Arsenio “Sonny” Trinidad – Through the Shattered Lens

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 and McCall get involved in a gang war in Chinatown!

Episode 2.2 “Night of the Dragons”

(Dir by James Whitmore, Jr, originally aired on September 28th, 1985)

McCall’s desire to try out a Chinese restaurant leads to her and Hunter witnessing a shootout and an apparent murder in Chinatown. (It’s “apparent” because the body disappears in all the confusion.) A war is brewing between two gang lords, the Chinese Chang (James Hong) and the Vietnamese Mr. Nim (Arsenio “Sonny” Trinidad). However, when Hunter and McCall try to investigate, they’re told to let the “Asian Affairs Unit” handle things.

Hunter suspects that an old friend, Detective Raymond Lau (Clyde Kusatsu), has gone crooked and is now working for Chang. It turns out Hunter is half-right. Lau is giving information to Chang, but only because Chang has kidnapped his daughter and is holding her hostage. Chang, it turns out, likes to kidnap people. For instance, he kidnaps McCall. How often can McCall get kidnapped? It seems to happen fairly frequently.

This was another action-packed episode of Hunter. Every few minutes, someone is either shooting a gun or threatening to. Meanwhile, McCall just wanted to find a nice Chinese place to eat. It’s obvious that, with the second season, the show had found a formula that worked for it and was determined to stick to it. This episode benefited from strong guest performances from Hong, Trinidad, and especially Clyde Kusatsu.

That said, I do wish this episode had explored its themes a bit more deeply. It’s mentioned that Hunter served in Vietnam, but it’s mostly just a throwaway reference used to explain how Hunter knew that the bullets recovered from a crime scene had been fired by Mr. Nim’s gang. The rivalry between the Chinese Chang and the Vietnamese Nim also serves as a reminder of the Vietnam War, but again, the episode doesn’t really dig into it. At one point, Chang says that Lau is weak because he was born not in China but in America, and again, it’s hard not to feel that the episode missed an opportunity to dig deeper with both men.

(I’ll also mention that, at one point, McCall compares one of the Chinese gangsters to Godzilla. Godzilla, needless to say, is part of Japan’s culture and not China’s.)

This was a good episode of Hunter that felt like it had the potential to be so much more.

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

Okay, let’s do this again.

Episode 2.6 “The Enemy Within”

(Dir by Stephen L. Posey, originally aired on September 28th, 1996)

A group of masked men are breaking into the homes of wealthy Vietnamese immigrants and stealing their money and jewelry. We are told that the men are specifically targeting the Vietnamese because Vietnamese people do not trust banks or the police. I have no idea if that’s true or not. I just know that the show insisted that this is true with a bizarre vehemence. To be honest, I’m Irish-Italian-Spanish in descent and I don’t trust banks or the police either. That said, I would be kind of offended if something bad happened to me and the cops responded by going, “Eh. It’s because she’s Irish-Italian-Spanish, what can you do?”

Kelly Hu, who is not Vietnamese, plays Wendy Trang, the granddaughter of a Vietnamese couple of have been robbed. Her grandfather does not want to talk to the police so Wendy instead talks to her grandfather and then meets with TC to tell him what her grandfather told her. From what Wendy tells him (which I think would be considered hearsay in a court of law), TC decides that only one of the thieves is Vietnamese and that the head of the robbery crew is probably an American who served in Vietnam and who harbors resentment towards immigrants. Seriously, he figures that out from just having one conversation.

(Actually, maybe it was Palermo who figured it out. Once they get on their bikes and put on their helmets, Palermo and TC are pretty much indistinguishable.)

TC recruits a psychic named Leslie Quint (Ken Weiler) to handle a knife that was left behind at the scene and to pick up on whatever psychic residue has been left behind. Chris smirks and calls the guy a fraud because, two seasons is, the writers still haven’t bothered to give Chris a personality beyond being bitchy. The psychic not only reveals that the leader of the gang is a big white guy but he also tells Chris that she needs to go to the dentist because she has a cavity. (Ewwww! Brush your teeth, weirdo!) He also tells Cory that her never-before mentioned brother is involved in some trouble.

The psychic’s right! Peter McNamara (William Bumiller), Cory’s brother, is a corrupt narcotics cop!

Anyway, things worked out. The bag guys were captured. Cory realized her brother wasn’t perfect. Chris learned a lesson about dismissing secret powers. TC smirked in that oddly humorless way of his. As Palermo, Rick Rossovich seemed to be begging someone to remember that he had been in both Top Gun and The Terminator before allowing himself to get sucked into the world of Pacific Blue.

Along with Kelly Hu, this episode featured Cronenberg favorite Robert A. Silverman, playing an eccentric on the beach. It’s always nice to see Silverman!

Otherwise, this was another stupid episode. At some point, these characters are going to have to develop personalities beyond riding bikes and getting annoyed, right?