I’m watching Hill Street Blues box set #1. It’s actually not bad if you look at it as a period piece and don’t take it quite as seriously as, say, Law & Order or NYPD Blue. If you’re into that kind of thing, you can see the origins of many of the conceits we see over-used today in TV dramas, things that look mundane now but were ground-breaking then. I was also saddened for some of the actors who became so identified with these roles that it impacted their careers severely. I suppose fame is a two-edged sword: you pray you get the gig, then you pray you don’t get buried in it.

Bruce Weitz comes most immediately to mind. His brilliant and touching Mic Belker has always seemed to me to be the obvious template for Wolverine. I’m sure I even scoffed at Chris/Len waaaay back in the way back when the New X-Men—whom nobody at Marvel thought would have legs, which is why Len walked off it and Marvel gave it to some associate editor named Claremont—debuted: they had this Mic Belker character, complete with cigar. Weitz talks briefly about it in the brief supplement: he’s actually (of course) an articulate, thoughtful, softy-spoken guy—nothing at al like Belker. But, says Weitz, to this day, fans on the street ask him to growl for them.

The show’s dynamic was simple: here’s a cartoonish, over-the-top zoo of ragged cops trying to keep the peace in No Man’s Land. The anchor was the brilliantly stone-faced Daniel J. Travanti, who does not appear in the reunion interview, nor is his name mentioned—which I found suspicious until I looked him up on YouTube. There you’ll find an exhaustive, nearly five-hour (yes *hour*) interview with Travanti which is, more or less, a primer on why editors are important: somebody could have saved Travanti from himself. He comes across as egocentric and self-absorbed, when he’s probably neither. It’s just the sheer *bulk* of footage of the guy talking about himself that makes him look like a loon. Throughout, I couldn’t help but muse abut how Travanti, who has aged most gracefully and looks wonderful, would make a great Trek starship captain. The downside is, you don’t want Captain Travanti so much as Captain Furillo, wanting Travanti to reprise the fabulously disciplined ringmaster from Hill Street, a role he’s obviously tried (and failed) to put behind him.

I’d actually forgotten what a nice guy Joe Spano (Sergeant/Lieutenant Henry Goldbloom) was on the show, Goldbloom having one of season one’s most poignant moments, a moment where Bochco surely looked at the dailies and made a course correction from farce toward the riveting drama the show became. Goldbloom looks at Furillo and tells him he’s no cop. “I want to get my wife and my kids and get them the hell out of here.” The sadness overwhelming him, Spano took the bare bones screen time everybody got and maximized every second of it. A feat made all the more amazing considering my last encounter with Spano was as the scene-chewing nemesis to Dennis Franz’s Detective Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue’s lame latter days. Spano’s detective John Clark, Sr. was literally the best part of the final seasons, but Bochco and company really didn’t know what to do with him. They’d hooked Sipowicz up with Spano’s TV son, played by Mark-Paul Gosselear, whose single-note performance (summed up by an incredulous smell-the-fart glare that’s supposed to make him look tough) I am convinced ultimately tanked the show. Gosselear’s TV dad, Spano, wiped the floor with him every time he walked on-set, and, had Bochco paired Spano with Franz instead of the empty suit Gosselear, NYPD would probably still be airing. The two were just that much fun to watch. Instead, as was common for NY, they killed Spano off. I (and, apparently the rest of Blue’s fans) threw up my hands, and the show spiraled.

It’s fun to remember just how amazing and excellent a slice of womanhood Veronica Hammill was. She really didn’t need any lines, just her walking across the set would stop traffic. The fact that Hammill could act, and that the writers clicked with her character early on, making her one of the strongest female leads on TV, was all the better. Betty Thomas occupied the flip side of the equation, season one not using her very well until toward the very end when the writers began to figure out who her character was, Barbara Babcock (who won an Emmy for her performance, here) and Barbara Bossom rounded out the cast—four strong female parts being rather unheard of in those days.

Hill Street juggled four to five ongoing plotlines and eighteen or more speaking roles. In the commentary, Bochco admits it was overly complex, especially considering the simplistic fare people were used to in those days. Some of the hair and clothes make you giggle (particularly a young David Caruso in a bad role and worse hat; Spano loses it and starts giggling about him in the commentary and Bochco calls Caruso an “asshole,” and “that’s why I made him wear the hat.” It amazes me that, almost twenty years after Caruso walked off NYPD’s set, the animosity continues to linger.

They could bring this show back. Heck, I wish they would. Most of the most popular cast members are either dead (the glorious Michael Conrad, “Let’s be careful out there,” or are probably unaffordable (Betty Thomas is a fairly successful film director, Charles Haid directs a lot of TV, etc.). But Spano is still around, and it would be fun to see Belker, all grown up and no longer biting, get dragged back into the old ways. The rest of the cast could be newcomers, and Bochco could use a solid cop show. I just hope they don’t do a feature film and screw it up—either talking it too seriously (Miami Vice) or making a farce of it (Starsky & Hutch).

It’d been so long, I’d actually forgotten how good this show was. 98 (no kidding) Emmy nominations, 28 of them for Season One. The pilot, alone, is worth the fifteen bucks: the pilot being this wonderful little movie and probably the best episode of the season. The show stumbles around for a dozen or so episodes before finding its voice two-thirds through the first season, Bochco finally getting the mix of comedy and drama just right, and then turning up the drama to the point where waiting the week for the next episode became unbearable. For $14.95 a season, well worth the time.