#weetjenog #elliebrokking Starsky and Hutch drove around a 1974 Ford Torino with two Southern California police officers; the dark-haired David Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) was a street hardened detective with a tremendous childish curiosity, and the blonde Kenneth 'Hutch' Hutchinson (David Soul) was more of a reserved intellectual.

They were known for tearing around the streets of “Bay City” in Starsky's two-door Ford Torino. This car was red with a white vector stripe along both sides of the car and in the episode “Kill Huggy Bear” by Hutch was nicknamed “Striped Tomato” and Huggy Bear called the car “a tomato with suspenders”! Afterwards, fans of the series adopted the name and to this day most people use this name to identify Starsky's Torino. The term did not come from the writers, but from a statement made by Glaser in everyday life. When Aaron Spelling showed the car for the first time, Glaser sarcastically noticed: “The thing looks like a striped tomato!” Hutch also had a car, a dented Ford Galaxi 500 from 1973, which appeared regularly when the duo needed their own car or for a secret mission. Their main contact with the underworld was through “Huggy Bear” (Antonio Fargas), a street living, trembling man who often dressed extravagantly, and who was sometimes tipped but never confessed (or denied) that he was a pimp. The duo's boss was the grumpy, serious commander Harold Dobey, in the series played by Bernie Hamilton with the crunching voice.

Two character names came from William Blinn's past: “Starsky” was the name of a friend in high school and “Huggy Bear” was a local disc jockey.

The fans loved these raw and often violent intrigues, accompanied by comic teasing, and especially the close, dedicated, lasting friendship between Starsky and Hutch. Starsky and Hutch were frank with physical, affective gestures, often arguing that they trusted no one else in the world but each other. This contrasted strongly with the police figures in television series up to then, and with the standards of the time, with more masculine and more distant behavior.

When an emerging concern arose about violence on television in 1977, scriptwriters were forced to curse violent action scenes and use more romantic and social themes, thereby highlighting the “over-friendly” aspects of the series; the protagonists, especially Paul Michael Glaser, were exhausted by the general theme of the series. Among other things, these factors contributed to the declining popularity of the series.

During the second season, Glaser clearly showed the people around him that he wanted to get rid of his contract and leave the series. At the beginning of the third season, it looked like he would not return for the film. To fill the gap that he would leave, the role of policeman Linda Baylor was created, and also a number of alternative scripts of the character were already written in case Starsky left; it is unknown whether the name of the series would have remained the same. Eventually Glaser was convinced to stay and Baylor, played by Roz Kelly, appeared once in the episode “Fatal Charm” (early third season).

During the fourth season, Glaser once again expressed the desire to leave the series. This time Starsky's younger brother Nick (John Herzfeld) was introduced in the episode “Starsky's Brother” (fourth season) and he was messed up with some bad company. The intention was that, when Glaser left the series, Nick would join the police force and thus take the place of Glaser (in this way, the title “Starsky and Hutch” could be retained). But again it didn't come of it. Although a fifth season was in the pipeline, it was not only Glaser's desire to stop, but eventually the declining ratings would put an end to the series. Ironically, Glaser initially got little attention to his most famous role, as often with protagonists in success series, and wanted to renounce it, but in more recent years he embraced it.