Hill Street Blues – Season Two

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Episodes: B

 

 

For people with short memories, even some who detest explicit kinds of freedom, creativity, understandable (versus naïve) optimism and a self-fulfilling prophecy of loss, hopelessness and settling for second best in the name of “growing up” and selling the idea that there is nothing new or good to look forward to.  That opportunity is dead unless you sell out to something conformist.  Hill Street Blues became the first television police drama that was considered “quality television” despite the genre being around since the dawn of the picture tube.  It turned out to be an unholy alliance in the long run.

 

When TV began, Film Noir was in full swing as a feature film form, but between the Hollywood Witch Hunts of the 1950s powered by the “anti-Communist” Red Scare and money/power forces in Hollywood that were definitely Right of center trying to negate these often groundbreaking films with quasi-documentary dramas that were “official” and practically certified by The FBI or like organizations, to “prove” that “they” were “in control” down to the white male “voice of God” narrator who was nameless in 99% of the cases.  Those films did not invent the latter, but it was a major feature of police shows like Dragnet, a big hit radio drama that became a huge hit TV series.

 

The detective stayed in Noir mode, even on TV, becoming more pronounced in the 1970s (Columbo, McMillan & Wife) in a great time for storytelling and mystery writing that exposed the limits of the likes of Dragnet.  However, that progress, intelligence and even fun was too much for some people, who wanted to tear it down without excuse.  This powered the commercial success of The Rockford Files and Hill Street Blues was a sort of return of the repressed.  It was better than Dragnet, but when all was said and done, pretty ideologically similar.

 

Steven Bochco had begun his career on Columbo, while the equally talented and less known Michael Kozoll began on Kojak with Telly Savalas.  They both began a hot streak at Universal Television, with Kozoll writing some of the best scripts for the likes of Delvecchio where he was also story editor, McCloud, Quincy and even the innovative Supernatural Horror/Comedy show Kolchak: The Night Stalker, where he worked with David Chase.

 

Kozoll and Bochco created the show when they left Universal Television, which had peaked in the late 1970s and was going into a decline of innovation and quality (Simon & Simon?) to MTM, Mary Tyler Moore’s production company.  Hill Street Blues landed up at then very desperate NBC, who watched ABC pass CBS as the #1 network despite having been around longer.  The show did terribly in its first season, but NBC held onto it so they had something respectable on their channels (versus Manimal, Pink Lady & Jeff, Hello Larry) and hoped it could even pick up as a big hit.  Despite the theme song reaching the Top 10 in 1981, the show never did in the ratings.  Still, it had its solid audience that combined streetwise and educated viewers.

 

Though Kozoll and Bochco did not intend to pander or unify any Right-Wing trends, the show was so boxed in and loose about its definition of “reality” that it was easily hi-jacked into that move of the media during the 1980s.  Since Kozoll was not that way in real life and Bochco was never an extremist, as well as quite the opposite and a very talented man, the idea that the audience had the common sense/mind set of those watching their Universal shows in the 1970s was a mistake.  Think Reagan Democrats.  Yes, this was well, written, well acted and the show has still aged well, but it unfortunately became part of the reactionary 1980s simply because they picked the genre easiest to absorb.

 

It made being “serious” a good thing, despite the shows sense of humor.  It said that decline and urban strife was all there was, but took the step further in wallowing in it, setting up those lower expectations.  The idea that characters could never win at much of anything started as a dark joke, but became a formula that spoke to failure louder than I believe the creators could have never imagined.

 

And then there is that camera work.  The show is shot well, but the overlapping dialogue goes back to Screwball Comedies, some Gangster films and definitely became even more of an art with Robert Altman’s best works.  Then there is the editing, which was not that original, and shaky camerawork that was supposed to be a sign of the “naturalness” of the show.  Now, it is a cliché beyond belief and only the scripts save these shows from looking like Blair Witch Project by backing them with solid narratives.  That alone shows how too loose the show became.

 

This season particularly shows the nadir of the rejection of hope, innovation and progress with the cycle of “Captain Freedom” shows.  Though this might be hard to believe with the current Superhero mania at the box office, in cartoons and toys, that genre was ebbing again after successful revivals of Superman on film, this of The Hulk and Wonder Woman on TV and other characters holding steady in print and cartoons.  Other filmed attempts failed and comics were trivialized forever, despite being censored by higher powers since their inception.

 

At about the time we were to suffer through The Greatest American Hero, here was an adult man who wore a silly costume, was mentally ill, obviously had some sexual issues and ran around “fighting crime” with the sometimes off-kilter cops on the show.  The message unintended or not, was that of anyone different being bad.  In this case, this also pointed to mental illness as a stigma, smacks of a certain homophobia and backhandedly says any creativity is doomed to failure.  The latter is the essence of comics, only now obvious since it has become a huger business.  However, dark comedy, ironic drama or not, this was a new aspect in the work of both creators that had never surfaced at Universal and why it chose to now is not known.  However, many people gave the show a chance and turned away knowing the downside, one I wonder if either writer was aware of.

 

At its best, the show was very humanizing of the people who were police on the show and had a knack for picking the most talented people they could find.  The show launched some great careers and confirmed the greatness of many more, but the pitfalls have never totally been overcome and after this season, Kozoll actually took a backseat.  It will be interesting to see how those pitfalls shift with the next season sets.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image looks really good and is not only one of the best we have seen in Fox’s release of the MTM catalog (The Mary Tyler Moore Show has great color, though not this kind of detail) but one of the best 1.33 X 1 filmed images of any kind we have seen to date.  As compared to something as impressive as Kolchak: The Night Stalker, another one-hour filmed show from a few years earlier, the Kolchak picture is also more detailed and refined than Mary Tyler Moore, but not the slightly more detail found in this set.  However, it still has better color, as does a show made just after Hill Street, Moonlighting.  Cinematographer William H. Cronjager, A.S.C., gave the show a distinctive look.  These prints show that off very nicely.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is just fine as well.

 

Extras include little featurettes on the fist four sides of this set, running between 6 – 7 minutes each, a gag reel on the fifth side and audio commentaries on two episodes on DVD 2: The World According To Freedom and Freedom’s Last Stand.  That’s not bad, though there is more to say and later season sets have room for greater additions.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo