The Blues

LT Goldblume (Joe Spano): [to Det. LaRue (Kiel Martin)] "You haven't had a meaningful relationship with a woman since your mother quit breastfeeding you." Hill Street Blues (1981).

Noting the passing of Hill Street Blues creator Steven Bochco.

Did you think the above quote was funny? Offensive? Sexist? It's probably all three. It demonstrated the sea change TV series Hill Street Blues represented when it first aired in 1981.

I was a police officer then, having served at a small department before finding a place in Lakewood, CO. I had been "on the job" for two years, and was well on my way to developing the kind of cynical worldview that would warp an innocent sense of humor beyond recognition. I would find things funny that a small town upbringing would never have contemplated. I immediately embraced Hill Street Blues.

Police dramas, up to that point, had been formal, almost stiff. Dragnet, and its descendant Adam-12 portrayed the Los Angeles Police Department as well-trained, experienced and strictly book-followers. Police Story, with police writer (and former LAPD member) Joseph Wambaugh doing screenplays, nibbled at the edges of what law enforcement was really all about. Barney Miller used humor to hint at the mayhem.

Then came Hill Street Blues. There were prostitutes and pimps. Good cops, and criminals wearing badges. Main characters were suspended, they were killed. They had affairs, divorces - and they went out on the streets of a fictional Midwestern city every day and did the best they could. Sergeant Phil Esterhaus sent them out each day with the admonition "Let's be careful out there." Because out there was the real world.

Steven Bochco was the creative genius behind the show. The chances they took, the glimpses into the truth of big city policing, were all him. He went on to have a fabulous career - one scene in his creation LA Law involving an attorney, his stunning bed partner and a dress shirt should be required viewing in every law school in the country - with hit after ground-breaking hit.

But it was Hill Street Blues that struck a cord with me, and with the men and women who worked the streets in the 1980s, when 200 law enforcement deaths per year was common. This show told it like it was. This show was honest.

One night, well into the wee hours, one of my colleagues keyed his car mike...there were very few working portables then...and played this song: