I've come across some weird shit in my travels when it comes to comic book conventions. I've seen all manner of people dressed like wizards and stormtroopers and spandex clad oddballs who should never be allowed within 100ft of even a stitch of the skin clinging material. My favorite part about the conventions have nothing to do with comic books though. My favorite part of the conventions is the DVD bootlegger tables. In addition to all the “incredibly rare shit that's become much less rare since DVD pirating materials became affordable for everybody”, I've been exposed to some wacky shit I never even knew existed. Case in point: “
Street Hawk”.
Our pilot episode opens like any '80s crime drama worth its weight in cliches. A pair of dirt bike riding thieves force a police transport van into one of those classic, “exploding vehicle goes flying off of a ramp through the air in slow motion” sequences. Stealing the van's contents (50lbs of cocaine), the duo then lead pursuing police cruisers on a merry chase through the nearby warehouse district where numerous crates filled with fruit are plowed through until the crooks disappear down an alleyway and vanish into thin air. Cue the generic gruff police chief character who's unhappy that the perps escaped without a trace, and whose blood pressure is only going to get higher when he catches 80% of his force down at the harbor placing wagers on some 5-0 Evil Kneival stunt. Said Kneival is Jesse Mach (are you shitting me!?), precinct hot shot who probably pops a nut when he watches Top Gun... every night when he goes home. Jesse's comedy relief is fellow pig Marty Walsh, who gives off this “dime store Poncharello” vibe. The Chief busts the duo and makes an example out of them by suspending them for a fortnight. Meanwhile, a guy named Norm Tuttle (Joe “Murphy Brown” Regalbuto) was videotaping Officer Mach's little stunt (and apparently with multiple cameras from numerous angles given the footage he shows his boss...) at the request of his big wig Washington DC boss. Jesse doesn't know it yet, but he's being watched as possible candidate for a top secret project called “Street Hawk”... It's getting hard to breathe in here with all those aforementioned cliches sucking up all the oxygen.
Not just a voyeur for the government, Tuttle is also the chief engineer of the Street Hawk project and he has reservations with putting such a pricey piece of delicate machinery into the hands of a reckless risk taker type. As with most political figures, Tut's boss is deaf to the man's concerns and wants Mach brought in to pilot Street Hawk. What exactly is a Street Hawk? Well, you remember Barry Bostwick's flying motorcycle in Mega Force? Well, imagine that motorcycle and Kit from “Knight Rider” were both put in front of Jesse James and the “Monster Garage” crew while they were all coked out of their gourds... and given theme music by Tangerine Dream.
Back to that 50lbs of cocaine, the guys who swiped it (one of which is Christopher freaking Lloyd?!) are meeting their buyer out in seemingly the middle of nowhere... which just so happens to be exactly where Marty is riding his dirt bike through. Despite the coincidence, Marty manages not to get even a single bead of buckshot in his ass by four guys with shotguns and escapes, but Christopher Lloyd isn't far behind, driving his big black truck of doom. By the time Jesse catches up, Marty's been rundown and our hero's next on Uncle Fester's roadkill hitlist. Thanks to a timely helicopter rescue, Jesse survives, but now his leg is permanently gimped. His days as a motorcycle cop are over and his new life behind a desk is about to begin... no, seriously, I'm starting to suffocate here because someone keeps farting more and more of these cliches into my room! Could somebody at least get me a fan or some air freshener in here?!
Of course this is when Tuttle shows up again, now offering an advanced prosthetic that will fix Mach's busted wheel. With his cockiness cooled by a good 30 degrees, this time Jesse listens, going with Tuttle to his secret base of operations. After the mandatory, “This place looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise!” quip, Jesse meets his new toy: Street Hawk. But first, Mr. Mach's gotta get his new Robocop knee cap installed and go through a sweaty '80s physical therapy montage (complete with nondescript hip-hop break dancing music!) before he's ready to take to two wheels again. Despite all the help that Jesse's getting from Tuttle and the government, he refuses to stop acting like a douche bag when it comes to being assisted remotely by Tuttle in working some of the bike's more advanced components, calling his partner a “backseat driver” in the snottiest little man bitch tone possible. Fuck having a chip on his shoulder, Little Miss Priss here's got a family-sized bag of Blazin' Buffalo Doritos perched by his skull. Bitter much? Yep, bit him too... hyuck hyuck!
To keep his involvement in the project a secret, Jesse's required to keep his shitty desk job at the police station giving tours to ten-year olds and wear a leg brace so nobody knows that his leg's been overhauled. Meanwhile, the case surrounding Marty's death seems to be getting buried or just ignored entirely, so there's something fishy stinking up the precinct house. It couldn't have something to do with Christopher Lloyd being in cahoots with the Police Commissioner, could it? Nah. Of course this means that Jesse will also be solving the crime on his own too. It would've been more honest to just call the damned show, “Generic Cop Drama With Sci-Fi Channel Twist”, but long titles tend to scare off the kids and the redneck demographics.
40 minutes into the one hour pilot, Jesse finally takes the bike out for a spin and, as should come as no surprise to anyone, he stops a pair of armed robbers that had been plaguing the city... what a coincidence. Then again, they're trying to sell me on a show where a guy fights crime with a space age motorcycle, but if they force anymore grains of salt down my throat I'll be in heart attack mode by dinner. And in case you weren't comfortable/familiar/bored enough with all of the other cookie-cutter cop crap going on, Jesse's new partner is a plucky ex-reporter named Sandra, who will no doubt be doing the bed sheet shimmy with our hero sooner or later. My money says they have their first kiss by the end of the 4th episode at the latest. Either way, Sandy helps Jesse track down Marty's killer and, surprise surprise surprise, she gets caught as a result. So, after he foils the next drug robbery attempt, it's now up to Jesse to simultaneously save Sandra and bring Marty's killer to justice, which includes an “A-Team” style exchange of machine gun fire (i.e. nobody gets shot), an off-road chase sequence (which somehow inexplicably manages to sneak in MORE random crates being smashed!), and one of those classic “Don't do it, it'll never work!” stunts that somehow ALWAYS works. I think this show somehow gave me colon polyps, but I won't know until some old man with rubber gloves lubes up his fingers and gives me the old “Area 51”. Thanks “Street Hawk”.
As far as pilots go, this one covers all the bases: hero's tragic origin, secret government project, a buddy's death gets avenged, various supporting characters are introduced (including the potential love interest), and there's even a celebrity guest star! Speaking of which, Christopher Lloyd does the slimeball drug dealer role well. I'm curious to know how he got roped into doing this pilot. And “pilot” is the appropriate word too, because this whole show was one big pilot shit... say it slowly, you might get the joke... not that it's worth putting too much effort into figuring out anyway. The parade of cheesy '80s synthesizer music is astonishing though. Way to go Tangerine Dream... that was said with all due sarcasm of course. The nonstop raging torrent of bad cop show cliches just hurts though. Long after the end credits roll, I still feel like someone wrapped their fist in barbed wire and punched me in the neck repeatedly.
Moral of the Story: If the super intelligent scientist who created your experimental piece of top secret government equipment tells you there's something it's incapable of doing, that just means that it is capable of doing it, but only during the climactic final minutes of the show/movie.
