carpooling-the-internet

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I'm curious, so let's play 'how many times do Starsky and Hutch call each other babe?'

I'll start.

"Yeah, babe, right here," Hutch to Starsky in s1ep14 "Shootout"

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Everyone gives Sherlock Holmes a hard time about being mean about Watson's writing, but honestly imagine you told your roommate "sure, you can write up an account of my work for the newspaper," thinking it would be like, about the murder, but then he publishes it and it's 90% about you, as a person, and it's a huge hit and now everyone in London knows that you hoard newspapers and do cocoaine when you're depressed. Because I think you'd be little miffed too.

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I've been rereading TLT and as much as I love the insane lesbian angle, I can't stop thinking about how Harrow as a child fell instantly in love with Earth.

She grows up in the darkest, saddest, deadest corner of the solar system, deprived to the point she's unable to tolerate bright light or really even much flavor in food. And she sees the face of Earth, and without understanding what she sees, loves it. my ecologist heart feels some type of way about this.

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trigger warning: suicide

something that’s been bugging me about The Old Guard 2 regarding Booker …

I don’t remember “an expiration date” being the talking point in the first movie. Because that doesn’t actually feel like Booker’s issue. And he doesn’t present it that way in the first film.

They have an “expiration date” as immortals. And like mortals, they don’t know when death is going to come. Look at Lykon. Look at Andy. Look at the way Nicky and Joe look for each other when they wake up from death each time — there were stakes even when death was somewhat tamed.

Booker’s issue in the first film is that he missed his real family, he’s lonely and depressed and tired of living. Get in line, buddy. But the nature of his immortality meant he didn’t get the choice to leave this earth when he wanted. He wanted that choice, and fair enough. But in trying to achieve that choice, he took autonomy away from his friends.

In the second film, his real family is never mentioned, and his desire to die is framed as wanting “an expiration date” but he does have one as an immortal! they all do!

moot point now because he got what he wanted. Booker wasn’t even my favorite character by a long shot, but this particular switch in the narrative reasoning for him irks me a lot.

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Sometimes an episode is just so stuffed with really good line deliveries theres nothing i can do except put em together in a compilation its out of my control im powerless to stop it. Goodbye.

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Another answer I have for the “what part of canon do people ignore” for starsky and hutch is that the “death in a different place” episode was apparently meticulously researched and careful to respect its subject matter (gay men when sodomy laws were only removed from CA penal code in 1976, gay cops in a system where you might be fired if people found out) and carefully carve out its space in the world it existed in.

what people remember from this episode is the tag, “you’re not even a good kisser”. but i could shout from the rooftops how wonderful it was that they cast a real drag queen and showed her in and out of drag, highlighting the performance and the theater of drag. how starsky’s apparent homophobia is shown to stem from a lot of places but none that were abject hatred or true disgust: discomfort with gayness being so close to him in the unknown form of his lifelong friend; discomfort with that which he thinks “shouldn’t be anybody’s business” that you see in the scene with peter whitelaw, the idea that being gay is akin to a fetish for him, a sexual act that should be kept behind closed doors; hutch’s immediate roll with the topic and seeming complete comfort the idea of a person being gay- how he is more discomfited by sugar suggesting his hair is not naturally blonde than he is the idea of a drag queen!

starsky’s perspective is delicately taken apart and unwound throughout the episode. by the end you can’t help but imagine he’s less uncomfortable with the idea of queerness as he was in the beginning.

the gay bar itself! how it was set up, how it’s lit, the people you see in the backgrounds, the scene where they show up to ask sugar questions and it’s like pre-opening when there’s just a couple people there and it’s empty and a little dirty, the remnants of hundreds of people who hang around there every night. sugar’s impersonations that are so so good. we’ve all seen shitty movies and tv shows where they hire a straight man to put in a wig and some mascara and the outcome is miserable. drag is some of my favorite artistry in the world, and it overjoys me to see a television show from so long ago actually take it seriously.

the episode also takes seriously the divide between gay people (namely sugar when she tries to hide that one guy from them) and the police. there is rarely trust between people who are oppressed by the system and the system itself. it hardly matters that WE like starsky and hutch; if I ran into them on their beat I wouldn’t trust them either. and this show in general does a really good job empathizing with that, I feel.

the Harvey Milk-esque politician who centers his queer identity in his campaign. the episode aired a year before Milk was assassinated (and his killer given a fairly light sentence which was assumed to be in part because of homophobia amongst the convicting jury)

so anyway. back to the tag. It’s silly, it’s sweet, it’s hutch exercising a kind of “back atcha” argument with starsky in order to get him to GET it. but the whole episode is just full of love and compassion and fantastic writing and set dressing and characters and I just needed to get this all out 💗🥰

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STAR TREK: VOYAGER Critical Care | 7x05

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“the old guard 2 was bad” yeah the storyline kinda sucked, the new lore and new characters felt so fucking ungracefully jammed in, even the camera zooms got a little annoying eventually.. but i genuinely enjoyed every interaction between the immortal family characters— joe and nicky, joe looking out for booker, andy and nile, andy and booker, andy and QUYHN!!! in particular you could really see nile’s growth, leadership, and integration in the team and that was definitely a highlight for me. i also really enjoyed the tension between nicky and joe— i want to see them to break down, struggle, and come back together again because their bond and love is ultimately immortal!!!

i didn’t fall in love with the old guard because it had a genius plot or something. i fell in love with the characters and their relationships. so yes overall mid movie but the cast all gave amazing heartfelt performances which reflected the deep bonds between these characters, and that made it genuinely enjoyable for me!

[carpooling-the-internet]

Another answer I have for the “what part of canon do people ignore” for starsky and hutch is that the “death in a different place” episode was apparently meticulously researched and careful to respect its subject matter (gay men when sodomy laws were only removed from CA penal code in 1976, gay cops in a system where you might be fired if people found out) and carefully carve out its space in the world it existed in.

what people remember from this episode is the tag, “you’re not even a good kisser”. but i could shout from the rooftops how wonderful it was that they cast a real drag queen and showed her in and out of drag, highlighting the performance and the theater of drag. how starsky’s apparent homophobia is shown to stem from a lot of places but none that were abject hatred or true disgust: discomfort with gayness being so close to him in the unknown form of his lifelong friend; discomfort with that which he thinks “shouldn’t be anybody’s business” that you see in the scene with peter whitelaw, the idea that being gay is akin to a fetish for him, a sexual act that should be kept behind closed doors; hutch’s immediate roll with the topic and seeming complete comfort the idea of a person being gay- how he is more discomfited by sugar suggesting his hair is not naturally blonde than he is the idea of a drag queen!

starsky’s perspective is delicately taken apart and unwound throughout the episode. by the end you can’t help but imagine he’s less uncomfortable with the idea of queerness as he was in the beginning.

the gay bar itself! how it was set up, how it’s lit, the people you see in the backgrounds, the scene where they show up to ask sugar questions and it’s like pre-opening when there’s just a couple people there and it’s empty and a little dirty, the remnants of hundreds of people who hang around there every night. sugar’s impersonations that are so so good. we’ve all seen shitty movies and tv shows where they hire a straight man to put in a wig and some mascara and the outcome is miserable. drag is some of my favorite artistry in the world, and it overjoys me to see a television show from so long ago actually take it seriously.

the episode also takes seriously the divide between gay people (namely sugar when she tries to hide that one guy from them) and the police. there is rarely trust between people who are oppressed by the system and the system itself. it hardly matters that WE like starsky and hutch; if I ran into them on their beat I wouldn’t trust them either. and this show in general does a really good job empathizing with that, I feel.

the Harvey Milk-esque politician who centers his queer identity in his campaign. the episode aired a year before Milk was assassinated (and his killer given a fairly light sentence which was assumed to be in part because of homophobia amongst the convicting jury)

so anyway. back to the tag. It’s silly, it’s sweet, it’s hutch exercising a kind of “back atcha” argument with starsky in order to get him to GET it. but the whole episode is just full of love and compassion and fantastic writing and set dressing and characters and I just needed to get this all out 💗🥰

[carpooling-the-internet]

In Shootout, despite being a serious episode, there were two moments I burst out laughing where I wasn't supposed to

Here, where Starsky's actor decided to leap onto a table after getting shot:

And Hutch channelling every Hutchinson matriarch:

[carpooling-the-internet]

This WIP has been languishing for several months and I promised myself I'd finish it before I start anything new, so here we go! My wife and I have been very normal about the former West End Hermes and Persephone 👀

Image ID in alt text

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Excellent essay analyzing the book and film!

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Joe and Nicky hold hands in the comic when they were on the plane to south Sudan. The scene when Joe look at Nicky and smile at him it's actually Joe/Nicky reaching toward each other hands and intertwine their fingers together like a sappy romantic that they are (and right in front of Booker's salad). We barely survive the smile imagine if they followed the comic and they actually hold hand I don't know what would happen to us.

Let's pretend they're actually holding hands in this picture.

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JOE & NICKY | THE OLD GUARD

bruce smith / mary zimmerman / anna akhmatova / elliot oakes / becca de la rosa and mabel martin

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Been thinking about this all day, and I think the main thing this movie failed to understand about itself is this: the immortality was supposed to be the premise, not the plot.

Like, the immortality piece fuels the villains in the first film, but the unknowability of it is part of the point. It’s a dreadful curse, to outlive all your loved ones. Or, it’s a powerful gift, to grow and nurture a relationship for centuries on end. Or, it’s a complicated responsibility, a way you are uniquely positioned to help make the world a better place, and how much of that mantle should you take on? It’s the premise, the vessel through which the themes and characters can be explored.

The point was never to find out the “rules” and drop a bunch of lore about it. This movie took the premise and made it the plot, and that I think was its cardinal mistake.