Veteran cop Sgt. T.J.Hooker (William Shatner) and his young partner Vince Romano (Adrian Zmed) are summoned by dispatch to investigate an attack on a young nurse in a hospital parking lot. The suspect - also a nurse, escapes the scene leaving behind a murdered victim, a rose and an odd brand of lipstick. An autopsy reveals the woman died of blunt force trauma.
It is similar to a case Hooker worked on six years earlier but could never solve back when he was still a homicide detective. If the viewer is keeping track there are several of these old unsolved cases of serial murders of attractive young women that Hooker couldn't crack which pop up in episodes of the series.
Hooker consults old friend psychiatrist Dr.Don Travers (David Huffman) with whom he had gotten help from on the similar case from years earlier. Travers is eager to help in any way he can but the advice he gives doesn't change and the young shrink remains perplexed as to why Hooker can't narrow down who the killer is before more young women are murdered.
The excesses and clichés of this series very much included exploding police cruisers, football tackles of suspects after a chase on foot and Hooker rolling out of the way of speeding cars. Each of them are seen here. They should be fully as identifiable with the series as the cliché about Hooker clinging like a barnacle to the hood of a moving car.
Again the quality of 'otherness' is attached to the baddie leaving us with little more than a simplistic and primitive good vs evil dialectic. Attempts to explain the motives for the crime are given sparse screen time utilizing the psychiatrist character to fill in a few blanks but never quite give us the whole picture. The reveal at the end is simply a tired rehash of movie and TV psychos.
As a sad note David Huffman, a likable actor who had done solid work on stage and screen over many years despite not seeing the age of 40, was himself murdered in San Diego little more than a year after this episode was first broadcast. He was stabbed with a screwdriver after chasing a thief that had broken in to a motor home. Huffman left behind a wife and two children.
It is similar to a case Hooker worked on six years earlier but could never solve back when he was still a homicide detective. If the viewer is keeping track there are several of these old unsolved cases of serial murders of attractive young women that Hooker couldn't crack which pop up in episodes of the series.
Hooker consults old friend psychiatrist Dr.Don Travers (David Huffman) with whom he had gotten help from on the similar case from years earlier. Travers is eager to help in any way he can but the advice he gives doesn't change and the young shrink remains perplexed as to why Hooker can't narrow down who the killer is before more young women are murdered.
The excesses and clichés of this series very much included exploding police cruisers, football tackles of suspects after a chase on foot and Hooker rolling out of the way of speeding cars. Each of them are seen here. They should be fully as identifiable with the series as the cliché about Hooker clinging like a barnacle to the hood of a moving car.
Again the quality of 'otherness' is attached to the baddie leaving us with little more than a simplistic and primitive good vs evil dialectic. Attempts to explain the motives for the crime are given sparse screen time utilizing the psychiatrist character to fill in a few blanks but never quite give us the whole picture. The reveal at the end is simply a tired rehash of movie and TV psychos.
As a sad note David Huffman, a likable actor who had done solid work on stage and screen over many years despite not seeing the age of 40, was himself murdered in San Diego little more than a year after this episode was first broadcast. He was stabbed with a screwdriver after chasing a thief that had broken in to a motor home. Huffman left behind a wife and two children.
