Season Two, Episode 2 (19): “Blood Money”
story by Michael Kozoll, Steven Bochco, and Anthony Yerkovich
written by Steven Bochco and Anthony Yerkovich
directed by Gregory Hoblit
original airdate: November 5, 1981
“Previously on Hill Street Blues…”
Roll Call: Roll Call must be running late; we’re only on item 9 and it’s already after 7pm. Phil has some trouble getting the kids to pay attention for said item, the latest in a string of cab robberies. Belker’s riding undercover, so there’s some foreshadowing. Phil’s interrupted again by slurping; the orangutan is sitting in roll call drinking milk with a straw. Item 10 involves a robbery at a sporting goods store which netted a couple-hundred guns and lots of ammo. Suspicion is on Jesse John Hudson. As roll call breaks up, Phil gets a note about a dead body and sends Renko and Hill, Bates and Coffey off to run crowd control. After some comedy with the uniforms, we roll credits.
When we return, Phil is busy breaking up with Grace over the phone as Howard enters. To Phil’s surprise and nobody else’s, she hangs up on him. J.D. and Neal talk about J.D.’s evening, then Henry accosts Frank to beg to be allowed to drive an undercover taxi. Frank relents, but tells Henry to wear something more appropriate than his sportcoat and bowtie.
Out at the dead body scene, Hill/Renko and Bates/Coffey are standing around. J.D., Neal, and Ray are there, and they confers with the coroner, Calloway. Neal recognizes the victim; she’s a prostitute working for Billy the Monk. Freddie, a junkie, gets Neal’s attention and snitches. Seems he saw Billy the Monk earlier, covered in blood and super worked up. The crew head to an apartment where they bust Billy and a couple of his girls, finding some coke to add to his tab.
Hudson is in a space where he’s putting on a charitable art exhibition to fund his programs, and he’s putting on a show for reporters. One of them asks him about the murder of Clayton Hicks. Meanwhile, Belker’s meeting with Brooks, who tells him just what happened to Hicks. He also confirms the Black Arrow were behind both the sporting goods heist and a hit on an armory the week before. Mick’s worried, and tells Brooks to be careful.
At the station, Frank checks in with the coroner, who’s been running forensics on Billy the Monk. He’s clean as a whistle, so they’re going to need a witness. Frank returns to his office and tells Ray to get Neal to produce Freddie. Also present: Ben Lambert, who Frank questions about Susan Downey. After, Fay is waiting with news: she’s getting married, so no more alimony. On her way out, the orangutan snatches her purse and absconds to the men’s room. Fay chases him in there, and hijinks ensue with Howard.
Henry’s out in his cab, and he spots a woman being harassed by a couple of guys at a bus stop. He rescues her, because he’s Henry. He takes her home, and after telling her he’s actually a cop (and proving it when she’s suspicious), she invites him in. We never do get her actual name, so we’ll just refer to her as the obviously not-name by which she’s referred to in the credits: West Virginia. She starts hitting on him, telling him how her husband left her. After breaking a glass accidentally, she flat out asks him to stay with her awhile. Henry resists, because he’s married (and he’s Henry), and leaves.
Neal tracks Freddie down and Freddie’s agitated because he’s in debt to the wrong sort of people. Neal gives him $200 and tells him to be at the station at six o’clock, which you know damn well is a bad idea. So does J.D., but Neal’s not stupid. He’s going to have J.D. tail him.
At the station, Phil’s on the phone, and a very bitter Grace is lurking behind him. She summons him to Roll Call for a chat; Howard is watching. Waiting. Weirdo. Grace is there to return all of Phil’s things, and fill his life with regret at her departure. On the way out, Howard stops her to talk. He asks her out, with plenty of unintentional innuendo. She responds positively, and sultries her phone number onto a poster for him.
In the bathroom, Mac MacAllister wanders in to talk to Phil and invites him fishing. They’re interrupted by Renko, and then they’re all interrupted by Hill. The pair basically invite themselves along, and then they rope Coffey into the shenanigans. All this leads to Phil bowing out, because it’s all too silly. Mac, meanwhile, is too polite to object.
Belker’s trying to eat lunch in his cab when a fare gets in the back seat. Belker says he’s on break, but the cross-dressing passenger puts a gun to his neck. Mick goes nuts, driving the car like a maniac and crashing in an alley; the robber tries to flee and Belker tackles him.
Back at the station, Mick gets off the phone; Brooks has a line on the warehouse where the armory loot may be stored. He tells Frank to get a warrant; Frank tells him to make sure he has backup. Meanwhile, J.D. calls Neal to tell him that Freddie is at the train station waiting for the L.A. Flyer.
Frank is at the art show, where Hudson greets him along with his attorney, Samantha McBride. Across the room, Joyce is there as well, being hit on. Howard and Grace are there, too, and Grace is getting aroused by the art. Frank crosses the room, and meets a woman named Adrianna Furth; sparks fly there, too. Back to Howard and Grace, who tells Howard that she and Phil broke up because he couldn’t handle her needs. She might very well be fondling Howard right there in the gallery.
Joyce greets Frank, with Lance Pollard in tow. Another guy approaches Joyce as they all talk, then Joyce and Pollard depart. Adrianna figures out quickly that Frank and Joyce just broke up, and starts to vacate; Frank stalls her, and asks her out.
Mick arrives at the warehouse with a bunch of uniforms. They find crates from the armory. At the same time, Neal arrives at the train station to scoop up Freddie, who’s trying to ditch town with his kid and a bunch of cash. J.D. figures out Freddie killed the hooker, and they arrest him.
Frank checks in with Belker, and asks about Brooks. Mick doesn’t know where he is, saying he left before the impound guys arrived to collect the armory swag. Next desk over, J.D. is filling out the report on Freddie, and Henry serves as exposition for what we just saw happen. Henry then goes to Frank’s office and unloads about being hit on.
Henry then arrives at West Virginia’s apartment. She invites him in. And the credits roll.
Look, Pizza Man: Joyce is only present for the art show scenes, and says little other than small talk.
Would You Prefer Internal Injuries?: “You forgot to pay your fare, dogbreath!” Mick, after tackling the robber.
I’m Unarmed: “She really wants me, Frank. What’s the harm?” Poor Henry, looking for validation for his desire to cheat on his wife.
My Car!: “That’s an interesting evolutionary study there, innit?” Andy, as Belker and the orangutan walk past him hand-in-hand.
Judas Priest!: “Alright, you simian psychopath. You’re looking at three to five the hard way if you don’t open that door.” For once, Howard is actually talking to a simian here rather than, say, a Hispanic or something.
Mano a Mano/Target Practice: Aside from mentioning what they had for breakfast, Bates and Coffey are just window-dressing this week.
I’m Good For It: “It’s truly a wonderful thing to spend an entire evening with a woman without a bottle of booze for backup.” J.D.’s recovery is proceeding apace… although in the very next line he’s apparently smoking weed and doing mushrooms, so…
What’s Up, Lover?: “Man, you really give new meaning to the word ‘rehabilitated’.” Neal’s response to the above.
Not Now, Fay: When Fay tells Frank about the guy she’s marrying (after knowing him for only a week), her description is like an APB: “male, caucasian, 51 years old, divorced”.
Central Booking: Regular guests Barbara Babcock and Robert Hirschfeld are on hand, as well as this arc’s main guest stars: Danny Glover as Jesse John Hudson, Sandy McPeak as Mac MacAllister, Nathan Cook as Virgil Brooks, Charles Guardino as Lambert, and the uncredited C.J. the Orangutan.
James Tartan returns as the coroner, although now his name is Calloway; he was named Metzger in season one’s “Gatorbait” and in last week’s episode. (Screwing up his name after six months is understandable. After one week?) Tartan will return later in the season for “Of Mouse and Man”, and he’ll just be “coroner” there.
Karen Austin appears as West Virginia; she’ll return in the next two episodes, uncredited. Also appearing in these three episodes is M.E. Loree as Samantha McBride. Unlike Austin, she’s actually credited in the following hours.
Lew Hopson plays Billy the Monk; he’ll return twice more in other roles in season six and seven. Similarly, J.D. Hall is here as “First Man”, who is the guy at the bus stop who actually has lines; he’ll pop up again in season three’s “Rain of Terror” and season four’s “Goodbye, Mr. Scripps”. Hall actually has a relatively recognizable later credit, recurring as Mr. Alvarado on The Secret Life of Alex Mack.
Lots of one-shot appearances this episode, including John Dennis Johnston as Freddy, Sandra McCabe as Adrianna Furth, Charles Walker and Victoria Thatcher (in her only American credit) as the reporters at Hudson’s press meetup, and Faith Minton as the large hooker at Billy the Monk’s place. The most noteworthy of the one-shots, however, was Eugene Robert Glazer, who played the guy hitting on Joyce at the art show. Glazer later went on to play Paul Wolfe (Operations) as a main cast member on the long-running series La Femme Nikita.
Rap Sheet: The writing and directorial crew is the same as last week, all seasoned Hill Street vets.
One thing we forgot to mention last week: the enigmatic Officer Morgan is no longer present during Roll Call. We’re still trying to figure out who she was.
Verdict: This episode is pretty much all about transitioning relationships. There’s the obvious, with Frank and Joyce seeing other people, Phil and Grace breaking up and Grace accepting Howard’s attentions, and Henry choosing to step out on Rachel.
But there’s also J.D.’s altering relationships with his partner and even other cops, as evidenced by the clear-eyed conversations he has with Neal and Henry and the fact that he’s doing his job competently now. J.D. has broken up with booze.
We’ve also got Phil’s attempts to form a friendship with MacAllister, Mick’s relationship with the orangutan, and even Freddie’s relationship with his son. These are all sort of cockeyed.
I don’t want to spoil the next two episodes before we rewatch them, so I can’t really go into details here. Suffice it to say that except for Freddie’s story, all of this continues toward resolution one way or another. It’s really all foreshadowing, including the armory arc.
Surprisingly, the most jarring portions of the episodes are the two scenes with Danny Glover. Glover is, of course, a fine actor. That’s part of the problem watching these in retrospect, because Jesse John Hudson is a character who’s being played the way he should be: an ex-con, not formally educated, trying to come across as a thoughtful and benevolent changed man. It’s not Glover’s performance that’s awkward; it’s Hudson’s spiel.
Final score: 8. It’s not very exciting, but it’s a well-crafted episode which moves things along.
Next Week: “The Last White Man on East Ferry Avenue” — Henry’s life turns upside down, a cop dies, and can it get any more humiliating for Howard?
