Beating the Heat with Hill Street Blues.

During too many days of high heat I holed up in my apartment. I had severe heat stroke as a teenager--huge blisters on chest and back, from sunburn, high fever and chills that shook the bed. I still feel the effects--inability to adapt to temperatures over 75 degrees, turning purple instead of sweating, general malaise.

With the noises of the fans and the AC, and the blinds closed to keep out the sun, holing up was more than a little like being in prison.

How is it that even if the thermostat reads 75 degrees I still know that it is blistering outside? I rarely read during the day, since there are always jobs to be done, but I would watch episodes of Hill Street Blues during breakfast and they would slide into the time allotted to jobs awaiting me.

The library has the first two seasons on disc, but since I am now nearly through both, I regret that they don't have all seven seasons. (Don't know if they are all out on disc.) Someone said that show depressed them back in the days and still does. I have no idea why. That mother of all cop shows is a comedy at heart, meant to express the upside of policing, certainly, as well as portraying the underside. (In fact, during season two there were too many long sermonizing speeches, for my taste.) It is a comedy, with aspirations of being a drama--or vice versa.

While watching it I could not help but wonder about the voyeur aspect of such shows. Probably most viewers, past and present, have never been arrested and sit in their living rooms catching the action with the erroneous sense of being in on it. I first saw show back in the 80's, of course. Not the episodes I have been watching, but later ones--forget which years. The Shakespearean portrayal of the gangs and the cops was a hoot. I have great affection for the show and for the actors, especially Charles Haid, as Renko, and Bruce Weitz as Belker. It has been a pleasure to watch them perform again in what to me are classic roles.