness at the way his life had turned out, to completely take over. Hutch assures Sue Ann that they don't want to hurt him, and they do their professional best, but it was unfortunate the six men Dobey could spare weren't around when the tennis court fiasco happened. If they'd had men stationed around the park Jerry might not have escaped! Good job S&H were police as it would have been embarrassing for Jerry to be spooked by an ordinary tennis player running towards him if he was just after the tennis ball!

Huggy's role is severely curtailed, only appearing in the invisible baseball match with Fireball, who qualifies as the single odd character of the episode, there being no other real contenders. We get to see the cuddly side of Dobey again, the one he usually reserves for ladies, where his face bunches up in bashful smiles, but even more so this time as he's obviously a big fan of Sue Ann - he asks for her autograph 'for his son,' but then proceeds to have it made out to 'Harold C.' Starsky's about to say his son's real name, but Dobey cuts him off, and it's all a nice moment between the characters, although it would also have been nice to remind us of Dobey's son, who appeared in 'Captain Dobey, You're Dead!' As usual continuity is eschewed, but at least he got a mention at all. Early in the episode Sue Ann says that "chivalry is not dead" when Starsky helps her put her coat on, but Dobey doesn't seem to share that sentiment as he grabs the first doughnut as it enters the room (carried by Starsky, it didn't walk in of its own accord), and proceeds to munch away before Sue Ann's even been offered one!

Though there's not a lot of story to this one, or much action, it's kind of nice to watch, perhaps because Sue Ann is good and kind, as well as conflicted, and S&H work well together. We get a bit of contemporary high-tech equipment more suited to 'Mission: Impossible' when Jerry's phone call is monitored in order to trace him, though he doesn't stay on long enough, plus they use the radios again, though only in that scene. There aren't any running jokes or themes in this one, the closest being Starsky's lack of interest in 'hillbilly' (as he calls country music), changes so that he's all dressed up in the country clothes by the end (the shots of him getting in the spirit of Sue Ann's song, and Hutch's eye-rolling disgust would later be used in the credits), though he goes from being against it to getting into the mood in the first few minutes of watching Sue Ann perform, so there was no gradual shift, though he 'understands' it through the lens of 'Americana' as he calls it, something he professed to love when he was being a trucker in 'The Set-Up.'

Dobey must have been pretty starstruck when Sue Ann paid a visit to his office because when she suggests they're putting on preferential treatment for her, Dobey replies that they treat all their suspects the same in this community - she wasn't a suspect, she was putting in a complaint about the blackmailer (I can just imagine Jerry being sent coffee and doughnuts with a special invitation to visit Dobey's office, not)! I wonder if Jerry's 'ugly' raspy voice was put on by the actor? It seems likely as at least a couple of times he appeared to be concentrating so hard on the voice that he almost forgot his next word (e.g.: '…put it in the trash…[gap] receptacle'). Not so much a mistake as an observation: watch the window S&H park in front of at the Hotel Adams and you'll see a little girl looking out who jumps down, then when they come out you can see a feather or a dog's tail waving about in that same window, which leads me to suspect they were filming at a real hotel or occupied building and hadn't bothered to ask people not to look out as it has nothing to do with the episode at all!

At least the ending is better than many (right down to the freeze frame of Starsky dashing out of his chair and Hutch about to jump down from the stage!), though in keeping with the rest of the episode it does go on a little bit thanks to two songs being played, one by Sue Ann, and the other by Hutch, aka The Singing Policeman, aka The Blond Blintz (that nickname seems to have taken off in the last few episodes!), another tie in to Soul's musical ability that he occasionally demonstrated on the series, this time singing 'Lovin' Arms' and having to act as a nervous and hesitant performer. Good acting! Other references were to Dirty Harry (the character played by Clint Eastwood in the seventies film series), though it's turned into an in-joke as after Starsky says Hutch sounded like him, and he doesn't know who that is, he adds it's a cop he knows in San Francisco. I don't know the films so it could be a double joke as if Starsky knows that actual character, or it could be a joke as if we're expecting him to be talking about the character and he really does know someone called that! I certainly didn't know Charlie Pride, Dobey's reference to someone he assumed Sue Ann would be impressed by. Maybe an older generation singer or musician? Not knowing much about baseball, either, I'd heard of Mickey Mantle, but not (Roger) Maris, whom Fireball 'sees' as part of his game.

A good, though not great episode, with a change of pace thanks to the musical interludes, and a believable country star for S&H to protect, even if they did bungle it in their gung-ho way. Fortunately for them, Cal had great faith in the police so they kept coming back into it, even when Sue Ann didn't show great willing. A good villain, a tighter cast of characters without lots of extraneous ones, and good character moments for all but Huggy, means this, while not a favourite, is a pleasurable watch.

***