In "The Action," a close friend (James B. Sikking) receives an unwarranted 'massage' from the Marlborough Health Club (which few others have survived), forcing Starsky and Hutch to enter into a high stakes gambling den of vice. The head man (Richard Venture) has cleverly eluded detection by holding the games in the back of a moving van constantly on the go. A stroke of luck lands them $18,000 to start with, but after a disastrous first night, they must turn to The Professor (John Carradine) for tips on how to beat the house at switching dice. At this stage of his lengthy and distinguished career, the veteran scene stealer John Carradine was often required to provide necessary exposition playing experts on something or other; here, moustachioed and wearing a t-shirt, he has two short scenes that take place on a massage table, offering up the Las Vegas background on the chief villain, with a winking nod to 'The Bard' in praise of his enormous masseuse. 20 year old Melanie Griffith is cast as Sikking's blonde daughter, who enjoys playing pranks on Starsky, even dropping an ice cube down his shirt front during one payoff.
2 Reviews
A bit of action
monomerd31 July 2016
Warning: Spoilers
I feel like I'm becoming too critical in my reviews, and I don't enjoy panning what was my favorite show ever. So I will attempt to be more understanding and gentle.
Basically this is a pretty good episode with drama and suspense, if not major action. The story is fine and it was refreshing to finally see Starsky and Hutch go undercover without using bizarre costumes and over-the-top personas. They actually blended in and didn't play for laughs. That helped to keep the story from going comic and made it feel like they were acting like real cops doing a real job, which always makes the show work better than when they play for laughs. I liked the way things came together with getting money for the mission and getting advice from the Professer character to run a scam on the scammers.
Still, there were things that brought it down. I really didn't care for Melanie Griffith's character and can't see why either Starsky or Hutch would have had any interest in wooing her, much less using her as part of their mission. She comes off as so weak, wimpy and borderline ditzy, there is no way they would bring her into the mix of the action they were working on, even as a delivery girl. Still, as usual this season, they compete for her attention for no good reason other than someone wrote it that way. Because......???? Nope, I got nothing.
The other problem for me was the anti-climatic ending. The final fight scene where Starsky and Hutch have to save themselves was way too short and all done by the stuntmen, whom you can clearly identify are not PMG or DS. It would have taken less than five seconds to at least wrap up the action with a final shot of PMG and DS finished with the fight, maybe shaking hands with each other while victoriously standing over their respective bad guy. Instead we get a dark shot of PMG's stuntman double. It just seems sloppy and careless. Good enough for who it's for? I think we deserved a little more effort.
I usually feel that most of these Season 3 episodes are almost there, but just not quite right. Somewhere the concern for getting it right was slipping away.
Basically this is a pretty good episode with drama and suspense, if not major action. The story is fine and it was refreshing to finally see Starsky and Hutch go undercover without using bizarre costumes and over-the-top personas. They actually blended in and didn't play for laughs. That helped to keep the story from going comic and made it feel like they were acting like real cops doing a real job, which always makes the show work better than when they play for laughs. I liked the way things came together with getting money for the mission and getting advice from the Professer character to run a scam on the scammers.
Still, there were things that brought it down. I really didn't care for Melanie Griffith's character and can't see why either Starsky or Hutch would have had any interest in wooing her, much less using her as part of their mission. She comes off as so weak, wimpy and borderline ditzy, there is no way they would bring her into the mix of the action they were working on, even as a delivery girl. Still, as usual this season, they compete for her attention for no good reason other than someone wrote it that way. Because......???? Nope, I got nothing.
The other problem for me was the anti-climatic ending. The final fight scene where Starsky and Hutch have to save themselves was way too short and all done by the stuntmen, whom you can clearly identify are not PMG or DS. It would have taken less than five seconds to at least wrap up the action with a final shot of PMG and DS finished with the fight, maybe shaking hands with each other while victoriously standing over their respective bad guy. Instead we get a dark shot of PMG's stuntman double. It just seems sloppy and careless. Good enough for who it's for? I think we deserved a little more effort.
I usually feel that most of these Season 3 episodes are almost there, but just not quite right. Somewhere the concern for getting it right was slipping away.
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