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’s episode is a difficult one.
Episode 2.6 “Rape and Revenge: Part 1”
(Dir by Gary Winter, originally aired on November 2nd, 1985)
I nearly didn’t watch this episode.
When I saw the title of this episode and then read the plot description on the IMDb, my first instinct was to try to find an excuse to get out of having to watch and review it. The plot description read: McCall is raped by a visiting diplomat and her colleague’s hands are tied when he claims diplomatic immunity. Nearly every episode of Hunter so far has featured McCall getting into some sort of trouble. She’s been kidnapped countless times. She’s been shot at least three times. She’s been in more than a few fights. In the past, that didn’t bother me because no one is going to mistake Hunter for a realistic show. But when I read what was going to happen to her in this week’s episode, I immediately imagined that the show would handle it in the worst and most insensitive way possible.
Still, I watched the episode because I’m a completist. And you know what? I was wrong.
This episode opens with Hunter and McCall investigating the discovery of a dead woman at the Curaguayan Consulate in Los Angeles. (Curaguaya is a fictional country in South America.) One of the consuls, Raoul Marino (Richard Yniguez), immediately starts hitting on McCall, despite the fact that she’s conducting a police investigation. Later, Raoul sends three different flower deliveries to McCall’s house. When Raoul then shows up at McCall’s house, she tells him to leave. He rapes her and then flees. McCall calls Hunter, who rushes over to her house and then takes her to the hospital.
Because he has diplomatic immunity, Raoul thinks that he can get away with rape. He also thinks that he can get away with shooting Hunter in the shoulder when the latter confronts him. And it turns out that Raoul is correct. With both McCall and Hunter temporarily out of action, he boards a plane to Curaguaya and returns home.
To the show’s credit, it handles McCall’s rape sensitively. Stepfanie Kramer gives a strong performance as McCall. The scenes at the hospital, where the still bruised McCall is examined by doctors and investigators, capture the fact that the trauma of being raped doesn’t just end with the act. My fear was that this episode would have McCall magically recover at the end of the hour. It didn’t. Instead, we watch as McCall goes through therapy and as she slowly reaches the point where she feels that she can return to work. But even when she does return, the pain and the trauma are still there. This episode doesn’t simplify rape or use it as just another melodramatic plot twist. For that, it deserves a lot of credit.
(My only real issue that, during a recovery montage, the scenes of McCall in therapy are mixed with scenes of Hunter recovering from being shot in the shoulder. I feel like McCall deserved to have that montage to herself.)
This is a two-part episode. The first hour ended with McCall realizing that Hunter had traveled down to San Pablo, Curaguay to get revenge on Raoul. (Hunter previously told McCall that he was taking a few days off to go fishing.) McCall then made a reservation on the next flight to San Pablo. The story concludes next week!
