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Oh Susanna!
The girl walking up the steps to Parker Center, home of Bay City’s finest men in blue (and
a couple of women, too), has waist length honey-blonde hair and cerulean blue eyes. She is slender and long-limbed, with
a colt-like grace, and her uniquely fashionable clothes fit her like a soft leather glove.
The rest of this descriptive passage was ruthlessly chopped by the editor. However the missing three pages
are available by special request, contingent upon the delivery of warm brownies delivered in person by Paul Michael Glaser.
Leather posing pouch optional.
She approaches the front desk, and treats the sergeant to a dazzling, yet endearingly shy, smile. The sergeant reaches quickly
for his sunglasses.
Sergeant: May I help you?
Mystery teenaged girl, not to be confused with Nancy Drew, henceforth known as MTG: I’m looking for Detective
Hutchinson.
Sergeant: Right. Follow the green line, through those doors and to the left, you can’t miss him.
A female cop arrives, watching curiously as MTG glides gracefully down the green line.
Officer N. Drew: Not another one.
The desk sergeant shrugs and slips his sunglasses into his front breast pocket. The scene dims, as if all the sunshine has
left the room with MTG. Both the cops look relieved, no doubt due to the recent inter-office memo on the hazards of UV radiation.
Cut to the squad room, that bastion of unrefined, raw masculinity.
Hutch is in full angst over having lost a suspect due to tripping over his own feet in the middle of a chase, while running
on a deceptively flat bit of pavement with both shoelaces securely tied. Meanwhile Starsky is at his desk going through Mary
Kay Cosmetics flyers.
The editor also deleted the subplot involving the little old lady in the corner knitting. She’s
just one of Starsky’s stalkers, and will not be kidnapping him and force feeding him shortbread in this episode. For
the director’s cut, with Starsky in his own leather posing pouch topped with whipped cream, please send David Soul with
a hot fudge sundae (no nuts, please) in each hand, fully dressed in soft touchable cotton plaid to Rebelcat’s home address,
where EH lives half the time anyway.
EH: Hey!
RC: Shouldn’t we get back to the story?
EH: Just mention the delivery has to be before six pm, so your husband doesn’t get home first.
RC: Except he said that he thinks DS looks sleek and dangerous in black... should that be three hot fudge sundaes?
EH: Back to the plot, such as it is!
MTG enters the room. No one notices the increase in illumination, or the faint sound of birdsong, or even the ineffable hint
of Chanel No. Five which she doesn’t actually wear, it’s just what she smells like. Except when it rains, and
then she smells like Irish Spring.
Hutch (still angsting): I double knotted them! And I dance, I wrestle, why am I so damn clumsy on the job?
Starsky: You’re obsessing. Now here, check this out...
Hutch (browsing through a Mary Kay flyer): It’s a pyramid scheme, Starsky.
Starsky: No, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity! We can meet women and get rich, all at the same time!
MTG is very taken aback that these two men have not noticed her entrance. Everyone notices her entrances. She turns up the
wattage on her smile.
MTG: Daddy!
Both detectives look up in alarm, but Starsky quickly lowers his head again, shading his eyes. He points roughly in her direction.
Starsky: One of yours, Hutch!
Hutch (blinking through watering eyes to try to make out her features): What? No!
MTG: You have to be my father. See? I’ve got your picture!
She holds up a headshot of Hutch. He’s smiling professionally into the camera, and there’s a faint glow from
the Vaseline that has obviously been smeared on the lens.
Starsky: Told’ja it was a mistake handing those out at your highschool reunion.
Hutch (donning his sunglasses): That doesn’t prove anything!
MTG: And I’ve got my birth certificate!
Starsky, still shading his eyes, snags it from her.
Starsky: Let’s see... Mary Susanna. Why am I not surprised?
Hutch: There was a large Catholic school in my neighbourhood! It doesn’t mean anything!
Starsky: It wouldn’t, if we hadn’t already met Mary Susan, Mary Susette, Mary Sue-Ellen, Mary...
Hutch: Enough! I get it!
Starsky: You were the Duluth Highschool bicycle, weren’t you?
Hutch: Was not! Give me that.
Hutch grabs the certificate from Starsky. Reads it. He looks relieved.
Hutch: Oh... Your mother was Mary Christina! Um, Miss, I hate to tell you, but...
Starsky: Ixnay on the school ut-slay talk in front of the progen-ay!
Hutch: Oh, but it could have been anyone! She even did Jack Mitchell!
Starsky: Everyone did the sweet prince.
Hutch: What’s that supposed to mean?
Starsky: Nothing! Except you talk in your sleep...
Mary S. (the love child formerly known as MTG): No, you don’t understand! My mother was the only child
of an impoverished coal miner. She was forced to work in the houses of the rich people just so there’d be food to put
on the table...
Starsky (to Hutch): Well, now we know how you met her mom!
Hutch: I was not rich! We only had two country homes and one summer cabin and it didn’t even have any electric
power in the boat house!
Starsky: Oooh, all the better for those moonlight seductions.
Mary S.: She was so ashamed when she found out she was pregnant that she ran away to Hollywood with her newborn baby
- me - where she had to earn her living cleaning the blood-soaked and bullet-ridden penthouses of the Los Angeles underground,
while cooking for four soldiers of fortune who had been unjustly convicted of a crime they didn’t commit...
Hutch: Wait, you mean those guys? Wasn’t one of them a blond? Couldn’t he be your dad?
Starsky: No dice, it’s the wrong time frame. He was over in 'Nam being horribly tortured and raped repeatedly,
while his secret lover, the helicopter pilot, was going insane and talking to imaginary dogs.
Hutch: Oh, those guys.
Mary S.: And then the military police showed up, and they were working for this secret spy agency that might or might
not have been connected with the government or possibly was fronted by a tailor shop in the East Forties of New York City.
Hutch: Hey, wait a sec! One of those two guys was a blond!
Starsky: Mm, no. He wasn’t the slutty one. Besides she doesn’t have that peculiar yet adorable British/Russian
accent that Mary Svetlana had when she stopped by last week.
Hutch (wistfully): I was kind of hoping that I was the only one Anna wanted to make snowdrift children with.
Starsky (reminiscing): Ah, those short sexy blond Russians...
Hutch: Wait, Anna wasn’t short.
Starsky (clearing his throat): Mary Sss... uh, whatever. We want to hear the rest of your fascinating story!
Hutch: Hang on a minute, there was that guy with the weird name... Birdie, no... uh, Swanny? No, Ducky! That’s
it!
Starsky: He was just a friend!
Hutch: Yeah, some “friend”. You talk in your sleep, too, you know.
Starsky: I do not!
Mary S.: So, anyway, my mother contracted a rare wasting disease from an overexposure to GMC panel van exhaust and
gold-plated jewelry polish, and in her delirium confessed her secret shame.
Starsky: That’s you, Hutch!
Hutch: Yeah, and who’s had all those dark curly haired sons turn up lately?
Starsky: They’re all Nicky’s and you’ll never prove otherwise!
Dobey enters the squad room, grumbling.
Dobey: Who turned up the lights? I’ve you clowns a million times, the department doesn’t have the budget
to subsidize your tans. All the money went into purchasing that tank!
He now spots Mary Susanna, although the real wonder is how he managed to miss her in the first place.
Dobey: Who is this delightful young lady? Can I get anything dear? I hope my Detectives aren’t bothering you.
Mary S. (pointing at Hutch): He’s my daddy.
Hutch: We don’t know that! Your Mom...
Dobey: Can it, Hutchinson! Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?
Starsky: Yeah, even if she did have the bad taste to...
Starsky ducks as both Dobey and Hutch try to cuff him. Unfortunately, he then slips on his collection of pet rocks, chia
pets and fuzzy blue troll dolls and cracks his head on the desk.
Hutch: See! See! I’m not the only clumsy one around here!
Starsky says nothing. He’s unconscious.
Dobey: Come, my dear. I’ll get you a soda and give you a copy of the police department’s free brochure
on Officer Hutchinson. There’s a support group in your area, with monthly meetings and cookies...
Dobey takes Mary Susanna by her slender ballerina-esque arm. As they head into his office, she trips over her dainty but
trendily sneaker-clad feet.
Starsky (reviving slightly): That proves it! She’s definitely one of yours.
Hutch: Hey, you know I only ever seem to trip when you’re around...
Starsky: Complete coincidence!
Hutch: And there was that time in the back of the rolling craps game when I could have sworn I felt a push just before
I fell off that bar stool...
Starsky sits up and removes a troll doll from his naturally curly hair. He looks worried.
Starsky: Your imagination is running away with you. You need a break from all this tough police work! So about this
Mary Kay thing...
Hutch: Starsky, they’d make you paint your car pink.
Starsky jumps to his feet, shaking off the effects of his concussion and sending several pet rocks flying.
Starsky: Oh well, stuff that, then!
Starsky balls up a Mary Kay flyer and sets about breaking the department's wastebasket ball record. Hutch picks up brooding
where he’d left off.
Hutch: Come to think of it, I was never that clumsy before I ran over that old gypsy woman deep in the wilds of urban
Minnesota.
Cut to credits...
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| Shortbread cookies? How do you know Hutch again? |
Good night, Starsky.
Good night, Hutch.
Good night, moon.
Goodnight little old lady knitting in the corner of the room.
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