Bill M. Ryusaki – 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.

This week, someone is killing criminals in Los Angeles and, for once, it’s not Rick Hunter!

Episode 1,15 “The Beach Boy”

(Dir by Richard Colla, originally aired on April 6th, 1985)

A Hawaiian drug lord is angered when five Los Angeles drug dealers decide to stop dealing his product. So, he sends his main assassin — Wes “Beach Boy” Kapano (Brett Clark) — to L.A. to kill all five of them. Hunter and McCall find themselves in the strange position of providing productive custody to the dealers while trying to stop Kapano.

This was a typical “chase-em-and-shoot-em” episode of Hunter. Dee Dee even managed to get shot for the second time this season. (And, once again, it didn’t seem to actually hurt her. “I’m fine!”) For the first season, at least, Hunter kept things simple. In between the flirtatious Hunter/McCall banter, there would be at least one car chase and three shootings.

What sets this episode apart is that Hunter and McCall are protecting drug dealers. While McCall makes it clear that she doesn’t actually care what happens to the dealers, Hunter’s feelings are a bit more ambivalent. He’s been chasing the dealers for so long that he’s developed a grudging affection for them. When one of them is killed while helping the police, Hunter’s actually upset about it.

The other thing that sets this episode apart was Brett Clark’s intimidating turn as the assassin. The Beach Boy, as he’s called, doesn’t waste too much time with conversations. He doesn’t brag about how clever he is or go to a lot of trouble trying to fool anyone. Instead, he just shows up and starts firing. He wears a bulletproof vest, as well. McCall shoots him twice and he barely flinches. He’s a scary dude!

That said, Hunter still manages to kill him. How many people have been killed by Rick Hunter so far? I’ve lost track. Most officers are suspended after a shooting so that the shooting board can rule whether or not it was justified. Hunter is always back on the streets within an hour of killing someone. Considering how quick he is with a gun, I probably wouldn’t want to tell him he was suspended either.

Much like Hunter and McCall, this episode was brutal and efficient.