Cover Girl

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S4 (Cover Girl) (2)

One of the dynamic duo meets an old friend who's now a model and has to protect her, becoming closer than professionally reasonable in the process. Where have we seen that synopsis before? Only about half a dozen episodes throughout the series, though specifically it made me think of an almost identical episode where Starsky found himself trying to help an old female friend way back in Season 1's 'Running.' The usual unprofessional behaviour at once makes Kate Larrabee, a model who has a debilitating disease that will weaken her bones and destroy her looks, better protected than if she were just a regular target, but also in more danger since Hutch is sidetracked and lowers his guard, almost getting blown to kingdom come by activating a bomb hidden under her car with his police radio frequency! Why is Kate being targeted? Because she asked to be assassinated, not having the fortitude to live with the slow death the doctors have informed her of. But if there's one lesson to be learned from this episode, it is not to give up, even when things seem hopeless - even doctors don't know everything, and hers, Dr. Harriman, soon shows up to give her the good news of remission, only it's too late to cancel the contract because the guy she arranged it through, Brady, can't get in contact with the hired hitman, Angel, whom conveniently (for the plot, inconveniently for Kate), has decided to move on after this job with no further contact possible.

It's a pretty good set up for an episode, the problem is that they wanted to have all the explosions and danger, but also squeeze in the romantic subplot and you can't really delve deep into either one, in consequence. I'm not sure we needed another fashion-focused episode immediately after the last one, but her model status is really only an excuse for her to give up all hope in life at the prospect of losing what she's got. I must admit I didn't realise it was Maud Adams at first, even having viewed 'The Man With The Golden Gun' and 'Octopussy' quite recently, but I kept thinking I knew her face and assumed she'd been in the series before. This would have been made between her two James Bond appearances (shame Dobey didn't make his crack about Bond in this episode, it would have been much more apposite!), so it was fun to come to the realisation, confirmed for sure only when I saw the end credits. She does come across as a bit of an unthinking, rich type, since it takes Hutch to remind her that beauty comes from within, not without, though I doubt saying that would make any female feel better about losing their looks, and the more the model, the harder the fall.

This could have been a great episode if they'd concentrated on enlarging the awe for the cruel and creepy gadget man, Angel ('there are no accidents in my life'), the hitman given the job by Brady. There are multiple references to death, Brady saying something about death needing no appointment, the Angel saying death has no respect for beauty, and the hitman himself known as the Angel of Death. We see his MO early on when he takes out an important witness in another case, Lindsay lured towards an abandoned pram by the sounds of its crying, but getting a face full of explosive in quite a violent effect that really looks like he got caught directly in the blast! Immediately Angel is shown to be this cool, calm killer that will stoop to any trick to get his man, or model. He does become the stereotypical genius murderer as we see his eccentricities in full force (only he and Big Ed, the toyshop man could be in any way considered members of the wacky crowd we expect S&H to encounter), whether that's Brady meeting him as he whirls a toy plane around his head, forcing Brady to duck every few seconds, using a doll in the pram (instantly obvious as a toy if anyone had happened to peek in), playing chess with himself while listening to classical music, and an affinity for fiddly gadgetry and toys. Although he's dangerous, you never get the impression of a terrible, evil mind, like the guys in 'Vendetta' or 'Murder Ward,' for example. This makes him quite lacking in scare factor, added to his open face, and would have been so much more effective if he'd lived up to some of the words about him.

Brady tells Kate that the killer will reach her 'when he burns you,' and he's described as the man in the shadows, except it all takes place in broad daylight and although eccentric in taste, attitude and profession, Angel is no threat in person as shown by S&H when they burst into his motel room. He's certainly assured and bold, going about in his typical villain's beige van that should instantly stand him out as a bad guy. He only uses the one disguise, a US Mail Letter Carrier (postman to me), and most of the time he just saunters up somewhere and sticks his bombs right there, as he does under Kate's car sitting in her driveway. You'd think that if Brady couldn't get in contact with Angel again he'd at least be able to give the police a detailed physical description so they knew who they were on the lookout for! Brady was the real slime, this guy who sets up the hit, but never seems in full control. He's denoted as a villain by the fact his office is carpeted in red, the carpet colour of villainy as has so often been the case. He has one attitude when dealing with Kate and quite another when Starsky shows up to play the heavy while Hutch does the soft stuff, looking after Kate. Again, you could suggest that Starsky isn't exactly professional, threatening Brady every way except openly, but there wasn't much the guy could do to repeal his wrong.

As part of S&H's investigations to track down Walter Allen, aka Angel, they visit a toy shop (wonder if it was the same one as Uncle Elmo's?), where Big Ed the shopkeeper tries to get them to buy a laughing man head in exchange for information. I like seeing what kind of toys they had in the Seventies and I wish we could have had a proper nose about in the shop, but if there was no time for even one scene of Huggy, and little of Dobey (though we do see him scoffing ice cream or something out of a pot, just when you thought they'd dropped that character trait!), there certainly wasn't time for S&H to mess around with toys. Hutch was too busy messing around with Kate… If Angel wasn't written, acted, or shot to be as threatening and frightening as a killer you're expecting at any moment by your own invitation (something they later did with Quark on 'DS9' - he learns he's got a terminal illness and asks Garak to kill him when he's unaware), we did get some good explosions, from the establishing of Angel with the pram, to the premature car bomb, and finally the blowing out of Kate's dressing room mirror with a cunningly substituted lightbulb. It was also terrific the way S&H speed back to Kate when they discover Angel's plan, Starsky first out of the motel room door, bringing the Torino screaming round in a circle while Hutch cuffs Angel, then barely stopping for Hutch to leap in through the passenger window in the classic style of the series. Why didn't they phone up Kate to warn her, or put through a message to the cop guarding her? They might have suspected the phone was tampered with, too, I suppose…

And then it's over, we never go back and see Angel properly arrested, we're suddenly at one of Kate's photo shoots by 'Randolph The Magnificent,' where he pulls the two cops into the picture. It wasn't the worst way for the episode to bow out, but it was as light and frothy a scene as the episode itself was, almost none of the tension and terror of 'The Avenger,' but a step up from 'The Groupie,' for sure. There's a bit of comedy (none more so than the opening, Hutch responding to a call from someone claiming assault by a deadly weapon - as the conversation progresses we discover it's a young boy reporting his Mother for cuffing him when he tried to get the cookie jar, culminating in Hutch's line that 'unless your Mother is a professional fighter and her hands are registered as deadly weapons there's really nothing I can do'!), and the return of Minnie (who was in Season 3's 'The Collector' and 'The Avenger' this season - again credited as Marki 'Bey' instead of 'Bay' as she was in her first role), who shares some flirty scenes with Starsky so he's not left out with Hutch getting all the romance. If you look at Alan Miller's (Brady), roles on the series, one per season, beginning with Season 2's 'The Psychic,' he's gone from being a good guy, to not exactly good or bad in 'A Body Worth Guarding' (another episode with similar premise to this one!), to be being all-out villain here. As well as Marki and Miller, we have Frank Geraci in a tiny role of a bartender who tells Kate where to find Brady (he was a banker in Season 1's 'Losing Streak'), and Jerome Guardino as the unfortunate, and short-lived, Lindsay (Mr. McDevlin in Season 2's 'Nightmare,' and Carboni in Season 3's 'Quadromania').

One character confused me momentarily - we see an advert featuring Kate in a magazine saying 'Cosmetics by Richards,' and then shortly after we meet a cop called Richards who was accompanying the doomed witness, so I assumed there was some connection, but it was just a coincidence and me paying too close attention! There were no running jokes, and I expected Starsky's trip to the dentist where he comes in feeling like he's missing half his face (to which Hutch responds it would be an improvement!), to be an ongoing subject, but it was just another thing they couldn't fit in. I like hearing about anything from S&H's past (we'd be getting deep into that in the very next episode), and although it's only a passing mention, we hear that Kate and Hutch knew each other seven years ago. Though there never was a Season 5 (sadly), I would have nominated the shot of S&H breaking through the motel room door, guns drawn and ready for action as worthy of addition to the opening credits montage. You can see the boom mike when Starsky visits Brady in his office, just as they meet at the door, and there are barely any references to keep track of: Kate says she thought she'd live to a hundred and eight and look like Marlene Dietrich; S&H use the call signs turkey buzzard and Chicken Little, and talk of the sky falling on their heads; plus Randy the photographer shouts out 'Beauty and The Beast' referring to S&H and Kate's group photo.

Interestingly, he refers to his female assistant as Michael (the male assistant was called Louie, neither of which are credited as they don't have lines), which is pertinent to me as the new, female star of 'Star Trek: Discovery' has that name and until then I had never heard any female usage of the name. It seems the garments were genuine as in the credits there's one for 'Fashion Apparel by Marion Wagner,' so no expense spared where it was 'important.' I hesitate to suggest the series was getting tired at this point, with the evidence that they were remaking old episodes again, because they were constantly redoing the same kinds of story throughout the series, which is why I make so many references to other episodes in these reviews, and they could get away with it by using the different characters in the same role since they were different personalities. But either Starsky or Hutch getting into romantic escapades had been done to death and what the series really needed was more danger (like 'The Avenger'), more hard-hitting social stories (like 'Black and Blue'), and less of the outrageous comedy and silliness. But again, the series showed it could do many different styles of storytelling, I just wish it had been a bit more consistently of a quality that pushed the series more. Then maybe we would have had a Season 5.

**