WONDER WOMAN: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON WARNER HOME VIDEO STARSKY & HUTCH: ...
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WONDER WOMAN: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
WARNER HOME VIDEO
STARSKY & HUTCH: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON, THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON
COLUMBIA TRISTAR HOME ENTERTAINMENT
WARNER HOME VIDEO
OTHER THAN THEIR relentless retro-kitschiness, potential for motion picture-ability and occasional homoerotic subtext, what's most remarkable about these sets is how nearly unwatchable each of them is.
Those who choose to elect the medium's current state of pre-taped reality as bad (and it is) haven't witnessed the era of Lynda Carter-a former Miss USA 1973 whose acting was as stiff as her hair. Though American culture was rife with dedication to all things big-band, Wonder Woman was set in a limply detailed version of the 1940s. While male actors paste their winged shag haircuts and chew on their hammy dialogue as if starving, Carter's Amazon Princess Diana stomps in ways that'd make Chyna the Wrestler seem daintier than Deborah Kerr. Wonder Woman should feel right at home in 2004, with its fight song theme ("In your satin tights/Fighting for your rights/And the old Red, White and Blue") and socially progressive superheroine patriotism. But ultimately, it comes off like Women in Chains wrapped in a dental dam.
Just how the hell country bad boy Waylon Jennings hooked up with the happy hillbillies of Luke and Bo Duke we'll never really know. But like America's obsession with the bobby-socks and the niceties of the black-leather 50s, a redneck fetishism-the same one that brought "Convoy," Burt Reynolds, Lynard Skynard and Confederate-flag coke mirrors to curiously squirrelly prominence throughout the 70s-found The Dukes of Hazzard's ratings getting higher than?well, than Jennings himself. While its moon-shining and country-cousin-loving set the course of Southern reformation back 200 years, playing hick-teens in constant trouble with venal lawmen gave Tom Wopat and John Schneider an eternal entrée into regional musical theater and Roscoe P. Coltrane into a living, breathing Foghorn Leghorn forevah.
Unlike the unfunny film version of Aaron Spelling's Starsky and Hutch series, the original was serious. Sorta. They came off, at first, as gay-ish buddy-cops in knit, shawl-collar sweaters and Jordache jeans. Yes, Antonio Fargas as Huggy Bear was the most likeable laughable pimp in Los Angeles, and even Michael Mann's gritty writing on season one couldn't help the action-officers be anything more than likeable car-chase scamps. By the time of the second season, though, S&H grew dark and determined, a raw rush of adrenaline and anger whose cynical twitches could've been a precursor to Mel Gibson's Riggs in the first Lethal Weapon: a death-wish cop whose deevolution is crushing. No worry. The self-deprecating laughs stop S&H from getting too gloomy. But, damn, those sweaters.