barbara stock

(Originally aired October 4, 1985).

It's easy to forget how good a show Spenser: For Hire was. It was on for only three seasons over 20 years ago, it's not on DVD, and I don't think that it's being shown on television right now. But oh, this show was so good.

Robert Urich was the perfect Spenser and Avery Brooks was the perfect Hawk (years later, reading the books, I could only see Urich and Brooks as the characters). And on-location filming in Boston truly added a nice, realistic touch to the show (unlike the later movies, which were filmed in Toronto or some similar place). This show had smart writing, too, and the first person narration? Robert Parker was wrong when he said it was bad.

(S03E12) The synchonization of the airing and production orders of the Season Three episodes started to getting a little dicey as the series entered 1992. For instance, the episode "The Suicide" was produced before "The Subway", but was aired two weeks after "The Subway" aired . But since I'm trying to present these in the order they aired, I'm doing "The Subway" next.

At this point in the third season, the memorable episodes are coming with more frequency. And they're getting more daring; because most of the scenes were shot on a subway-car set specially made for movie and TV shoots, the episode had to be shot out of order without a studio audience. Considering the logistics involved in the previous audience-less episode, "The Parking Garage", this one was realtively easier to do. But it still wasn't easy. The results, though, are pretty damn great.