Season One, Episode 14: “Rites of Spring” (Part One)
written by Michael Kozoll and Steven Bochco
directed by Gregory Hoblit
original airdate: May 19, 1981
“Previously on Hill Street Blues…”
Roll Call: Item 11, which we don’t discover is item 11 until item 12, is Phil telling everyone that with spring springing, crime’s going to be on the rise. 12 is an announcement about a summit between the various minority cop organizations. 13 is blood drive info, and 14 is an update on bus and subway robberies, during which a guy who looks disturbingly like Nick Offerman wanders in and hands Phil some paperwork. (It’s not him. Nick was only 11 when this episode aired.) After handing out assignments, Phil breaks roll, and we go straight to credits.
Henry’s leaving a crime scene alongside a dead body on a gurney in a long establishing shot. Way down below on the street, Lucy is standing next to a cop responding to a bystander’s question with a coffee order. He banters with Bates, including a lunch bet. Then we pan over to Hill and Renko, who fend off more questions and then consult with Henry. There are actually four dead, all due to heroin overdose. Henry then knocks on the back of a van, and we meet Charlie Weeks, an undercover narcotics officer. Henry turns over evidence, and is a bit perturbed at being brushed off.
Hill and Renko race to an apartment building where there’s a report of an abandoned child. Turns out the momma, Shirett Anders at a bar down the street, and Bobby heads off to find her. He does, and she’s there, along with a guy who’s none too pleased at the interruption. Bobby gets her to leave with him, while Andy backs down the mouthy gentleman. Her excuse is the babysitter didn’t show up. Hill tells her that in the future, she shouldn’t leave until the babysitter shows, and sends her home. Then Andy drops a “these people” and Bobby shoots him down with some classplaining.
At the station, Phil’s dealing with a woman on the phone complaining about being peeped on by telling her she should lower her windowshade, and it’s hard to argue with that. Ray, meanwhile, is concerned about why three narco officers needed to be in that van. Just then, Weeks and his homies arrive to give Henry some gas because Henry’s been calling around to alert people the heroin on the street is bad; before it gets out of hand, Frank arrives on the scene and summons them both to his office. After sorting them out, Frank gets an earful from Henry, who can’t believe narcotics is being allowed to run the case when they don’t care about the dead people.
Belker’s undercover on a bus, with J.D. and Neal following the bus as backup. They break for lunch, where Mick is chastised by the waitress for taking up space and eating his own lunch instead of buying anything, while J.D. is spiking his coffee. Neal’s unamused. Also at the diner: Hill, Renko, Bates, and her still un-named new partner; officers Cooper and Perez also enter, but don’t sit with the four. On her way out, Bates gets her ass grabbed by Cooper. She and Cooper get into it, with Lucy completely ready to throw down. Her partner (“Joe”), also steps in, and Cooper backs down.
After lunch, Bobby and Andy return to Shirret’s apartment with stuffed animals. She left again as soon as they’d left earlier, so back to the bar they go. She’s with a different guy. He’s just as mouthy as the first one. Andy has to whip out his nightstick and service revolver in order for Bobby to escort Shirret out.
At the station, Howard and Phil are having coffee and talking about women. And here’s where we finally find out that Phil is now with Grace and Cindy’s out of the picture. This is a long, long scene, and the first real humanization of Howard.
Joyce wanders in to take a meeting with a client, charged with rape and beaten up purty good. Cooper and Perez were the arresting officers, and Joyce heads out to the squad room to snarl at them. Frank escorts here away, where he recites a litany of charges against the suspect and tries to get her to drop the client because he’s concerned for her safety. She reacts about how you’d expect.
Henry’s on the phone with his wife, Rachel, with Ray and Bobby and Shirett and her kids in the background. Ray lends an ear to Henry after he hangs up. Henry’s kid is at the doctor, and Henry’s anxious; he finally just interrupts Ray and leaves.
Denise Thompson from whatever passes for Child Protective Services on the Hill arrives to deal with Shirett. Bobby’s trying to avoid having the kids put in foster care, and compromises with Thompson. Afterward, Andy busts on him hard for failing to successfully hit on Thompson.
Weeks is running a lineup, asking a kid he’s busted which guy sold him the dope. Furillo calls him and tells him Midtown solved his case, and to just charge the kid (Jay Driver) and let him go. Weeks gives Driver a beating for his trouble.
Mick’s still on the bus, and J.D. and Neal are still following. As the bus is about to reach its turnaround, they stop at a gas station so Neal can, well, you know. J.D. spots a liquor store… and leaves the walkie-talkie in the car to go buy a pint. And right then, at the next bus stop, a guy in a ski mask barges onto the bus with a shotgun. Mick calls for backup, which isn’t coming, then pursues the perp, eventually gunning him down in an alley and almost getting shot twice himself. LaRue and Washington arrive on the scene, finally, and Mick nearly tears J.D.’s head off. Neal breaks it up, and gives J.D. his own speech about straightening up.
Andy’s sitting on the steps of a school hallway, a college, actually, as a bell rings. He’s there to ask a question of Sandra Pauley, his English Comp teacher. Did you know Andy was taking college courses? Not until now, you didn’t! He tries to offer her a ride home, and she burns him. But she relents, and they leave together. Bow-chika-bow-wow.
Back at the station, with the most maudlin rendition of the show’s theme music ever, Frank is offering Henry a cup of coffee in his office. Henry’s updating Frank on his son’s medical tests, and then essentially tells Frank he’s going to resign. Frank talks him out of it.
We shift to a dark alley, where Weeks is on a stakeout. He spots three black guys emptying a bunch of drugs out of the back of a Camaro; attempting an arrest, they start shooting. He shoots back, and drops one of them. And the end credits roll.
Look, Pizza Man: Joyce is hopping mad in this scene, because her client’s been roughed up but what he was doing to his victim is about a thousand times worse. She doesn’t like it when Furillo reads off the litany, including rape by instrumentation, sodomy, cigarette burns, and the fact that the teenage victim was tied up to a chain-link fence.
Would You Prefer Internal Injuries?: “How’d you like a collapsed lung, kidney-breath? Over.” Mick, showing his appreciation for LaRue calling him Fido.
I’m Unarmed: “I’m no cop, Frank. Masquerade’s gone on long enough.” Henry faces a serious crisis of conscience here, and one is left to wonder about the alternate reality in which Frank’s unable to talk Henry into staying.
My Car!: “One more word outta you, my friend, you’re goin’ to county emergency.” Andy ain’t takin’ no guff.
Judas Priest!: “To be frank, Phil, I spent the entire night with a woman.” The way Howard says this, one might be forgiven for assuming this was a novel experience.
Mano a Mano: Lucy actually has Cooper back on his heels during their confrontation. It’s like they’re going to fight, for real — and Cooper’s not treating her like a woman, at all.
I’m Good For It: “I’m having trouble just seeing the bus.” J.D.’s character arc over both two-part episodes may be encapsulated in just these seven lines.
What’s Up, Lover?: “This is the last time, J.D. The last time. Now, you do somethin’ about that problem, or you lost me.” Neal, dressing his partner down after the incident with Belker.
Not Now, Fay: Barbara Bosson does not appear in this episode.
Central Booking: Get ready, because this section is loooooooong this time out.
Robert Hirschfeld as Leo Schnitz and Tony Perez as Mike Perez are the only previously recurring characters to appear in this two-part episode, but we make up for it with a cornucopia of guest stars you’re going to recognize. This was only the second appearance on the show for Perez, but he would appear 20 more times. One other actor made the second of his two appearances on the show; Mark Casella had previously played Marty in “Your Kind, My Kind, Humankind” but played a different role here, Jay Driver. He would not appear in part two.
Appearing in both this two-parter and the following one was a bit of a cottage industry. Van Nessa Clarke appeared here and in the following two-parter as Shirret Anders; she co-starred in the series Teachers Only the following year then vanished from the business. Freddye Chapman played Denise Thompson; she bounced around Hollywood until the 1990s. Starletta DuPois appeared here as “Second Neighbor” (in the scene where Hill and Renko respond to the abandoned child complaint) and in the next episodes as “Second Woman”, but it’s probably the same role. Terry Alexander played Theo Monroe; he’d come back for another pair of consecutive episodes in season four, appearing in “Doris in Wonderland” and “Praise Dilaudid” as Quincy.
Some other folks debuted here and reappeared later in other guises. “First Neighbor”, at Shirett’s apartment, was played by Myrna White, who’d be back in season three’s “Gung Ho”. Finally, Charles Hallahan, most famous for playing Captain Devane for the duration of the run of Hunter, played Weeks.
Oh, and there was another uncredited appearance this episode; in his only appearance before the camera on Hill Street, Steven Bochco was part of the police lineup. Joyce’s client, Mr. Davis, is uncredited and unknown.
There were two guest stars who are big deals now. The first, making her first credited appearance anywhere as Sandra Pauley in both this two-parter and the following one, was Mimi Rogers. It would be awhile before her career took off with the film Someone To Watch Over Me, and she was of course famous for being the first wife of Tom Cruise — and the personal responsible for introducing him to Scientology.
James Remar, who’d burst onto the scene two years earlier in The Warriors playing Ajax, the leader of the titular gang, appeared as Cooper. Remar would go on to play the main bad guy in 48 Hours, and has had a long career since; most recently, he co-starred as Harry Morgan on Dexter.
The most important debut by far, however, was that of Ed Marinaro. The former All-American running back from Cornell, who won the Maxwell Award and finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1971 before playing in two Super Bowls with the Minnesota Vikings, would become main-billed as Joe Coffey with the start of season two and remain in the cast until only 27 episodes remained in the series. (Marinaro’s arrival made Hill Street the home of two former consensus All-American college athletes, as Mike Warren was also an All-American at UCLA.) This wasn’t Marinaro’s first steady acting gig; he’d had a run on Laverne & Shirley as Sonny St. Jacques earlier in the year. Post-Hill, Marinaro went on to long-term roles on Sisters and as Coach Daniels on Blue Mountain State.
Rap Sheet: The crew is all familiar here, as the three-headed beast of Kozoll, Bochco, and Yerkovich team up. (Technically, Yerkovich is not credited as co-writer for part one, but we’ll get to this in a moment.) Hoblit becomes the first director to helm back-to-back episodes since Robert Butler’s stewardship of the first five hours.
Tom Stevens earned the second of three Outstanding Achievement in Film Editing nominations of the debut season of the series, following the pilot and preceding the next episode, “Jungle Madness”. None of them won the Emmy, however, which went to M. Pam Blumenthal and Jack Michon for the Taxi episode “Elaine’s Strange Triangle”.
Some sources tend to treat this (as well as the following two-parter) as single episodes. One, they’re two-part episodes (duh). Two, most sources list the cast and crew identically for both parts; I’ve had to split the cast manually, as it were. And three, the original airing was on the same night, back-to-back. Frankly, the only reason we did not treat it as a single episode was so that the recap wouldn’t be twice as long.
Verdict: We’ve had hints of it before, but this episode makes it very explicit when Frank flat-out tells Henry that he’s not wrong: Henry is the voice of “righteousness” on the show, while Frank is the avatar of “doing what you can within the system.” Frank knows that compromises have to be made; Henry doesn’t understand it, doesn’t like it, and will sometimes risk the greater good to save one soul.
But the core of the distinction is more of a flaw: Frank can smell a rat a mile away, while Henry, as he himself says, can’t “tell the good guys from the bad guys, because we don’t have that luxury anymore — not in this department.” Henry can’t understand why people don’t behave within their assigned roles, as it were, and one could make the argument that this is a defining characterization between blind liberalism and blind conservatism; the latter, usually expressed by Howard, is that you always have to watch your back with everyone. As for Frank and Henry, it’s the battle between idealism and pragmatism.
But Frank impresses upon Henry that in a flawed system, people like Henry are necessary, because without them it just gets worse. Good show, Furillo.
J.D. is swirling down the toilet, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. His circumstances are the main B-plot for the remainder of the season, so we’ll have more on this in the next few posts.
Finally, we have the addition of a new main cast member to talk about here, although we won’t “promote” him until the show does. Ed Marinaro popped in for what was supposed to be a four-episode guest stint, but was so popular and engaging that he not only stuck around but joined the main cast beginning with season two. There’s immediate chemistry between Marinaro and Thomas, and it’s sort of funny that throughout this entire episode we never do hear his last name — although in an even more amusing twist, someone orders coffee while standing right next to him at the diner.
Final score: 9. This is a very strong episode, with very few missed beats. It beggars belief that Mick and Neal would let J.D. off the hook, but we won’t penalize the episode too harshly for that — largely because starting next episode, they stop doing it. We also can’t penalize this episode for a problem which spans both parts of the two-parter — something we’ll address in more detail next week. The real hiccup is Bobby’s inexplicable 180 regarding Shirett; he really wants to bust her when he finds the kids alone, but then he’s suddenly defending her to the social worker. This, too, will be further addressed going forward.
Next Week: “Rites of Spring (Part Two)” – Weeks finds a strange ally, while J.D. melts down.
