It's Not a Book About Underwater Naval Vessels

One thing about watching old TV shows — especially those for which I was around when they were new — is the glimpse back at how things were then. Granted, it was TV. It never quite captured or recreated life the way it really was, and some of the shows that were "edgy" then have seen their edge grown dull in reflection.

I'm still plugging away at Starsky & Hutch, and am now about one-fifth of the way through season three. Monday night I resumed my viewing and, in episode five, titled "Death in a Different Place," was witness to what I thought was a rather odd exchange between the two main characters:




As I am the master of double entendre, I absorbed the end of this exchange with the exuberance of an eighth grade boy who just learned a new use of the word "rubber."

But then the episode deals with a married police lieutenant who is murdered in a dive hotel where he has been seen frequently taking a different young man up to his room each night.

At first both Starsky and Hutch react with shock and disbelief that their friend and colleague was apparently living a secret life as a gay man.

I was mildly shocked that a weekly network TV action show did, in 1977, take on the topic so frankly. Starsky was portrayed as having a tough time dealing with this revelation about his friend, and having some prejudiced views about homosexuality — reflecting the general attitude of the nation at the time. Hutch was portrayed as being of the more progressive view, that it's not so strange or taboo, that homosexuals are human and deserve the respect of humans, regardless of their sexual preference.

An added wrinkle was the plot complication that their boss, Captain Dobey, was under pressure to make the murder investigation go away because the department was under pressure by certain entities of the public to allow gays on the police force, and now it had been revealed that one of "the city's finest was a homosexual." To me, the implication was clear that their fictional police department — not unlike real ones across the nation — was resisting that pressure.

By today's standards, the show's handling of the topic was certainly ham-fisted. But then, everything the show did was ham-fisted, so why complain? However, there seemed a raw honesty about it, and an enthusiasm about their message. I think they were breaking new ground — or at least making tracks on recently broken ground — in American television, and making a bold statement: homosexuals exist in society and are not awaiting your permission to function beside you; their private lives are none of your business, and shouldn't be a factor in their hiring or firing, or whether or not you'll share the sidewalk with them; denying their existence or their lifestyle won't make them straight, nor will it make them go away.

I recall reading recently that many people saw a homosexual undercurrent between the two characters in the program, perhaps when the show was on the air, but certainly when observed today. The program's epilogue, despite the message, still tweaked on a general sense of homophobia when Hutch asked Starsky if he thought two men spending 75% of their time together implied a certain preference. Starsky indicated his assent to the notion. But when Hutch laid down the correlation of his and Starsky's relationship, that the two spent about twelve hours a day together, sharing most of their meals together, and asked what that meant about them, Starsky was fairly disturbed by his partner's implication.

At the end of this episode I realized the unfortunate dialogue highlighted at the beginning of this post was probably not unintentional after all, and subtly, subliminally, introduced the episode's subject matter as subtext before coming out of the closet to hit the viewer over the head with it.

Perhaps the undercurrent wasn't so sublime after all.



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