Well that was creepy, and right there on the cusp of shows I would not actually choose to watch. Also, this is the beginning of a three-parter. A THREE-parter? Who on Earth makes three-parters? It's lunacy! Mutter mutter.
'Hunter' was a 1980s detective show which frequently wobbled between goofy and adult, and serious and daft plot elements and storylines. In the early years, it was mainly a vehicle for its titular star Fred Dryer to get in some car chases and shoot a villain dead in self-defence every week, and for Stepfanie Kramer to over-dress ridiculously every week as his partner McCall, and sometimes go undercover as a tarty prostitute. That all partly changed when Roy 'Maverick' Huggins took over the show, and made it his last television project before retirement. He added consistency but sadly removed the goofier peaks and troughs. If it weren't for the actors, it might not have worked, but they were great enough to pull it off, and that is what is really going on here. Huggins also instituted his old practice of adapting stories and novels, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
'City Of Passion' seems to be a triple-layered narrative at the moment, where even the dynamic duo's boss is getting in on the action, staging a campaign to remove an incompetent or corrupt senior officer from the force. It is packed full of things, which probably originates from the source novel it is at least partly pulled from. There is political intrigue inside the force, a serial rapist who has possibly turned homicidal, a threat to Dee Dee that calls back to her previous rape trauma, and even a supposed subplot involving demon worshippers and a possible death cult. Demon worshippers? It's madness! It's bizarre, crazy lunacy! That flashback/story was the most awkward part of it all.
This hour was really well done. However, and this may have been due to it being December here, and the mood being generally in the deep doldrums, this episode was packed with foreboding and it seems as if it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Of course, if it goes badly, this may be the only time we mention 'Hunter' here on the QM. There may never be a second Fred Dryer reference. This could be it. No uttered confusion as to why 'Stepfanie' has a 'pf'. No wondering at the sheer ineptitude of their first few lieutenants, or Hunter's relentless early destruction of his cars. No ponderings on Sporty James. Nada.
What will happen with the rest of this three-parter? There are going to be some serious events, we'll probably have some mostly boring personal stories from the guest cops, and McCall will almost certainly be in extreme danger at some point. The main question is this: How will these three stories combine by the end? Will they all combine? Will just two converge, or will there be three different resolutions to come? We'll have to wait to see.
O.
Subsequent Note: Sadly, parts two and three weren't anywhere near as good, the three plots didn't converge in any meaningful manner, and the end result was quite underwhelming. No posts for those, then!
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