Seven Great Episodes From POLICE WOMAN: SEASON TWO

Season 2 brought some changes to Police Woman: it went for a more “uptown” feel, with glossier pro­duc­tion val­ues, more guest stars and cases that shifted the show into more upscale set­tings.  Despite these changes, Season Two man­aged to offer a num­ber of strong episodes that served up plenty of action and some clever vari­a­tions on the usual cop-show for­mula.  The fol­low­ing is a list of seven stand­out episodes from Police Woman: Season Two, each accom­pa­nied by a quick run­down of the rea­sons why.  It is sub­mit­ted to you in hopes of offer­ing a high­lights guide for any­one who wants to explore the show’s cop-show charms.

Cold Wind: When two work­ers at a soda fac­tory are ran­domly shot and killed by a mys­tery assailant, sus­pi­cion falls on two employ­ees: one is a emo­tion­ally trou­bled type with gam­bling debts (Kenneth Mars) while the other is a self-styled intel­lec­tual who recently quit his job there (Daniel Benton).  There are some effec­tive twists and turns here, plus a few effec­tive scenes with Pepper going under­cover to draw out the younger of the two sus­pects.  Mars offers a real scene-stealing per­for­mance and the episode ben­e­fits from inven­tive script­ing, includ­ing a plot that man­ages to involve a book by Baudelaire(!) and an unex­pect­edly haunt­ing final scene that dri­ves home the down­side of inves­tiga­tive police work.

Farewell, Mary Jane: a snappy, action-oriented episode that has Pepper team­ing up with a for­mer race-car dri­ver (Sam Elliott!) to set up a drug buy with a crazy, plane-flying dealer (W.L. LeGault) who gets a kick out of mur­der­ing any­one he per­ceives as a threat.  This episode uses the com­plex­i­ties and dan­gers of a drug deal to sus­pense­ful effect and the appeal is height­ened by some great loca­tion shoot­ing, includ­ing an atmos­pheric use of the desert.  Dickinson and Elliott have great chem­istry but it’s LeGault who walks off with the act­ing hon­ors here, play­ing a crazed good ol’ boy that you’ll love to hate.

Blaze Of Glory: the best of the b-movie style episodes from Season 2 has Pepper unwit­tingly walk­ing into a bank rob­bery and becom­ing the hostage of a pair of bank-robbing broth­ers led by alpha-male Don Stroud.  Pepper plays along, tak­ing on the per­sona of a starry-eyed hooker as Crowley and the rest of the squad try to track the get­away car down.  This one plays up a hick­sploita­tion car-chase movie vibe, com­plete with a fiddle-happy coun­try music score, and Stroud has a blast ham­ming it up as a thief obsessed with going out in a Bonnie & Clyde fash­ion.  Watch for a fun scene where Dickinson fends off Stroud’s advances by “acci­den­tally” tap­ping his bul­let wound.

The Purge: the squad attempts to bust the ware­house of a mob­ster and every­thing goes wrong — not only is the mer­chan­dise not there but Crowley acci­den­tally shoots a 15 year-old nephew of the crook after being attacked in the dark.  He’s con­vinced he was attacked by a larger man and the kid got caught in the cross­fire but he can’t prove it — and is thus sus­pended.  When the police force’s admin­is­tra­tion refuses to help, Pepper is forced to team up with a con man (beau­ti­fully played by David Huddleston) to flush the mob­ster out into the open with a phony deal.  The plot­ting is tight and both Dickinson and co-star Earl Holliman get to add some dimen­sion to the Pepper/Crowley rela­tion­ship when he strug­gles with being forced to the sidelines.

The Hit: Pepper and the crew are try­ing to find out who shot a boxer who didn’t take the dive he was paid to take.  Interestingly, the main focus of the episode is the life of the hit man more than the inves­ti­ga­tion itself.  He’s a sad sack played with mem­o­rable pathos by Harris Yulin, a crim­i­nal who is suf­fer­ing a midlife cri­sis.  He’s lost inter­est in his work, which has become very sloppy, and is much more inter­ested in the suc­cess and future hap­pi­ness of his teenage daugh­ter (Amy Irving).  The focus on the hitman’s inter­nal cri­sis gives this episode a Police Story vibe, with a melan­choly, almost film noir feel to the way his story is told.  There’s a scene late in the episode between Yulin and Irving that offers the best act­ing in any episode dur­ing this sea­son of Police Woman.

The Pawn Shop: a fun caper episode with a bit of Hollywood com­men­tary on the side as the inves­ti­ga­tion squad sets up a phony pawn shop in hopes of flush­ing out a group of savvy crim­i­nals who tar­get the nou­veau riche res­i­dents of a sub­urb.  Pepper poses as the pawn shop chief and makes her way into the under­belly of high soci­ety as Crowley tries to get a pos­i­tive i.d. on one crook with the help of an aging but man-hungry actress played by a pre–Dynasty Joan Collins.  The repar­tee between Collins and Earl Holliman makes this episode, with Crowley get­ting amus­ingly flus­tered by Collin’s less-than-subtle attempts to seduce him.  This episode also ben­e­fits from a tight script that blends excite­ment and humor well: it even makes room for a fun sec­ond sub­plot about a pre-teen cus­tomer at the pawn shop who has eyes for Pepper.

Task Force — Cop Killer: this two-part sea­son finale really deliv­ers the goods.  Pepper finds her­self with a new boyfriend in motor­cy­cle task force chief (played with mat­inée idol charm by James Darren) when a fem­i­nist co-worker gets her involved in vol­un­teer­ing for task force train­ing.  Unfortunately, Pepper’s beau is tar­geted by some­one in a nasty group of bik­ers led by Don Stroud, in his sec­ond fun per­for­mance from this sea­son.  The pro­duc­ers obvi­ously sunk a lot of money into this episode as it fea­tures a lot of cool loca­tion shoot­ing and some great motor­cy­cle stunts.  It also ben­e­fits from a strong sup­port­ing cast, includ­ing Charles Haid as a psy­cho­log­i­cally frag­ile task force appli­cant and Gerald McRaney as one of the bik­ers.  Best of all, it is tautly directed by Barry Shear, who directed sev­eral strong episodes in Season 2.

To read Schlockmania’s review of Police Woman: Season Two, click here.