The BEST episodes of Starsky & Hutch
Every episode of Starsky & Hutch ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Starsky & Hutch!
Tough Starsky and educated Hutch are plainclothes cops taking on dope dealers, muggers and other thugs, aided by their red 1974 Torino and informant Huggy Bear. Both bachelors' private lives play as interweaving threads in the drama. This was TV's coolest buddy cop show, fueled by full-throttle car chases, offbeat humour, colourful characters and a hip vibe.
#1 - Survival
Season 2 - Episode 18 - Aired 2/5/1977
After Hutch plays the key part in a successful undercover operation to nail a wanted racketeer, the captured felon hires a hit-man to prevent Hutch from testifying in court. The assassin runs him off the road and down an embankment, leaving Hutch trapped under the wreckage of his car, near death, in a desolate area, while Starsky desperately searches for his missing partner...
#2 - Deckwatch
Season 3 - Episode 23 - Aired 5/17/1978
A serial killing seaman, who preys on prostitutes, is badly shot during his latest attack. Wounded and on the run, he resorts to holding Hutch's friend and her wheelchair-bound mother hostage in their home. Hutch poses as a paramedic to get inside the house as he and Starsky try to apprehend the desperate killer and safely free the hostages...
#3 - Fatal Charm
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/24/1977
While Starsky, Hutch and Officer Linda Baylor are working on an operation to trap a wanted drug dealer, Hutch receives a minor wound, and reports to hospital, where he meets nurse Diana Harmon. After they meet later at a bar, they spend a romantic evening together. But when afterwards Hutch, concerned by her possessive ways, doesn't plan to continue with the relationship, Diana starts displaying unbalanced, obsessive behaviour that not only jeopardises the Police operation, but puts Hutch in great danger...
#4 - Manchild on the Streets
Season 3 - Episode 12 - Aired 12/10/1977
When a friend of Starsky and Hutch's is wrongfully shot dead by a rookie Cop after the drunk driving of the man's pal leads to a Police pursuit, the pair must do their best to steer his confused teenage son away from a life of crime, as he grows intent on avenging his father's needless death and becomes involved with a small-time thief...
#5 - Ninety Pounds of Trouble
Season 4 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/6/1979
When a contract is put out to kill a top union official, Starsky and Hutch go undercover as hit men to protect him. But while Hutch rehearses his performance as a trigger man, Starsky is plagued by a young admirer who may compromise his cover.
#6 - Strange Justice
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/24/1978
When his daughter is raped, long-standing, veteran Detective Slate is devastated, and shoots her attacker, who's been brought in for questioning. With the wounded rapist looking like he'll get off scott-free and Slate facing serious charges, the distinguished Lieutenant takes the law into his own hands to get even with his daughter's assailant - and it's up to Starsky and Hutch to stop him in time...
#7 - Starsky's Lady (a.k.a. Revenge; a.k.a. Snowball)
Season 2 - Episode 19 - Aired 2/12/1977
Crazed killer Prudholm returns to extract his revenge on Starsky, who he blames for the death of his son while in Police custody. By targeting Starsky's beloved girl-friend, making sure that she is shot in a supermarket heist, leaving her with a bullet fragment lodged in her brain and facing impending death...
#8 - Hutchinson - Murder One (a.k.a. Hutchinson for Murder One)
Season 3 - Episode 19 - Aired 2/22/1978
Out of the blue, Hutch's estranged former wife Vanessa suddenly contacts him, attempting to rekindle their relationship. Hutch doesn't want to know, until Vanessa claims that she's ill with a cancerous tumour. But the next day, Vanessa is murdered in Hutch's apartment – and Hutch is the prime suspect. With two Internal Affairs agents investigating and seemingly convinced that Hutch is guilty, Starsky must help his partner trace the real culprits in order to clear his name...
#9 - The Game
Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/19/1978
When they blow the capture of a wanted felon, Starsky and Hutch each blame the other, and lay down a bet to see whether or not Hutch can successfully elude Starsky for a whole weekend. But the exercise in hide-and-seek becomes more than just a game when Starsky realises that Hutch has unknowingly eaten contaminated soup, and could die from the potentially lethal botulism poisoning. It's a race against time as Starsky struggles to locate Hutch to warn him, but Hutch, unawares to the poisoning, assumes it's all part of Starsky's attempts to draw him out, and dons a number of disguises in order to stay one step ahead...
#10 - The Velvet Jungle
Season 2 - Episode 22 - Aired 3/5/1977
An illegal immigrant witnesses the murder of a co-worker who was threatening to expose the illegal activities of crooked Immigration officials, and is forced to hide out in fear as she too is now hunted by the killer. The detective duo step in to investigate and uncover an illegal-alien smuggling operation...
#11 - Murder Ward
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/8/1977
The intrepid cops go undercover at a mental hospital, with Starsky as a patient and Hutch as an orderly, to investigate a number of mysterious patient deaths that have occurred at the asylum. With a female journalist, also undercover as a patient, they uncover that someone in the hospital is illegally using patients as human guinea-pigs for the testing of behaviour modification drugs...
#12 - The Action
Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/7/1978
Starsky and Hutch set out to bust an illegal gambling ring behind the brutal beating of a friend after he failed to pay off his debts. The duo end up playing for very high stakes as they infiltrate the illegal club, run from a mobile casino in the back of an 18-wheeled truck...
#13 - Partners
Season 3 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/3/1978
Starsky's reckless driving in pursuit of two robbers lands both himself and Hutch in hospital, with Hutch seemingly suffering from amnesia, unable to remember his partner or anything about their jobs. Starsky reminds him of some of their past adventures in an attempt to revive his memory…
#14 - The Fix
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/8/1975
Hutch is dating a girl who was formerly associated with a big-time mobster. But Hutch is abducted by the jealous mobster, who forcibly gets him hooked on heroin, in order to find out where the girl is. Starsky must find his friend and the people who did this to him before it is too late and Hutch ends up dead...
#15 - Savage Sunday
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/10/1975
An elderly couple, desperate to draw attention to the poor living conditions in their old folks home, have rigged the trunk of their car with fifty sticks of dynamite and a timer, planning to set it off outside City Hall. But the car is stolen by two thugs on a spree of armed liquor store robberies, unaware that the car is loaded with explosives, ticking towards detonation in the trunk. Starsky and Hutch initially are on the hunt for the two robbers – when they learn that the car is rigged with dynamite, they have mere hours to track it down before disaster strikes...
#16 - Foxy Lady
Season 3 - Episode 20 - Aired 3/1/1978
An attractive young woman is the only eye-witness to a man being killed for the suitcase he is carrying. As Starsky and Hutch investigate, the girl goes about using her manipulative charms to not only outwit both of them, but also the mobster behind the killing, in order to keep the hot cash inside the suitcase for herself...
#17 - Sweet Revenge
Season 4 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/15/1979
As Starsky lies in a hospital bed at death's door, Hutch goes after the powerful man who tried to have him killed
#18 - Huggy Can't Go Home (a.k.a. Huggy Can't Go Back)
Season 4 - Episode 17 - Aired 2/13/1979
An illegal poker game puts Huggy Bear in a tight spot - holding a dead man's hand and facing a choice between covering for a friend or obeying the law.
#19 - Blindfold
Season 4 - Episode 3 - Aired 9/26/1978
Responding to a jewellery store robbery, Starsky is distraught when he accidentally shoots an art student caught in the cross-fire, costing the girl her sight. Guilt-stricken, he forcefully strikes up friendship with the blinded young woman, without confessing that he's the law officer that caused her to loose her vision. But their subsequent relationship soon proves to be very dangerous, as someone seems determined to keep him away from her, and Hutch comes to question just how much of a chance by-stander she really was in the incident...
#20 - The Committee
Season 2 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/26/1977
After the streetwise detectives capture a rapist, they are outraged when the thug is let of with a lenient court sentence. Starsky openly vents his disgust at such light punishment - attracting the interests of a vigilante Police 'death squad', who are executing criminals that are given such lenient sentences, and see him as their next possible recruit...
#21 - The Bounty Hunter
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 4/21/1976
When a Cop is shot dead, apparently by a bail-jumper, the Detective duo pursue the alleged murderer. But as Starsky and Hutch search for the felon, they find that they are not the only ones after the felon - an extortionist bail-bondsman and her accomplice are also on his trail...
#22 - Bloodbath
Season 2 - Episode 14 - Aired 1/1/1977
On the day of trial of Simon Marcus, a murderous cult leader that Starsky and Hutch arrested, Starsky is snatched away by the cult leader's followers just before judgement is passed. The vengeful followers will only release him safely if their leader is released without charge. If Simon Marcus is sentenced to prison, then Starsky is sentenced to death. Hutch must find his partner before he is subjected to a deadly "religious" ritual, as foreseen in the deranged leader's visions...
#23 - Bust Amboy (a.k.a. Nightlight)
Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/23/1976
The detective pair are determined to nail the wealthy Amboy, a crafty narcotics dealer who is supplying young prostitutes, and always avoids police arrest with legal loop-holes...
#24 - Nightmare
Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired 11/28/1976
A gang of rapists who attacked a retarded 19-year-old girl may go free because an ambitious district attorney thinks that the victim's testimony may be worthless in court.
#25 - A Coffin for Starsky
Season 1 - Episode 21 - Aired 3/3/1976
A masked assassin breaks into Starsky's apartment in the middle of the night, and injects him with a deadly poison. With the lethal drug quickly taking its hold, the rapidly ailing Starksy has less than 24 hours to live unless Hutch and himself can find the antidote in time. And to identify the exact poison in order to find the right antidote, they must first find the would-be killer...
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