GOOD. Decent plot, stylish storytelling and a couple of superb guest stars combine to make an episode just-about worthy of two-hour treatment.
McCall goes undercover as a singer while on the trail of a drug baron. One of his henchmen blows her cover, and it becomes a race against time as Dee Dee tries to nail the bad-guy before he finds out who she is.
Early in the investigation McCall crosses paths with a young girl on the run from a corrupt cop out to kill her. The girl leads the cop (and Hunter) on a chase around the city before heading to the drug baron for help, bringing him face to face with the corrupt cop for an explosive climax.
This well thought-out and engrossing story is told with a little more style that the usual Hunter outing: lots of music (including two good songs from Stepfanie Kramer) and some snappy jump-cut editing of the type frequently found on Cannell's Stingray.
Two of my favourite actors get a lot of screen-time in this one. Dennis Farina (of Crime Story) is perfect as the drug-baron, and he has great on-screen chemistry with Kramer. Dennis Franz (of Hill Street Blues) does what he does best: the bad cop. He and Dryer are likewise well matched on-screen. The climax that brings both bad guys face to face doesn't make full use of Franz and Farina together and one would wish the episode lasted another 20 minutes to see what would happen if the guys had attempted to form an uneasy alliance.
In fact, it's a great pity there wasn't a third episode to keep the story going.
Lycia Naff does an okay job as the girl on the run. However, her character is curiously unsympathetic. One would imagine that Lupo wanted us to care about the girl when he scripted the story, but Naff makes her come across as shallow and uninteresting and is probably the episode's weakest link. The episode opens on her, closes on her, and is named after her. Yet, she is not the central character she is obviously supposed to be. Kojak excelled at creating new characters, placing them in dire situations and having us feel for them. During this first season Hunter has managed a couple of times to create a one-off character and make us care about their fate.
Not this time.
Luckily, she's lost amid a lot of good stuff: hearing Kramer sing is a treat, watching Hunter & McCall playfully wrestling together (in one of their few scenes) is another treat. And just having an episode with two strong credible bad-guys who have nothing to do with one another is the biggest treat of all.