The Plague Part II

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S3 (The Plague Part II)

"Part Two: The Plague," announces the voiceover after recapping the events of the first part, followed by the title on screen: 'The Plague Part II.' But that's not the oddest inconsistency of that recap - it does a fine job of bringing us up to speed on what came before, but if you know what actually came before it throws you off by chucking in a couple of scenes from the episode you're about to watch and you start to question your memory: I don't recall Hutch being so ill and Starsky standing over him in a surgeon's mask, or him visiting Roper with the suggestion of playing bait to draw Callendar out… That's because it hadn't happened yet, so why did they include it in the recap? Strange decisions aside, I was right in my memory that this was the better part of the story, as Starsky continues in the 'all business' mode that he adopted at the end of the first part, taking no nonsense, no time for games or fripperies, seen at its most pure when he takes it upon himself to walk into the lion's den of Charles Roper's estate. Surrounded by Roper's edgy men, his gun removed from his person, he doesn't present any less than a full and serious challenge to the man. In other words he's far from cowed and Roper doesn't understand the intensity he brings into the room. If Starsky's mission wasn't so personal, and on a knife-edge, you sense at the drop of a pin he'd erupt and wildly maul as many of Roper's goons as got in his way - he even grabs Roper by his lapel, only the man's coolness and willingness for the meeting to play out stops things from getting messy.

It looked as if Roper was intrigued by 'Mr. Cop' visiting his doorstep, but if all he had to do was sit around playing chess with a drink in his hand, waiting for news of Callendar, it's no surprise he welcomed a diversion - he was already far gone enough that he talked about himself in third person! Starsky's more than that, though, he wants Roper as a decoy to draw Callendar out into the open. It was only a slim chance he'd go for it, we later hear in conversation between him and Dobey that they didn't expect him to, but he's willing to do whatever it takes. One scene that showed how Hutch's friends were pulling together was when Huggy was shown to be helping Starsky, although ineffectually as his ears on the street are too scared at both Thomas Callendar, a hitman, and Roper, a syndicate boss, to want to give any information on where he might be. I really wanted 'Starsky & Hug' to be the theme of the episode, as if this was a potential spinoff (like 'Huggy Bear and The Turkey'), with Huggy taking Hutch's place. It would have been fascinating to see a cop and a streetwise hustler out in the city working together to track down their man - only recently I was speculating what would have happened if one of the main stars had wanted to leave, and I couldn't really imagine the remaining one with anyone else, but now that I think about it, having Huggy as an unofficial partner could have made for a great continuation.

It's really Starsky's episode, though, I don't think Huggy (or Dobey), got an episode focused on their character this season, more's the pity. Hutch isn't forgotten, of course, his friendship with Dr. Judith Kaufman, which was a mere nothing in Part I, is developed a little with their short conversation through the isolation ward's telephone, though it's the long look they share when Hutch calls her back to the window that says more than their words. You could point to a patient forming an attachment to their doctor, except that Hutch was immediately fond of her even before he became a patient. It could be said to be the usual drawing together of people under duress, banding together in their time of need, especially as she doesn't hang around after the crisis is averted, off to her next assignment - Hutch suggests she's afraid to take a chance, but she has to go or she'd have surely died, getting that close to him! They either die or move away, the latter option a little better for her than the former, though indeed, I thought she was going to go down with the virus, as there was a slight suggestion of tiredness in Part I that could have become something more, and which we see again in this one, but neither she nor Dr. Meredith come down with the disease. Overall, it was just a minor subplot to fill out the two-parter, because it's really Starsky's care for his partner that matters to us.

The episode gave us some nice, heartfelt moments, such as when Starsky uses Judith's lipstick to draw 'Starsk' on Hutch's isolation window, so when he wakes he's encouraged. Why no curtains, though - are patients not allowed a little privacy? Dobey says it with flowers, showing his loyalty by taking the time to visit his man. It shows that they care, beyond the task of finding a killer. The killer himself gets his best scenes, whether it's the frank conversation between himself and Helen Yeager, the owner of the guest house, or the continued bond with Richie who attends him during his relapse after his recent exertions. Helen asks him to leave and he does, tramping the streets in his long overcoat and looking as much the tramp as his disguise of Part I. Helen also has a tearful appeal to him when Starsky finally sways the authorities (Dobey and Meredith), by pointing out it's either "Jail for Callendar or Hutch's life, what's it going to be?" A bit simplistic, as we know he's sure to be responsible for other deaths in future. Meredith's opposed to making the information public yet as it could cause panic and it was really Helen's emotional push that shifted the balance to allow the TV appeal to get Callendar to bring himself in. With Roper out to kill him they're desperate to get his blood while he's still alive, to formulate the cure. It's the thought of little Richie that gets to Callendar - perhaps he had a child once, or wanted one, who knows? If you think about it enough you could come up with all kinds of a backstory: maybe he empathised with Richie because his own Father left him, he certainly doesn't balk at Helen's wishes when she says she doesn't want her son hurt again.

You'd have thought Callendar would have done a better job of getting to the hospital than just showing up in a yellow cab and walking out of it normally, as he must have expected Roper to be watching the place. Maybe he still intended to finish his job, and was hoping the man would be there? In a way everyone gets what they wanted: Roper and his men shoot down Callendar, Callendar shoots down Roper, Starsky gets Callendar's blood, Helen gets her boy back, which is what Callendar also wanted. And the state doesn't have to let a hitman go, his punishment, death, or so I assume. He finds a sort of redemption by doing the selfless thing, 'all debts paid,' as he says. It's not entirely selfless, as he was promised immunity, but it becomes that when it appears he's fatally injured, although I wasn't certain about that. It looked like he got shot in the arm, spinning backwards in the firefight outside the hospital, but inside we see he's bleeding from a wound to the stomach, so either there was a bit of a continuity glitch there, or he was shot in more than one place simultaneously. I liked that rather than run for the hospital, he lives up to his reputation and takes the attackers on, and that Starsky and he end up working together for that brief moment, Starsky valiantly dashing over to his prone form to protect it, though not for Callendar's sake, of course, for the vital blood inside him.

Although it wasn't clear if Callendar or Roper actually died from their injuries it would make sense for poetic justice and that's how I like to see it, but it could have done with clarification. We don't even see Richie up and about again, the episode suffering from closing out syndrome: having only a short time in which to finish up. It wasn't the best written two-parter, though Part II makes up for a lot in Part I. In this one, Dobey says Starsky's stretching it a bit when he acts on a lead from the area where Callendar went missing: Helen Yeager, who usually pays with small change, paid for her groceries with a new $100 bill, but I'd say the writers were stretching it themselves at that point! It was a tense moment when Starsky drives up to the guest house, taking no risks as he makes contact with Helen, though there was no actual danger as it turned out, since Callendar was long gone. The actress that played Yeager added a lot of colour to the performance, a really believable response to events, such as a man suddenly pushing her inside her own house with his hand over her mouth, even if he was claiming to be a cop - she has an outrage about her, but still remains a polite, law-abiding civilian, but when her boy is threatened by the virus she won't keep away from him, and as I mentioned, it was her forcefulness that got the TV spot in the end, and her appeal that got to Callendar ,so she was probably the best character in it. An ordinary, decent sort, but strong enough to take what happened.

As often happens in second parts, we get down to business and don't play around much, though there are references to Florence Nightingale (Hutch doesn't want to look like her in his paper isolation garb), Starsky says "Alakazam, Captain Marvel," when he's trying to cheer his partner up, and there's a callback to the running joke of Part I: in the tag scene at the end Hutch is full of energy and life, mentioning the village where people live to a hundred and forty-eight plus, and says he's got over a hundred years to go, in his optimism and joy at being back to normal. But I thought they were going to return to the other joke about Starsky's car being towed away as he parks in the same place as last time and once again we hear the announcement that it's a no parking zone, and since they're on their way to the exit as they chat it seemed a given, but they didn't even get to the car before the episode ended! I noticed at the front of the hospital it said 'Memorial Hospital' in big letters, but unless this is a different one in the previous episode it was called City Hospital, and then Callendar orders the taxi driver he's held up at gunpoint to go to Lincoln Hospital, so which is it? Or are they all the same place with different buildings? Or is this a major slip up? Roper made me think that it would have been good for the series to have an ongoing syndicate boss as a villain, like Stryker, or others that have come and gone, because if we'd built up a recurring baddie who'd died in the firefight like it seemed Roper may have, it would have had more satisfaction to it. But they didn't go in much for continuing stories, beyond two-parters.

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