Kings Of The Hill

 In the vast wasteland of a DirecTV customer, with its hundreds of channels with nothing of value on, there is a tendency to turn off the modern media orgy of communications and go simple. I often retreat to my bedroom, where I have a simple Antenna TV set-up. Recently, while searching through those channels, I discovered a long-lost friend, a show as familiar and comfortable as an old pair of slippers. I knew I found this friend because of the room shown at the top of the show......The room itself looked like it had survived some bizarre war on time. It was old-fashioned, with the dirty walls and floor a match for the slightly dirty business of life it was about to partake in. Its residents were mostly young men and women, eager to do their jobs but cautious of what was out there awaiting them. The room held one podium, with a Chief Of Wisdom to guide them. After intoning what the days events would behold them out there in the cold world, the Chief, the wise sage of the Royal Order Of Policemen, would state a cautious warning from his heart, tinged with a deep sense of caring for them: ''Let's be CAREFUL out there!''....... From 1981 to 1987, ''Hill Street Blues'' was the class act of television. A remarkable program, it was the first realistic show on the public and private lives of policemen. Before ''Hill Street'', cops were mostly one-dimension, the ''just the facts, ma'am'', school of character representation. The cops would bust the bad guy on the streets----- the bad guys never got away on television---- and by the end of the program, good triumphed over evil......... Well, we all know that life is not like that. Good does not triumph over evil. Evil is not always punished. ''Hill Street Blues'' recognized this and exploited the possibilities of showing real people in real circumstances. And, it did, royally so. The show, created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, showed the warts-and-all ticks of a big-city police station [Although it was never stated, it is hard to not believe that the city was Chicago] and all of the situations that the people inside would encounter. Human life was treated with dignity, with all of the foibles of imperfect men and women showed in a realistic light. Death, drugs, affairs of the heart, love found and lost, violence, shocking brutality, tears and laughter, were on display for a public to view. Interlocking stories spilled on from episode to episode, as the drawn out characters showed their lives being led at various degrees of success. They may have been police officers, a world alien to most of its viewers, but, the emotions and fears and frustrations and human heart were universal to everyone watching......... And, those characters!!! A marvelous collection of individuals. You had the heroic but flawed Captain Frank Furillo. The Captain, a man caught between being honest and dealing with reality, led the ship of fools, occasionally stumbling, but, never failing, in leading his forces against the forces of evil. He was not above making the tough decision and being the bad-guy. But, he also showed compassion and heart, a rare combination in a leader. You had a sense from Furillo that he loved his people and would take a bullet for them all, no matter of rank. He fought City Hall and the gangs that ran around his police district. He was the Knight In Shining Armor, with a little dirt on him to soil his knighthood. He battled the bottle and allowed himself to feel pain........ Furillo also allowed himself to feel love. He had a passionate love affair with Defense Counselor, Joyce Davenport. Their ardor for each other drove their professional and personal relationship. Davenport, an ice tigress as a lawyer, also brought the bedroom heat that lit up the screen. Joyce clearly loved Furillo, her ''Pizza Man.'' In her eyes, there showed affection and pride, even as she was batting back and forth salvos and legalese with Frank. They fought and fucked with equal parts of their minds and bodies........The heart and soul of the station, the Chief of the precinct, was a gruff but kind-hearted man named Esterhaus, played superbly by Michael Conrad. He was the Father Figure in the squad room, the wise counselor of life. Conrad played this character with equal parts of toughness and warmth, not an easy trick for an actor. When he ended his roll call in the morning and warned his charges about being safe out in the streets, you, as the viewer, felt his concern for their safety. And, that translates the television screen into the viewers minds. If he cared about them so much, then, we will also........ The rest of the squad was a power keg of mixed personalities, all of them compelling on their own levels. You had Mick Belker, the street urchin-looking like cop who growled like a dog when he sees his prey. Belker barked and bit, the pitbull of the department. But, all that faded away when he received his daily phone call from ''Ma''. Then, he became the dutiful son patiently dealing with an aged parent.......Around Belker was Hill and Renko, the partners who were the steady lifeline in the precinct. Renko always brought little-boy problems out in the squad car when he and Hill were out on the streets, whether they be love entanglements or weight issues. Hill, steady as a friend as he was as an officer, would nod and dispense his advice, for nothing ever seemed to shake him up. He was right out of a recruiting poster for being a cop. Hill and Renko were black and white in appearance, but, as friends and partners, they were as one skin....... The other police team, also black and white, were Washington and La Rue. Washington was the wiser of the two. He was the older brother for La Rue-----the straight-as-an-arrow anchor. La Rue was the opposite. While essentially decent, he walked on the wild side, always on the edge of trouble, be it drinking or gambling or a fetish for teenage girls. Make no mistake, Johnny La Rue was a good man. He just had his hazy moments of personal judgment. The contrast with the clear-thinking, decent Washington made for good chemistry between them....... You also had Howard Hunter, the neo-fascist cop who always looked like he was itching for a nuclear war to break out. There was Henry Goldblume, a sad-faced man who was steady in his duty but always had an aura of resignation of soul. There was Ray, the proud Hispanic police officer, pride of his family, who saw the world and its achievements passing him by without taking him along for the trip. There was the bitter and annoying ex-wife of Furillo, Fay, who always seemed to be hanging out at the station, nagging her ex and also secretly still loving him. You had the rookie cops, Bates and Coffee, who were friends that also swam around the sexual tension underneath their professional relationship. And, finally, in later seasons, you had the always watchable Dennis Franz in the lineup. At first, Franz portrayed a bad cop, ''Bad Sal'' Benedetto, one of the most interesting short-lived characters in TV history. Benedetto, all sleaze and loving it, was only in a few episodes in the beginning but, such was his impact, that, even though his character was killed off, the producers brought him back in the show's waning days, this time as a sleazy but good officer named Buntz. All of these people, plus, some good, juicy guest starring roles [who can ever forgot a stand-up comic named ''Vic Hitler?'] deepened an already richly layered show with greatness........ As with all shows, the flame burns out after a long run. By its sixth season, ''Hill Street Blues'' [which, by the way, was never a ratings success, rarely cracking the Nielsen Top Ten] ran out of speed. The characters and situations, so fresh at the beginning, became stale and tiresome. Finally, in the spring of 1987, the show took its last bow. But, it made its mark in history. It was intelligent. It was well-acted and written. And, its showed a side of police officers that needed to be seen by the public. That side showed that cops are very human beings, with the same joys and fears and problems as the rest of us....... Perhaps, the next time the media uses the police as a punching bag for ratings controversy, the sainted media crones should take a look at ''Hill Street Blues'' and get a small taste of what the daily life of a police officer is like. Perhaps even, after some sense has settled into the anti-police crowd and they realize fully the enormous task every cop has every day in their job to keep us safe, many of these detractors will say, with genuine feeling, ........ ''Hey! Lets Be CAREFUL Out There!''.........