(no subject)

[pebblerocker]

Starsky: I'll dress in, you know, the sort of clothes drug dealers usually wear, and we should have a cool car, maybe a convertible. Do you think drug dealers sometimes wear running shoes?

Hutch: My character's called O'Brien and I'll be from Texas and wear a huge cowboy hat - in fact I want the full cowboy outfit, I'll find one with plenty of rhinestones - and I'm going to chew gum all the time and be a dickhead, well, more so than usual. A Texas-sized dickhead. And I'm going to be massively racist.

Starsky: You do know we're trying to get the co-operation of a drug dealer who happens to be black?

Hutch: I'm going to be so racist. And I get to drive the convertible.


When Hutch gets the chance to pick out clothes for Starsky he chooses some much tighter pants than Starsky usually wears, plus high heels. Very understandable, especially if you're then going to walk behind him a lot. I liked the bit where Hutch is talking to Captain Dobey and realises he doesn't have to stay in character and he throws the chewing gum in the bin.

I also saw the episode where someone's coming to kill Captain Dobey and we get to meet his lovely family. I like his teenage son not having to deal with assassins in the night even though he's quite tall because he's just a kid and his mother is better equipped to handle it. I liked the family playing Twister together! I liked that the little daughter being left-handed made Hutch think twice about being such a jerk to Starsky about being left-handed, there is nothing wrong with him and you can't change the way his brain is wired and he'll never be able to shoot straight if you try, oh my god.

And buy him his own designated pair of scissors if that will help him, or let him continue to use right-handed scissors if he's used to it and that works better for him. Opinion varies among left-handers in my family over whether left-handed scissors are worth it, but I have learnt the move of pushing with the fingers and pulling with the thumb to twist the blades of wrong-handed scissors against each other because I grew up with both types of scissors available.

Comments

[pebblerocker]

Learning to recognise mean behaviour, even when it comes from a pretty face, is a useful life skill! Nothing wrong with enjoying fictional dickheads, though, especially when they have such gorgeous long legs.

The things Hutch says are often objectively cruel. Does Starsky realise this and choose to react as if it's friendly banter instead of letting it get to him, or does he think it's fine? Once or twice could be writer fail, but by now it's gotta be characterisation.

[mortmere]

My favorite interpretation is that Hutch's meanness is just a part of their well-honed relationship dynamic: slightly overdoing the basic roles they've drifted into, to amuse themselves and to let out some steam. (I've seen that happen between male friends in real life - and I admit I've been there myself sometimes, saying awful stuff just to cultivate some stupid inside joke or other, not really meaning any of it personally. But I suppose it's a brand of humor/bonding that comes more naturally to men.)

Also, considering what a gentle and sensitive person Hutch usually is, the way he picks at Starsky in particular must be his way of telling him "I love it that we're so close that I can do this to you and trust that you know I don't really mean it and read between the lines that I'm just saying 'I love you'." It's either that or he'd be all over Starsky, physically (which is what Starsky does to Hutch).

And it's not like Starsky doesn't gripe about Hutch's oddities all the time (health fads, so-called car and the mess in the back seat, opinion on Christmas, disastrous taste in women, blondness...) but maybe most of us don't really mind that because it's so easy to think Hutch's choices - surely written for laughs back in the day - beg for comments like that. And Starsky has less of a cold poker face when he says those things - his teasing is much warmer! It's almost like Hutch has copied this art of friendly sniping and practical joking from Starsky and is still doing it slightly wrong.

Uhhuh, got carried away there... :) Btw, are you on the S/H group on FB? It seems like the liveliest fandom haunt at the moment, and there are other new/newish fans happily squeeing over the show there. https://www.facebook.com/groups/SHbromance/

[pebblerocker]

Yes, Starsky's teasing is much easier to see as good-natured and friendly. I like that interpretation, that Hutch is trying to joke around with Starsky as a way of showing affection, and it comes off harsher than he intends. And it shows that they know each other well, and Starsky takes it in the spirit it was intended.

Thanks for the link - I don't use Facebook much at all, but that could be worth checking out.

[mortmere]

I don't use FB very much either (as myself), but I have a fannish account there because those groups are where the rarest pics and vids and stuff circulate now. Really, really worth it!