The hairstyles
still jump out at you, sure. And this was, after all, the season that
David Soul (above right) busted off with the shaggy moustache. But Starsky & Hutch, as much as anything else, is still chiefly interesting as a relic of 1970s-era small screen pacing.
</b> and offbeat humor made it a hit. The show’s fourth year, spanning 1978 and ’79, would be its last, and serve as a fitting farewell to <b>one of the more popular cop shows of its time</b>, or indeed any time. I don’t pretend to be the most well versed overall in the history of the series — mine were other concerns at the time — but Soul and Paul Michael Glaser have a nice chemistry. And the episodes, too, generally have a nice moralistic depth, even if they’re certainly not above tossing in satirical elements, like the clearly <i>Shampoo</i>-inspired “Dandruff,” in which the two macho detectives pose as hairdressers in order to renowned thief from stealing diamonds at a private auction.</p>
<p>Again, though, the pacing is the most interesting thing. With shows like <a href=)
Lost, Desperate Housewives and The Nine hellbent on twiddling viewers off with long, masturbatory arcs, the art of self-contained story arc is waning. Starsky & Hutch, at least here in its fourth season, does a superlative job of spinning tight narrative nuggets that then paradoxically allow for longer, dawdling scenes within those concentrated parameters. Case in point: a three-and-a-half-minute, flirty peeping tom sequence in “Strange Justice,” which finds a veteran cop concocting a semi-elaborate plot to take revenge upon his daughter’s rapist. Modern television boils this down to one minute, tops, to give us more “gritty” procedural. The irony is that that generally takes away from the empathy one feels from the aggrieved character(s).
Amongst my other favorites from this five-disc set, which collects all 22 episodes, are “Photo Finish” and “Ninety Pounds of Trouble,” in which the pair go undercover as hitmen. Kitsch low, meanwhile, is reached in “The Golden Angel,” in which Starsky poses as a wrestler and Hutch a referee.
Starsky & Hutch: The Complete Fourth Season is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, and the transfers are surprisingly clear and free of grain. While there are certainly some issues with color consistency here and there, as a measure of comparison these episodes look better than many of the 1970s and ’80s sitcoms currently being peddled by Sony (Good Times, The Jeffersons, etcetera). The set comes packaged in bright red, gatefold fashion, with an outer cardboard slipcase to boot. There are, alas, no supplemental bonus features. If you can get over that disappointment, you’ll be otherwise happy with the clarity of this revisitation. B- (Show) B- (Disc)