Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Hunter gets another bad assignment.

Episode 1.9 “High Bleacher Man”

(Dir by Arnold Laven, originally aired on December 7th, 1984)

Hunter and McCall have finally arrested Elton Gavin (Michael Baselon), a murderous punk who has been causing mayhem all over Los Angeles.  Unfortunately, Gavin works out a deal.  For immunity, he’ll turn on gangster Nate Demarest (Richard Romanus).  With Demarest eager to kill the informant, Hunter finds himself assigned to protect Gavin until Gavin can testify.

The problem, of course, is that Gavin is a sociopath.  Hunter doesn’t want to protect Gavin.  He doesn’t want Gavin to get immunity.  He certainly doesn’t want to see Gavin back out on the streets.  When Hunter learns that McCall once investigated Demarest for killing a federal agent, he asks her to reopen the case.  If they can get Demarest on that charge, then there won’t be any reason to give Gavin immunity.

Poor Hunter and McCall.  They always get the worst assignments.  This was pretty much a standard episode of Hunter but the chemistry between Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer was fun to watch.  In the middle of all the action and the bullets, Dryer and Kramer were actually a pretty good comedy team.  It’s fun to listen to them talk.

As I watched this episode, I suddenly remembered that Hunter’s father was a gangster and therefore, one would think that Hunter would have more contacts in the world of organized crime than he does.  Hunter’s mob background is one of those things that the show sometimes seems to forget about.

The other thing that occurred to me as I watched this episode is that, in 1984, John Amos probably had one of the easiest jobs in television.  He played Dolan, Hunter and McCall’s captain.  As far as I can tell, his role consisted of showing up at the end of each episode and yelling at Hunter for taking unnecessary risks.  That was pretty much it.  Amos just had to be annoyed for two-minutes every week.

Of course, it didn’t matter how much Dolan got annoyed,

Hunter got results!