The Decline and Fall of Starsky and Hutch: A Brief Exploration Of Where S4 Went Wrong

What is the point of the trend towards comedy in the later seasons of things? Here I’m referring directly to Starsky and Hutch, that iconic buddy-cop show that’s as 1970s as picketing and 'Smash' (it must have been tastier in the seventies because modern 'Smash'… is an acquired taste). I’m currently working my way through the fourth series and the sea-change between this and even the third, whose lighter touch was signalled from the first episode wherein Starsky goes under voodoo, is bizarre.

Firstly, I think we must have had at least five disco-themed shows. Admittedly this was still in the throws of the disco period, being filmed a year after Saturday Night Fever made falsetto and medallions cool again and in the year of Ottawan’s unparalleled ‘D.I.S.C.O’ but if disco was made for one thing, it was not Starsky and Hutch. What worked on the big screen with a budget of $3.5 million and months of rehearsals does not on something practically made for 30-year long syndication. Not only does it have that slight shoddiness emblematic of the seventies television show but is also emphasised by the director taking every opportunity to showcase Starsky and Hutch’s dad dancing, which is not nearly as funny as they think it is, and is clearly intended as filler by its ten-minute length and two-minute contribution to the story-line. Furthermore, personally I feel it doesn’t travel well- whether that’s to do with knowing how the disco craze turns out or simply the way in which it seems to drain the energy of the episode through sheer length, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, it’s a distinctly odd phenomenon for a series that used to deal in the harsh, macho life of a working cop that aimed for some kind of realism to spend a third of its episode in a studio with $5 disco lights.

Another distinct change from the origins of the series is a pronounced movement towards “going undercover” or more accurately, ‘dressing up’. In one episode, a character asks Starsky: ‘You’re not going undercover as a bush haired paparazzi?’- unfortunately, the answer is yes, as it was the last seventeen times they did it. Is there anything more indicative of a series decline than this last desperate attempt to introduce novelty? Every episode there seems to be a new bizarre premise for dressing up- dealing with contraband smugglers obviously leads to a silly voice and sillier moustache, and a bizarre accent and some poor, poor banter, to the extent that we’ve had two- TWO- pretending-to-be-hairdressers episodes. Two. There's not a lot you can get out of such a premise once let alone on two occasions which retread a lot of the same ground. These dress-up shows also come along with slightly dodgy racial/sexual stereotypes (see the episodes 'Dandruff' and 'Moonshine') that leave a lot to be desired. I can sympathise with why they did it- lack of ideas, desperation to inject something fun for the actors to do- but most of the time, they don’t work and moreover are embarrassing to watch.

Lastly, a less embarrassing but equally ubiquitous component of this series has been its oddness. There are two levels to this. The first is absurdity- for instance, episodes such as ‘Quadromania’ from Season 3 with a murderer who uses incredible makeup to make himself unrecognisable, with its odd camera angles and bizarre blind grandfather aspect, are eclipsed by things like ‘The Avenger’. Not only is it improbable (of course this woman can instantly change her voice from a nice young American girl to a man's somewhere on the road to Darth Vader) but was also oddly filmed with flip-flop camera tricks and overuse of slow-mo. However, this has nothing to what seems obviously odd from a modern perspective but really, even allowing for your normal taking-it-with-a-pinch-of-salt attitude to the time, can't have been normal even then.  The episode that exemplifies this is ‘Blindfold’. Retrospectively odd/amusing through its early performance from Kim Cattrall, the episode’s plot concerns a woman that Starsky shoots, blinds and then SEDUCES without her realising who it is. And then, when it’s revealed, she’s fine with it. She even wants to continue the relationship. To the extent that that’s part of the obligatory cheery ending. I struggle to comprehend how people could’ve been okay with it at the time, it’s odd and also quite troubling in the way he takes advantage of her disability to seduce her and how the show is so in thrall to Starsky that she's not bothered by this at all and instead falls into his arms. Earlier shows never quite went that far. And as I write, the episode I’m watching combines the two elements: an overlong swimwear competition, and Hutch swings in Tarzan-like on a rope. It's starting to move from being an interesting change from the series' normal pace to forming wallpaper for the eyes.

Starsky and Hutch’s late episode fatigue is often depressing, and you can see why Paul Michael Glaser wanted to leave. But the show still has things to offer, from retroactive recognition to tense, character-focused drama like ‘The Game’- the only problem is that the quota of these episodes vs those obsessed with disco is unfortunately imbalanced.