HILL STREET BLUES

Lou Grant, the Iranian cinema of late '70s TV

xp

haha!

i hate watching things that are too fast and incident-rich, unless it's farce

Lou Grant, the Iranian cinema of late '70s TV - genuine lol at this

Trinidad Silva, who played Jesus the gang leader, died in a car crash in '88.

Chief Daniels is still around, and it's funny to see he appeared on nearly all the anti-HSB precedents: The FBI, Mannix, Cannon, Police Woman etc.

Among the regular cast i guess the biggest careers were Haid and Betty Thomas, both of whom directed a ton of TV and a few features.

betty thomas has turned into a perfectly adequate comedy director. i'm not going to go so far as to call her 'underrated' (to be clear, she's a hack for sure) but she's made alot of perfectly watchable movies that really had no right to be watchable (private parts, the brady bunch movie). 28 days the best sandra bullock performance pre-gravity.

I know she has a Second City background

Ken Olin was a regular for what, a year before thirtysomething

yeah his character was the gambling addict who got killed i think

I only saw the pilot in reruns mid-series, but now i remember Hill and Renko getting blown away in the last scene.

Yeah, they rewrote/retconned that pretty swiftly iirc.

Lou Grant still feels preachy/spoon-feedy in a way Hill Street mostly avoided.

Am i right in thinking daniel j travanti's failure to transition from HSB to anything bigger was a matter of some serious bitterness on his part? I really like him as Furillo, but I seem to remember my parents thinking he was pretty wooden.

Michael Conrad was golden throughout.

His character is sort of where the de-sitcommed Barney Miller parallel comes in, he was the solid center amid the nuts and/or obstacles. I seem to remeber him relying on the even, soft-spoken-determination thing in all Furillo's "big" scenes.

chicken joke Bochco discussed as reason for this episode in NYT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8EXTzNMOzg

The Police Tapes, as mentioned in the NYTimes piece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz_X4b4f0Lg

this was pretty big in the UK too, it was in a plum slot on Channel 4 on a Saturday night around 9 or 10pm for years.

what i remember from this show, faint memories, was ed marinaro's character getting shot and nearly dying at one point, and then a few seasons later he just got unexpectedly blown away in a pretty violent manner and his body was just left on the street (implicitly) for hours while they were dealing with the crime scene, and it was just so grim and final.

and i really like the unnamed city aspect of it, which i've liked in a lot of cinema and tv before (seven, miller's crossing, etc.)

i wonder what the most recent (non-shitty) cop show not to name its city was

(also non-canadian)

"Judas H. Priest, man!"

would be fine if everyone who worked for TMZ were consumed by fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdO3cTQgNhI

Hi I am watching Hill Street Blues for the first time and we've just finished s4.

I love it so much. I always loved the theme song even when I was a kid but it was just one of those 'grown up shows' that passed me by.
Anyway there's been some great storylines, I have a huge crush on Washington, I hated JD from the moment he appeared on screen and I'm kinda happy he's not in it much now, I love Bates especially since she made Sgt and took over roll call. I loved Esterhaus so much but words cannot describe how much I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated his girlfriend Grace. God she skeeved me out. I love Furrillo almost all the time except when he's an idiot w/r/t eveyr woman in his life. I felt so bad for Fay's character for the first x amount of seasons that they just boxed her in as the hysterical ex wife.

Jesus Martinez aka Trinidad Silva is a blessing, such a great screen presence!!

It's kinda surprising for a show that's as big of a sausagefest as it is that they do a pretty good job of showing how much of a heel some of these guys can be towards the women in their life. I don't like that the women's side of the story doesn't get examined too often but by the same token they're not as tossed off as you'd expect. the guys often come out looking like douchebags -- ie the storyline when Linda Hamilton plays coffey's girlfiend and she gets raped and coffey goes cold on her because he 'doesn't know how to feel about it'. Horrifying. But I was impressed that they didn't try to resolve it, or have her forgive him, she just gets to be well fuck you then idiot and they never cross paths again.

I love it so much. I always loved the theme song even when I was a kid but it was just one of those 'grown up shows' that passed me by.

alltime best, most perfectly written tv theme song

I hated JD from the moment he appeared on screen and I'm kinda happy he's not in it much now

PVMIC for me, but when I was watching the first two seasons on the old DVDs, JD always gave me Glenn Frey vibes.

LOL totally

er

i mean

well, yeah

Love the theme song so much.

I keep trying to watch this show but can't seem to get fully locked onto it somehow, although I like what I've seen. Maybe it's time to try again. I absolutely love Davenport and Furillo as a couple, though - it's so great that instead of centering around some slow-burning marriage-plot romance between two people who have to be kept apart for as long as possible, this show gives us an actual adult relationship and lets us watch it evolve.

Recently watched the first two series, I remember it as a youngster but it was a bit too grown up to make much impact beyond Renko and Belker's more demonstrative acting roles. But man, it's so great, There's what 6/7 series? Does it cool off? Everything's so grubby, dirty, ppl are mostly all angry, sweaty and unshaven all the time.

7 seasons

i just started s5 and it has kept the same pace/look/feel the entire time

s5 looks a tiny bit more polished

Where does HSB stream currently? My dad and I used to watch it religiously...

I seem to recall later seasons getting bogged down in some long-running political subplot involving the DA shouting at Furillo a lot. Or did he and the missus end up on different sides? Anyway it got a bit dull.
Spinal Tap watch: Charles Levin's 'Eddie Gregg' character (one of Mick Belker's many nemeses) also played the record store owner of the failed signing session.

i think this show got a bit overshadowed by Bochco's subsequent success w/NYPD Blue, which lasted longer and was even more successful in terms of awards season BS, but HSB is better. i watched it a decent amount as a kid, it was on when i was in elementary school. i enjoyed that it was seemingly set in a close approximation of Chicago, based on just some of the atmosphere and the police vehicles. everyone did seem a little worn down and more blue-collar and a bit more real. the violence was occasionally pretty shocking.

it still engaged in some ridiculousness, like when David Caruso was the leader of an Irish street gang. It was more The Warriors than The Wire on some occasions, really.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cth4KAXWEAAKGED.jpg

Dennis Franz's Sal Benedetto + Norman Buntz characters > NYPD Blue, sorry for challops

entire series currently streaming on Hulu

apparently Bochko leaves during or after s5

i watched first ep of s5 last night
Robert Prosky joins the cast as roll call sgt so my excitement about Blake coming into her own on roll call was shortlived :/

also their “it’s a hot one out there” summer makeup is usually pretty extra but it’s waaaay ott in this first ep - i said to clay they’re so sweaty & damp that it looks like the station moved to Indonesia over the break. All they need are linen suits & slow ceiling fans & it’s The Year of Living Dangerously

also there’s a new detective whose name i cant remember & of course furillo has already gone on a date with her. dude just shits where he eats left right & center.. he’s still tangled up w joyce even though they’re separated & i think fay is still hot for him too.
wild.

morbs otm. i dunno that it’s even challops - Sal Bendetto was an amazingly realized slimeball. that arc was so good!!

and he almost got Washington killed >:(

weird how no one noticed Benedetto and Buntz bore a resemblance to one another.

i think in the Prosky era David Mamet wrote an episode, maybe 'consulted' on more

although it was more common on sitcoms, the same guest actors usta show up playing diff characters fairly often on series

i love it, i think the Law and Orders did and still do it constantly.

yeah Edward James Olmos played a tenant in a slumlord building & then later showed up as a judge in a different season. i kinda love that

so many great guest stars in general though
Alfré Woodard had an amazing run as the mother of a kid who got shot. She got an emmy for it (her first iirc)

Oh and Jonathan Banks got a 2 parter as a homeless guy with multiple personality disorder suspected of murder. He looked SO young i didnt recognize him at first

Jonathan Banks is also one of the detectives that gets capped in the beginning of the first 48 Hrs film.

I have never heard of Jonathan Banks, so I guessed it was a Prestige TV thing

yep

it still engaged in some ridiculousness, like when David Caruso was the leader of an Irish street gang. It was more The Warriors than The Wire on some occasions, really.

lol i watched an episode last night and nearly shared a similar image. were there actual irish gangs that dressed like they fell off a box of lucky charms?

hill street was so much better than NYPD Blue it's ridiculous.

i think in the Prosky era David Mamet wrote an episode, maybe 'consulted' on more

Yep, A Wasted Weekend.”

Nutty IMDB Trivia About Veronica Hamel:

In 1972 she and her then husband became the new owners of Marilyn Monroe's Brentwood home. They hired a contractor to replace the roof and remodel the house, and the contractor discovered a sophisticated eavesdropping and telephone tapping system that covered every room in the house. The components were not commercially available in 1962, but were--in the words of a retired Justice Department official--"standard FBI issue." This discovery lent further support to claims of conspiracy theorists that Marilyn had been under surveillance by the Kennedys and the Mafia. The new owners spent $100,000 to remove the bugging devices from the house.

whoah!

Decades is showing a smattering of episodes this weekend. They're currently in the midst of a Season 3 arc about a black man getting killed in custody (by a racist biker in the next holding cell BTW), and holy shit they could have shot this yesterday.

Also LaRue has been perving on a 16 year-old played by Ally Sheedy.

yeah that was super gross

This show is streaming for free on Channel 4 in the UK. I dip in and out, having watched most of it as a kid when it first ran, and it rarely feels dated. I mean, the fashions, etc, have changed, but its hard edge remains an acme of a certain kind of TV.

They've skipped ahead to S7, and they just ran the Mamet episode, which lives up to reputation. It's so Mamet they brought back Lindsey Crouse and gave her some great scenes with Dennis Franz! Only needed a bunch of gratuitous swears and a Rickey Jay or William H. Macy cameo to achieve Full Mamet.

love franz in HSB, buntz was a great shady piece of work

Robert Prosky (with a full monologue in that Mamet episode) was the original Shelley Levene (Jack Lemmon’s role) in Glengarry on Broadway.

Oh yeah, I was just looking him up and found this started by Morbs: RIP Mamet regular / character actor Robert Prosky

prosky is a legend <3

Is that him in the second Gremlins movie, as the guy who introduces horror flicks on TV?

Yes it is!