Eric Gault (Mayf Nutter) loses an appeal for a new trial. On his way back to prison, the transport bus is attacked by men launching teargas grenades through the windshield. Norman picks up an emergency signal and alerts Street Hawk. The guards get the prisoners off of the bus as another tear gas grenade lands amongst them. In the confusion, Gault rolls under the bus. On the other side is a look-alike who rolls back under the bus and takes Gault’s place while Gault gets into a waiting van. Street Hawk shows up in time to see Gault flee and pursues the van down an alley. He's halted by a fire bomb until Norman reassures Jesse both his suit and the motorcycle are fireproof. Street Hawk rides through the flames, but the van has vanished.
The press grill Altobelli about Street Hawk, then ask about the prison transport assault. He assures the press that all prisoners are accounted for. When the conference is over, Altobelli assigns Jesse and Rachel to crack the identity of Street Hawk. Instead, Jesse leaves the task to a frustrated Rachel while he calls Norman and asks him to pull the tape. Norman identifies Gault as a mercenary and Jesse goes to the prison to investigate, only to be told that Gault died that day in a kitchen fire.
In Chinatown, a young man named Joe Ching (Jame Saitos) steals an imperial ivory statue from the criminal Tong organization, bringing the full power of the Five Families down on him in their attempts to recover it, mostly lead by Mr. Ming (Keye Luke). The next day, Jesse returns home from his morning jog and is shocked to find Lile (Shelagh McLeod) waiting for him. Lile (pronounced Lih-lay, though Jesse calls her Lillie) was Jesse's girlfriend back in the day, but left him when he joined the police force because she couldn't stand being with someone who put their lives in danger. She's here now to ask Jesse for help in getting Joe Ching, her friend, out of trouble.
The first place Jessie goes is the home of another old friend, Auntie Pearl (Beaulah Quo). Lile was the daughter of English photographers who often left the girl at their home in China where Pearl worked as her nanny and caretaker. Lile was never able to fully acclimate to either China or England, and is still struggling to find a place here in America. Pearl reveals to Jesse that Joe and Lile are a couple, and that Joe's been shunned by his family for the dishonor of getting engaged to a white woman. When Joe and Lile secretly meet, we learn he stole the statue because the Tong originally stole it from Joe's family, and he's hoping to regain his family's support by returning it to shanghai.
In the dead of night, Jesse and Street Hawk stand poised above the city. A nearby factory explodes. Jesse races to the scene, but is unable to do anything and flees as fire trucks arrive. It seems this is the latest in a recent rash of warehouse arsons that have erupted across the city, and with no suspects or leads, both Street Hawk and the authorities are left spinning their collective wheels.
At Police HQ, Altobelli has arranged to meet with the victims of the fires. First up is Will Gassner (Clu Gulager) and his daughter and business partner, Diana (Kristen Meadows). Like the rest of the victimized Businessman’s Association, Gassner isn’t interested in cooperating with the police. Jesse and Diana try to calm their respective parties down as Altobelli lays it on the table, suggesting the victims are being extorted for protection money. Gassner mockingly feigns ignorance and leaves. Gassner spots Rachel on her way out and it's revealed to Jesse that Gassner has offered her a job. Outside police HQ, Gassner and Diana run into Nick (Hank Brandt) and Morgan Harkness (Tige Andrews), two other members of the Businessman’s Association. Gassner reminds them that the police can’t offer any protection and implores them to stand firm.
At Rachel's insisting, Jesse heads down to a studio to meet with pop sensation Deborah Shain (Daphne Ashbrook) and ask if she's willing to appear in a promotional ad for the department's anti-drug campaign. Deborah, unfortunately, has a nasty history with cops who she deeply distrusts for interfering every time she tried to run away from her abusive father, so she turns Jesse down. Jesse persists, but Deborah is dragged away by her manager/boyfriend Virgil (rocker Lee Ving). Virgil is currently in the middle of using a video tape to blackmail record producer Neil Jacobs (James Whitmore Jr.). Neil rounds up a couple thugs to retrieve it.
Jesse hits the road for some new Street Hawk tests, but diverts to the home of Virgil and Deborah to check up on her. He arrives just as Neil's goons kill Virgil and Deborah takes off with the tape. Street Hawk stops one of the goons for the police to catch, but the other gets away and Altobelli is fuming because, with Deborah missing, they have nothing to connect the goon they have to the crime.
After talking down her furious stage director, aging Vegas showgirl Linda Martin (Sybil Danning) is met in her dressing room by a pair of goons. Seems they caught wind that she's going to testify against mob boss Jimmy Pinard (Christopher Thomas), her ex-boyfriend, and they have orders to keep her under wraps until the trial is through. When a stagehand walks in, Linda uses the distraction to take off. She jumps in the nearest taxi and tells the driver to head for Los Angles. Pinard gets word of Linda’s escape and makes arrangements for his goons to continue their pursuit in L.A. Despite the prodding of his ruthless attorney, Pinard doesn’t want Linda to be harmed.
In L.A., Street Hawk wraps up his night patrol by taking out a mugger. Jesse bums a ride off of Norman for an early morning date the cop has scheduled, with Norman arguing with him about the unhealthiness of his sloppy lifestyle and how there's no way he can have the energy he does by burning the candle at both ends. All plans go out the window when Linda jumps in front of their car and flags them down. Seems her cab safely made it to her sister's apartment, only to discover Pinard's goons ready and waiting.
Mitchel Elkins is a small time bookie who ran off with his boss's money and is looking to launder it in exchange for jewels freshly obtained by the Kurksey Brothers in a series of violent robberies. The three meet in an abandoned factory for the deal, unaware that Jesse spotted them while on a routine patrol as Street Hawk. He bursts into the scene, keeping the crooks busy until the cops show up, then takes off.
While lunching out with Norman, Jesse gets an earful from the engineer about bullet holes Street Hawk sustained. Jesse quickly ducks the issue by pointing out a gorgeous waitress that's been flashing Norman a come hither smile. Norman is stunned at the idea of a woman being attracted to him and, of course, freezes up before any kind of move can be made.
Jesse and Street Hawk are out on a little late night test run when Norman picks up a call on the police band. An officer is in pursuit of two men in a stolen Ferrari and its “blocker”, a driver in another car who acts as a lookout and plays interference. Jesse intercepts the Ferrari and begins a high speed chase through a series of winding back alleys. As the Ferrari exits one of the alleys, the blocker suddenly appears, forcing Jesse to make a dead stop. The Ferrari escapes, but the blocker careens out of control, killing the driver as the car crashes and bursts into flames. Unable to do anything else, Jesse flees the scene before the police arrive.
The drivers deliver the Ferrari to a chop shop and make a nervous trek into the office of the operation’s head man, Burton Levine (Robert Lipton). They break the news that Nicky, the blocker and Levine's kid brother, is dead. Clearly fearful that Levine will hold them responsible, the two embellish the story to make it seem as if Street Hawk killed Nicky on purpose. Levine vows to kill Street Hawk.
Included as a bonus on the DVD set is the unaired, but not unseen (more on that below), alternate version of the Street Hawk pilot. I was hoping for something entirely new, but it’s basically the same as the broadcast pilot with a few f/x and musical changes and some incidental additional footage.
Let me just note that I didn’t have the time or inclination to re-watch the original broadcast pilot again, so I watched the unaired pilot, noted what struck me as different from memory, and then re-watched those scenes again to confirm. If any of you Street Hawk aficionados out there - and you know who you are - know of anything I missed, please let us know.
We open on an armored police van transporting a load of confiscated cocaine to a storage facility. The drivers notice a strange custom black SUV pulling up behind them, but don't catch the two off-road dirtbikes and riders that exit the back of the menacing vehicle. The riders quickly take the police van out and crack it open with C4, riding off with the drugs. Other police pursue, but the bikers seemingly vanish into a sealed drainage pool.
In the police vehicle lot, we meet Jesse Mach (Rex Smith) - yes, whose name is pronounced like the measurement of speed - a former teen dirtbike racing champ turned motorcycle cop, and his partner Marty (Rebert Beltran). Marty is taking bets while Jesse, in stars-and-stripes helmet and cape, pulls an Evel Knievel as he jumps his bike over four squad cars. Just as they collect their winnings, they're busted by no-nonsense Lieutenant Commander Leo Altobelli (Richard Venture), who suspends the duo for two weeks.
If the shows of the Super Saturday Short-Lived Showcase were like old classmates of mine, Automan would be the kid who sat next to me in second grade, moved to Wisconsin over the summer, and I never saw again. Visionaries would be the underclassman I occasionally passed in the hall or saw in the lunchroom, but never talked to. But our next show was a good friend. Maybe not my best friend, but we hung out together when my best friend wasn’t home. I’m talking, of course, about Street Hawk.
Street Hawk came along at the tail end of what is sometimes referred to as the “super vehicle craze”. Most would credit Knight Rider for starting it, but I would actually go back a few more years to The Dukes of Hazzard. As you’re probably aware, the Duke boys perpetrated most of their redneck shenanigans behind the wheel of a supped-up ’69 Dodge Charger called The General Lee. It didn’t take long for the car to become the star of the show - well, that and Catherine Bach’s cut-off denim shorts - and a phenomenon was born.
By the Year of our Lord nineteen and eighty five, several such vehicles were stars or co-stars in 80s prime time. You had K.I.T.T. (from the aforementioned Knight Rider), the Airwolf helicopter from the show of the same name, Mr. T’s jet black van from The A-Team, Magnum’s red Ferrari 308, the Manta Montage from Hardcastle and McCormick, and the Screaming Mimi from Riptide, just to name a few. Even films weren’t immune to the phenomenon, with Blue Thunder (later a short-lived TV series of its own) and Firefox getting in on the action. And bringing up the rear was Street Hawk, a show cut from the same cloth as Knight Rider, where a well coiffed hero worked in secret for a vaguely defined agency to fight crime with the help of a super vehicle. Lasting only thirteen episodes, Street Hawk is nonetheless fondly remembered as one of the best the genre had to offer. Noel and I will be the judge of that.
And this being the 80s, Street Hawk needed a kick-ass theme. It got one, courtesy of German electro-pop group Tangerine Dream. The track, titled "Le Parc", wasn’t specifically written for the series, but it fits hand in glove and if people remember nothing else about the show beyond the motorcycle, they remember the theme.
With only thirteen episodes on its resume, Street Hawk has only seen the occasional run in syndication over the years and I honestly can’t remember the last time I watched an episode. That means this is going to be almost completely fresh to me, especially the finer details.
I’ve got the first episode cued up and ready to go and I’m really looking forward to watching it with Noel, and hopefully with you, too.
But before we begin, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a few words about our new partnership with the Made of Fail family. Noel's been with them for some time now, first as fan and then as co-host of his own podcast (which you really need to go listen to now). Let me just say that it’s an honor to be a part of the growing MoF empire and I promise not to embarrass the brand. Well, at least not any more than Noel.
Noel
I've never seen Street Hawk. I've never read about Street Hawk. I didn't even know the series existed until 80s guru Tony filled me in on it with a single sentence: "It's Knight Rider with a motorcycle." I thought, "Hey, that could be cool," until I remembered the last time I saw an episode of Knight Rider and figured I was in for some awesome car shots, a few quippy lines, and a dull story with guest stars who never quite graduated to the "character" level of actor.
Imagine my surprise when I learned Glen Larson had nothing to do with this series. Surely, if anyone was going to knock off Knight Rider, it would be the king of the knockoffs himself. As we established with Automan, Larson knew how to leap on a trend and try to cash in on it for all it's worth, even trends of his own creation. Then he'd get bored three episodes in, pass the reigns to a shifting creative team, and try to find the next hot ticket to bet on.
Instead, this show was made by people I've never heard of. Not to brag, but I've picked up on so many names over the years that it's a rare feat for me to not know someone on a creative team. Looking at the credits of creators Paul M. Belous and Bob Wolterstorff, Street Hawk is definitely their most prominent work in a list of sporadic freelance tv writing, and it seems the show must have impressed the right people because it won them the roles of supervising producers on the second season of Quantom Leap (a series by Glen Larson protege Don Bellissario, weaving our web tighter). Beyond that, Belous seems to have gone his own way, leaving Wolterstorff to write solo for another decade before he, too, went quiet.
As for the intro, it looks gorgeous. The sleek black rider on the bike, backlit by blue, gives it an alien quality that's both gripping and menacing. The stories look to be exactly what I'd expect, which means I fear many an episode involving rich white men and their money laundering schemes, but it doesn't look to have the same level of camp as Larson's shows. The intro mentions the character is recovering from debilitating injuries, so I'm hoping they keep that as a strong thematic layer as the character keeps pushing himself, maybe even farther than he should.
I'm not overly familiar with the cast. The only thing I've seen lead Rex Smith in was the lead in the 1983 filmed version of Pirates of Penzance, which is certainly a different role than we're getting here. But, hey, if Chuck Wagner can make that Broadway swagger work on screen, here's hoping the same is true for Rex. Jeannie Wilson looks lovely, but I can't place her. I'm curious to see if they let her do anything of substance or if she's just the pretty lady rolling her eyes at the hero when he's not rescuing her from peril. Richard Venture and Joe Regalbuto are familiar character actors, of course, but I have to admit I've never been a big fan of Regalbuto, who I've always found to be a poor man's Matt Frewer. Which, when you look back on Frewer's career, must make for a really poor man. I'll push that aside and give him a shot.
The theme is pretty catchy with its beats of hope and atmosphere of imagination. I'm a little surprised to see it's from the synth masters Tangerine Dream. Slightly less surprised to see they didn't do it for the show, it rather being a remix of a title track from one of their hit albums.
I'm curious. As with Automan, this is the type of 80s formula show I don't usually go for, but I'm looking forward to see what the untested creators had in store for the audiences of 1985. Is it a hidden gem, lost before its time, or something that didn't catch on because it was really no different from everything around it? Follow along as we find out!
Tune in this Saturday Morning for the pilot episode of Street Hawk.
If you'd like to watch along with us, the entire series is available in a DVD set which can be purchased through Amazon US, Amazon CA, or Amazon UK.
