"Adam-12": A "gay bashing", 1990 style.

Last week, Dennis posted about the gay content (or lack thereof) on Hulu, the new site where you can see tons of episodes from new and old TV series. I decided to give it a try, and by pure chance, unearthed an ancient artifact.

It's an episode from the short lived 1990 "re-imagining" of Adam-12. The original show was one of the most popular cop shows of the 70's...the remake, not so much. It lasted less than a season in syndication, and it's easy to see why. Bad writing, hammy acting, and cheap production values doomed it. The show revolved around two hunky young cops, played by Peter Parros and Ethan Wayne (a quick check of IMDB.com reveals that he is indeed the son of John Wayne).

The episode I watched was called Gay Bashing, and it had the boys in blue investigate a series of assaults on gay men (with side stories about stripped cars and...a nudist club). What surprised me was that the show went out of its way to be as sensitive as possible, not resorting to stereotypical gay characters (for the most part), and having the leads remark repeatedly how wrong and unfair the assaults were.

Unfortunately, that's about the only good thing I can say about it. Because it was a half hour show, the scenes were disjointed and abrupt, and the score was recycled, generic "80's cop show" (if you close your eyes, you'd swear it was an episode of Hunter). The best part was a particularly hilarious poolside arrest scene, which, with just a little tweaking, would make a classic porn scene (Copping a Plea, Part IV!).

Speaking of which, I found these pictures from the original featuring Kent McCord and Martin Milner. All I can say looking at that second pic is "Gentlemen, start your slashing!"

Martin Milner, Kent McCord

You can see entire episode (without commercials, it's just over twenty minutes) after the break. It's been almost twenty years since it was made, do you think it would be made differently today?