Ninety Pounds of Trouble

DVD, Starsky & Hutch S4 (Ninety Pounds of Trouble) (2)

The crime of this episode isn't so much what it is, but what it isn't: it's not 'Huggy Can't Go Home' which is the episode I was looking forward to, and expecting to be next, but then I found that this was the first on the disc, so that was a disappointment. Then it's the one where they recast Joey Carston, the teenage girl from Season 3's 'The Trap' with a crush on 'Dave.' And there's also the fact that this is traditional, old-fashioned fare for the series, but makes the undeniable point that S&H have aged. So as I said, it's not a lot of things, and that's its downfall, because otherwise it's a perfectly passable instalment in the season with occasional flashes of tension or drama, Starsky getting to turn his charm-o-meter up to maximum in a bid to inveigle his way into the attentions of a hitman's girlfriend to keep her busy while Hutch pulls off some proper acting which is one part talent to four parts gall, all while the emotional Joey runs around causing her ninety pounds worth of trouble. When put like that it's not a bad combination, and it isn't a bad story, but I'm not sure we really needed an agent messing up S&H's serious bid to take down Schiller, especially a teenage girl, as amusing as her interference initially is.

Joey seems quite young, and I was trying to work out how old she'd be. In her previous appearance she seemed about twelve or thirteen, but then Starsky playing up to her attentions would seem creepy, so she must have been older than that, and in fact she tells Huggy she's eighteen, though she could have been lying, but although S&H and Dobey are slow to accept her word, and quick to assume she's making up stories, it's really just that she has a different way of seeing things - like reporting a hit and run when a puppy is bumped by her neighbour's car, so there's an impression of crying wolf which sets up Starsky's inability to believe her when she says Hutch is in danger. So she probably is eighteen, and we have to remember that young people were younger in the Seventies, while older people were older, whereas nowadays children and teens grow up much quicker with access to so much information and formative content thanks to the internet and multi-channel media, while older people seem to have regressed with their desire for nostalgia, toys, and childlike experiences, so the age gap wouldn't be quite as noticeable today, I would imagine. But she does serve to illustrate the age of S&H (I guess about early-to-mid thirties), Huggy telling her Starsky's over the hill and set in his ways.

They may be over the hill, but they can still do their thing, and we have moments of classic S&H, such as the raid on hitman Eddie Carlyle's hotel apartment: kicking the door in, diving back when he blasts some rounds through the blocked door, then a chase down the external fire escape. The episode could have done with a lot more action like this to make it memorable, but Hutch takes his performance seriously and acts more like the Hutch of old with his knowledge of high class food and wine, the finer things of life, bringing to mind the scene in 'Bust Amboy' when he gives Starsky a tutorial on Amboy's expensive tastes - it must have been the caviar that did it ("Iranian or Beluga?" he asks Schiller's gopher, Damon, who asks what Beluga is!). And he pulls it off. It takes direct confirmation from Sid, who, thanks to Joey's intervention, learns Starsky's a cop, putting Hutch's cover in jeopardy, while he calmly brazens it out. When you compare the intent and professionalism here with the barmy roles he took on in 'Dandruff' and 'The Groupie' they're worlds apart and I much prefer this serious and audacious undercover role, the little humour of the episode coming from his getting into Carlyle's mind through his clothes (along with Joey's sincere, but misguided surety, and Hutch nicking Starsky's doughnut!), and it shows once again that Hutch really does want to be an actor and maybe that's why he went down the detective route rather than uniform, or other police careers, because he gets these opportunities to try the craft (even if in the actual limelight he stammers and stutters like an old engine - see 'Murder On Stage 17').

"I may have the salary of a cop, but I have the soul of an aesthete," he says, but I'm sure the majority of actors out there would be very happy with the salary of a cop! I do feel the premise of the episode could have made it a classic if pulled off right, but there isn't enough tension, perhaps not enough time to set up all the characters, and I could see this working as a film plot where they had time to flesh out the villains, maybe set up more of the shock moments such as when Hutch as Carlyle coldly jumps out of the car before walking over to Starsky and shooting him at point blank range before jumping back in and speeding off. If you think about it, it made little sense that he would actually show himself to his target instead of simply blasting him in the back, but for the sake of his cover he had to make the unsuspecting Starsky aware of who was shooting him so he could react in the correct way, since he didn't really get shot. They cover it a bit when Hutch says love and kisses from Schiller, but you'd think Damon, as driver, would have been a bit suspicious, though it has the finesse of a magic trick - the 'audience' aren't in on the association between S&H so there's a strong reaction, and none stronger than Sid's, distraught at what she's apparently caused, paid in full for her warning to Schiller that Starsky's a cop, since she cries out she didn't realise they were going to do this, before scarpering, instead of staying calm and checking the injury, in which case she'd have realised it was a fake.

I don't recall how they knew Sid was going to be in the area, as Starsky just shows up at the Miramar Hotel and uses a cunning trick to work out who the mysterious 'Sid' is by making a phone call in sight of the front desk (or bar, in this case), asking for Sid, then seeing who goes to answer it. I like it when we get to see little techniques like that, the same with Carlyle's cunning at extricating himself from the unethical 'care' of the police at Memorial Hospital by smuggling a syringe away from a nurse's trolley when she checks up on him, then using it on the doctor later to put him to sleep as a decoy for dopey Officer Kromack who doesn't notice the difference. There are some issues with Carlyle's situation - firstly, wouldn't the medical staff realise he wasn't really still asleep and report that he'd woken up? And second, more importantly, would they really work with the police to keep the patient out of it? And if they weren't working with the police to keep him under sedation, why would a nurse bring a trolley full of syringes full of drugs to knock him out? Or did I miss something - maybe he didn't actually drug the doc, but just left him there unconscious? But if that were so why did he steal a hypodermic in the first place? The unlawful actions that Dobey goes along with, giving his men thirty-six hours before he'll allow Carlyle to wake up and have his lawyer and phone call are worrying, or would be if we didn't know he was a nasty hitman, or understand the integrity of Captain Dobey. Otherwise it looks pretty bad, another case of the Seventies attitude to policing!

The life of a hitman is shown to be as much about boredom as the buzz of a successful contract carried out, with Hutch sitting around in his hotel room flicking cards into his hat, as we've seen in other episodes where villains hang around in their rooms waiting for a phone call. I do wish we could have seen Carlyle in action before he's out of action for the majority of the episode, perhaps coolly offing someone before coldly walking away, just to get a sense that he is the well-tooled killing machine he's said to be, and upping the tension of Hutch's situation. Hutch does a good line in throwing those around him off balance, especially the scratchy-voiced Damon who's immediately impressed with his attitude and idiosyncrasies, put on the back foot, which only makes it easier to gain his admiration when the hit on Starsky is carried off so smoothly, right in front of his eyes in broad daylight, and in a public place! If I could have done with more Carlyle to up the threat level, I would say the same about Schiller, head of Schiller Imports. He's played by one of those familiar faces you've seen in everything if you've watched Seventies and Eighties TV (for example, he was in an early 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' adding to the high quotient of Trek actors this season), but we don't really learn much about him, and the main contribution he makes is pulling a gun out of his drawer every few minutes when he gets suspicious of Hutch, before Hutch talks him round again.

As expected there are a number of returning actors, but in supreme irony for an episode about impersonation, the main character, returning from a previous episode, is played by a different actress, when so often actors have recurred in multiple roles, yet when they actually bring one back they recast her! I don't know whether this was to do with Kristy McNichol being unavailable, but I assume it must have been a scheduling conflict because she'd been in every season of the series, playing a different character each time, so I imagine the intent was to make it a full house and bring her back again, especially as she'd be a little older - if they'd gone to the trouble of revolving an episode around a specific character we'd seen before you'd expect them to have the original actress in mind. Not that Mare Winningham does a bad job, she's just not the same, and it's sad that McNichol couldn't make it a perfect four. Adding weight to my speculation is that Joey's Mother is once again played by Ann Prentiss and that was only a single scene where she tells Hutch Joey's been missing for twenty-four hours, and in typical liberal form, is only concerned because Joey took her Mercedes and she needs the golf clubs in the boot! She's another hippy, 'spiritual' type, but at least she's not as bad as the ex-wife from 'The Golden Angel,' even if her unconcern for her daughter could almost be seen as abusive, though Joey is at least of adult age now so it doesn't seem quite so neglectful! I like that we get these throwbacks to the past such as the Mum, or Joey mentioning she met Starsky when he busted her for shoplifting.

Another character that returns is the increasingly ubiquitous Marki Bey as Minnie in her astonishing fifth appearance, and it wasn't even her last. Quite a few actors had three credits to their name over the course of the series, but I think only Ann Foster as Abigail, Hutch's girlfriend, had four, so Minnie has become the most recurring character, and Bey the actress. The other returning actress is Lana Wood as Sid. She'd played Ella in Season 1's 'Running.' The credits mention a character called Steve, presumably the lad at the end who invites Joey to watch football practice as he's the Captain of the team, but that means Schiller's other lackey goes unnamed - he's definitely been in it before and is probably one of the stunt team because I recognise his face and they do sometimes use extras or stunt cast repeatedly. Another stunt face who's been in it before (just a bit!), is Charles Picerni, the Stunt Coordinator, who gets a couple of moments in this episode where you can clearly see it's him - the first is fine as he's just a motorist wearing shades, forced to brake hard when Joey drives so erratically past him as he pulls out of a side road (then, oddly, reverses - was that so they could do another take?), but he's supposed to be Starsky when he speeds the Torino into some boxes at Schiller Imports, and it's probably the clearest shot of him since he drives right towards the camera!

Schiller Imports (Far East Specialists), is at Berth 55, but there's a large sign over the door that says 'Port of Los Angeles,' so unless they want to contend that they travelled to another city, this would seem to suggest the name of the city S&H work in. Maybe they hoped no one would spot it, and weren't allowed to take it down or cover it up? Another misnamed location, though one much harder to spot, is the French restaurant where Hutch arranges to meet in the guise of Carlyle, Chez Moi. In the establishing shot you can see a sign where it's possible to make out that it's 'Cooperman's Restaurant.' I'm not knowledgeable about cars, but was the yellow one Joey zips about in really a Mercedes? I couldn't see the famous logo so I wasn't sure on that one. And I have to mention Carlyle's bizarre line about the jacket Hutch has borrowed to play his character: he says he never did like it, and now he knows why. He never liked it because he had the intuition that one day a cop would wear it to impersonate him? Or he just doesn't like people that look like him? It doesn't make any sense, but then he had been chased and shot by the police, fallen onto the roof of a car, kept locked up in a hospital and escaped only to find Hutch dressed up in his togs, so I suppose I can't blame him for not making much sense!

Someone else that doesn't make much sense is Mrs. Carston, but at least she brings back the closest we get to S&H being confused for each other when she calls Hutch, Detective Starchky, both messing up the name and confusing the two, which you never get any more. The pop culture is rife, whether it's Huggy having KISS posters behind the bar, Starsky presenting tickets for him and Joey to take her to the Springsteen concert, as well as getting the chance to do his Humphrey Bogart impression on Sid when he pretends to search for his wallet around her table. Huggy gives Joey a 'Shirley Temple' drink, which must be an in-joke since she was a famous child film star, just as the actress playing Joey is a young star. There are more actor references, too, when Starsky compares Hutch trying to play a classy character, with Lou Costello (of Abbott and Costello), trying to play Noel Coward. And Hutch claims that with the right clothes he'll be as at home with the hoi polloi as the Rothschilds. I do find it funny to see a 'No Smoking Oxygen In Use' sign on the door to Carlyle's hospital room - to think that it was acceptable to smoke anywhere in a hospital, or the implication that if it wasn't for the oxygen in the room it would be fine, is quite alien to us now.

At least the ending has some bittersweet moments for S&H and couldn't be more tied to the episode. You could say that Joey's crush on Starsky is the running joke of the episode, but it's really more than that, a full-blown plot which has ramifications for the story, but when she tells Steve they're her Uncles it's a wound to Starsky's pride and even Hutch needs to have a sit down - Starsky didn't want to be bothered with this young girl, but he's got used to her attention and is grateful for her assistance (even though she was the one who messed it up and had to redeem herself by tailing Hutch to Schiller's), Hutch even pointing out that he's fortunate a girl that young even wants to be seen with him, but despite all that he is disappointed that she'd rather go and see this lad practice football than come to the concert he'd planned, so it's a nice moment, but also spells the end of the series: S&H are no longer young, and the series has always been about these two young detectives doing these active things and it's a reminder that no period in life goes on forever - I'm sure they could have gone on like that for another ten years, but we were not to see their careers for much longer, so it is something of a sad ending, even though couched in the bursting of a little bubble of condescension.

**