What aspect of SH isn't appealing to you just yet?

The show is different from what I had expected, that's what mainly threw me off. I haven't seen very much from that time period, I'm a child of the 80ties. What I had expected was more light-hearted, along the lines of Cordially Yours, which is one of my favourite old shows. I have only seen the first DVD so far, but I miss the fun in it.

I love a good dark show. There have been some great sci-fi shows with a dark edge. I'm just not sure yet what to make of SH. It's not about fitting into a catergory, I just can't really figure out what there is espüecially applealing about the show.

I'll watch the rest of the first season since I rented it and the show is well done. What do you like most about the show?

What I love most about SH is their relationship. Unabashedly, no-holds barred, they would die for one another and are virtually two halves to a whole. It’s all about the love, the devotion, the caring between these two partners who are best friends and possibly more. There were a lot of tense episodes and it was often said to be the most graphic and real show of the time because of the issues it dealt with—racism, rape, and drug abuse (Hutch even got hooked on heroin in one episode). It was a ground-breaking show and in some aspects it still is because some of the issues they touched on, current television won't anymore. But at the forefront of the entire show was the relationship between Starsky and Hutch.

How do you sum up the relationship between Starsky and Hutch? Well, you can’t really. I mean, there can’t be one without the other, so there’s your starting ground. Two entities that ceased to be two long before we got a chance to peek into their lives. You don't see one without the other. They touch each other all the time, as if they are each other’s touchstones in the middle of a storm. They eat off each other’s plates, drink after one another, hold hands in the squad-room, pat each other down, end up at each other’s apartments almost by default, take vacations with one another, spend 75% of their time with one another, and even bought a house together (a dump, but still a house!)

There have been multiple times where they have sacrificed their careers, their futures, in order to save the other. Starsky covered up Hutch’s forced heroin addiction, killed the only link they had to a missing girl because he thought they had killed Hutch, and even offered to let a known murderer go because he was the only hope of saving Hutch from the plague. Hutch does the same thing for Starsky, going to the ends of the earth to bring down those who dare to hurt Starsky and racing against time again and again to save him. Other people notice their bond, too. Huggy is often pointing out that one without the other looks lopsided. They are not separate entities, but one being called StarskyandHutch. Whereas other fandoms have subtext, Starsky and Hutch have straight-out text.

The straight-out text of their relationship is what drew me in. There are many fandoms where there’s subtext, where the depth of relationships are drawn from certain glances and actions. In Starsky and Hutch, it’s a completely different mode of partnership. This is a fandom of happy every after. This is a pairing that can and has survived everything from addiction to loss to even death (technically, Starsky died in the last episode and his heart only started beating again when Hutch hit the hospital doors). This is a show where there was no “first meeting.” The pilot episode has them already established as partners, as friends, as two halves to the same person. They went through the Academy together, they spend countless hours together, they are each other’s one constant no matter what happens.

And I think the most special thing about the Starsky and Hutch relationship is that it was not just Starsky and Hutch. The love and admiration that shines between these two characters is a direct result of the relationship between Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky) and David Soul (Hutch). They were and have continued to be best friends, creating a strong friendship that has last over thirty years and through both bad times and good. There are many scenes in the show where it ceased to be Starsky and Hutch and became Paul and David. To bear witness to that is what makes the fandom special.

Since it cut off my first paragraph and messed up my pictures;)

What I love most about SH is their relationship. Unabashedly, no-holds barred, they would die for one another and are virtually two halves to a whole. It’s all about the love, the devotion, the caring between these two partners who are best friends and possibly more. There were a lot of tense episodes and it was often said to be the most graphic and real show of the time because of the issues it dealt with—racism, rape, and drug abuse (Hutch even got hooked on heroin in one episode). It was a ground-breaking show and in some aspects it still is because some of the issues they touched on, current television won't anymore. But at the forefront of the entire show was the relationship between Starsky and Hutch.

When you put it like that, I almost have to watch the second DVD this weekend ;)