Episode: Season
Two, Episode One: “The Prodigal Son” (parts 1 & 2)
Original airdate:
September 27, 1985
Directed by: Paul
Michael Glaser, aka Starsky on Starsky
& Hutch
Written by:
Daniel Pyne
Summary:
After Gina is badly injured in a retaliatory shooting
following a big drug bust, Crockett and Tubbs head up to Manhattan to infiltrate and take down the Revillas,
the New York-based Colombian crime family responsible for the attack. While
back in his old stomping grounds, Tubbs tries to rekindle a romance with his
shady ex-lover, NYPD cop Valerie (Pam Grier), whose current undercover
assignment puts her at odds with Tubbs’s mission. Crockett hooks up with Margaret
(Susan Hess), a bad-news party girl who: a) steals his gun (Crockett, love, do not let your one-night stands steal your
gun), b) falls in love with him, and c) betrays him to the bad guys. After
blowing up warehouses and wreaking general chaos and shooting down helicopters
and ending up with most of Manhattan
trying to murder them, Tubbs and Crockett finally manage to neutralize the
Revilla family, though they’re unable to do much about the great sweeping
corruption surrounding them. Oh, and there’s some nonsense about Tubbs maybe
thinking about moving back to New
York to be with Valerie, except of course he doesn’t.
Iconic Moments:
Guest stars! This episode is all about the guest stars! We’ve
got KISS frontman Gene Simmons as a yacht-dwelling drug dealer:
We’ve got Penn Jillette as the hapless and ill-fated
go-between who brokers the deal between Crockett and Tubbs and the Revillas:
We’ve got theater legend Julian Beck, who died a few days
before this episode premiered, as a shadowy, evil, strings-pulling Wall Street
tycoon:
We’ve got Pam Grier, Foxy
Brown herself, in her recurring role as Valerie:
We’ve got Charles S. Dutton as a foul-tempered NYPD
detective:
We’ve got that dude who played Chilton in Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Heald, appearing
in a single scene as a foul-tempered NYPD commander:
We’ve got James Russo as a powerful Manhattan crime lord:
And we’ve got Luis Guzman as one of the feared Revilla
brothers:
Themes:
Corruption, corruption, and more corruption: Pretty much
everyone Crockett and Tubbs run into in New
York tries to destroy them in one way or another.
It’s All in the
Details:
There’s a certain unsubtle “we shelled out a lot of cash to
film on location in Manhattan ,
and damn it, we’re going to shoehorn as many big-name landmarks into each shot
as possible” charm to the cinematography:
Sign of the Times:
This episode was lampooned in a classic 1985 Bloom County strip:
I’d object to “stylized garbage”, because this episode is
awesome, but… yeah, Crockett does
growl “Major uncool” to Margaret after she steals his gun.
Music Notes:
There are so, so many songs in this double-length episode.
First and foremost, there’s “You Belong to the City” by Glenn Frey, which gets
used twice. Here’s the Miami
In addition, there’s Billy Ocean
Rating:
Five flamingos. Anything less would be major uncool.
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