Hill Street Blues Season One Rewatch: Episode 1, “Hill Street Station”

vlcsnap-2016-01-19-19h03m55s128Season One, Episode One:”Hill Street Station”

written by Michael Kozoll & Steven Bochco
directed by Robert Butler
original airdate: Thursday, January 15, 1981

First rewatch note: This particular installment may feel a little TWOP-y and overlong, but rest assured it’s only because we’re introducing a lot of common series tropes. Expect future posts to be shorter. I hope. (Or, if you think this is just peachy, feel free to let me know.)

Roll Call: 6:53 AM. Unlike most episodes, the roll call doesn’t begin with Phil at the lectern, but as will be the usual nature it does start near the end of Phil’s morning agenda, with item 14: a bunch of kids ripping off social security checks. We see the usual chaos of morning roll call for the first time, with the camera darting about to focus on various cops paying various levels of attention to their desk sergeant; as a device, this will usually just be a red herring but will sometimes indicate guest star officers who have relevant plot points in the episode.
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Hill Street Blues Rewatch: Introduction, Part Two

vlcsnap-2016-01-19-19h10m26s194Hill Street Blues had an extensive ensemble cast, in some ways large even compared to the primetime soap operas which had arisen in the same era. Dallas may have had more characters, but outside of a small handful everyone else was just incidental with temporary subplots being largely driven by in-and-out guest stars; Hill Street‘s ensemble consisted of as many as fifteen main cast members at a time, with as many as a dozen additional major recurring characters (who themselves often had key recurring storylines) alongside them.
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Hill Street Blues Rewatch: Introduction, Part One

vlcsnap-2016-01-19-19h08m28s31It was January 15, 1981, five days before Ronald Reagan would take residence in the White House. NBC was still reeling from the disastrous beginning of Fred Silverman’s three-year tenure as network head (Supetrain, anyone?), the loss of inventory resulting from the United States-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and the 1980 writer’s strike. A new show hit the airwaves in the 10:00 time slot. Hill Street Blues was not immediately a hit. In fact, although it would achieve respectable ratings, it would never finish in the top 20, and was consistently beaten in its own time slot by Dallas spinoff Knots Landing on CBS.

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