As I said for the review of Part 1, the problem with this story is a lot of melodramatic dialog and not much substance. There was really not enough here to make a two-parter, and it probably would have been better and not dragged as much if it had been compacted into 60 or 90 minutes.
So now Hutch has the virus and must be isolated. Starsky has to go it alone, searching for Patient A to get his blood for the antibodies. Fair enough. Except Starsky mostly doesn't do that. He talks to the doctors, he talks to Dobie, he talks to the hit-man's target. He does quite a bit of talking and not much chasing. Instead of being out on the street, beating the bushes and tracking leads, looking for Patient A (who is also an international hit-man), Starsky mostly just goes around asking other people to find the guy. His impassioned plea to the group of cops searching for the hit-man, telling them his partner will die if they don't succeed, is pretty melodramatic. I think PMG tries to make it work, but the writing is just not great. The scene of Starsky at the dying Hutch's bedside is the same; the guys work valiantly to keep the scene from getting "soapy", but even they can't quite save it.
Starsky does at last track the guy to where he was staying, using the thinnest of all leads, but the guy is gone. Finally Starsky makes a television plea for the guy to come forward to save his partner. The hit-man/Patient A finally decides to come in, not to save Hutch but to save a boy who befriended him. There is some excitement when the hit-man's target tries to kill him before he gets into the hospital, but that's over quickly.
There are many ways I could think of that would have kept this story moving along better and make more sense so the viewer would be more drawn into the urgency of the situation. I think it was just poorly crafted and poorly written and therefore didn't live up to what it could have been.
So now Hutch has the virus and must be isolated. Starsky has to go it alone, searching for Patient A to get his blood for the antibodies. Fair enough. Except Starsky mostly doesn't do that. He talks to the doctors, he talks to Dobie, he talks to the hit-man's target. He does quite a bit of talking and not much chasing. Instead of being out on the street, beating the bushes and tracking leads, looking for Patient A (who is also an international hit-man), Starsky mostly just goes around asking other people to find the guy. His impassioned plea to the group of cops searching for the hit-man, telling them his partner will die if they don't succeed, is pretty melodramatic. I think PMG tries to make it work, but the writing is just not great. The scene of Starsky at the dying Hutch's bedside is the same; the guys work valiantly to keep the scene from getting "soapy", but even they can't quite save it.
Starsky does at last track the guy to where he was staying, using the thinnest of all leads, but the guy is gone. Finally Starsky makes a television plea for the guy to come forward to save his partner. The hit-man/Patient A finally decides to come in, not to save Hutch but to save a boy who befriended him. There is some excitement when the hit-man's target tries to kill him before he gets into the hospital, but that's over quickly.
There are many ways I could think of that would have kept this story moving along better and make more sense so the viewer would be more drawn into the urgency of the situation. I think it was just poorly crafted and poorly written and therefore didn't live up to what it could have been.
