The Rookies - The Complete First Season
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DVD details
Actor: Sam MelvilleBrand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Unknown; English (Original Language), Unknown
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 1174 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-07-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of The Rookies - The Complete First Season
DVD Review: the new breed of cop . . .
Summary: 3 Stars
In the 70's, executive producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg teamed to produce a string of huge primetime hits for ABC. The list includes, Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Starsky and Hutch, and Family. Created by Rita Lakin (Gladdy Gold mystery books), The Rookies was one of Spelling/Goldberg's earlier efforts, and was probably familiar ground for Spelling, who had recently had a major success with The Mod Squad, another police drama with three young stars.
The Rookies are police officers Terry Webster (Georg Stanford Brown), Mike Danko (Sam Melville) and Willie Gillis (Michael Ontkean). Serving on the Southern California Police Force, they are supervised by their watch commander Lieutenant Eddie Ryker (Gerald S. O'Laughlin). Webster and Gillis are partners, and also share and apartment. Danko is ex-Air Force, and married. His wife Jill is a nurse, and played by future Charlie's Angel, Kate Jackson. With a youthful cast, the hope was that The Rookies, like The Mod Squad, would appeal to a younger demographic than programs like McCloud, or Ironside.
The relationships between the central characters, is the strength of the program. The focus is often on partners Webster and Gillis. The streetwise Webster is prone to anger against what he sees as the injustice of society. Gillis is thoughtful and sensitive, and sometimes in situations that cause him to question himself. Without a steady partner, Pete Danko is often the odd man out. Being older, married, and more level headed, also separates Danko from the other two. People are frequently in need of medical attention, providing ample opportunities to feature Jill at the hospital. Lt. Ryker is sometimes stiffer than cardboard, but he is the steadying force in the middle of the , tragedy, and drama.
Typical for crime shows of the time, the amount of action and level of violence is quite high, often excessive, with realism and credibility often secondary to generating the action, or just ignored altogether. Although there is a steady diet of gun battles, chases, fights, murders, assaults, gratuitous violence, and drug related crime, many times there isn't a logical intelligent story behind the mayhem. To be fair, there is marked improvement in the level of the writing by season's end, and a good variety in the stories.
Episodes featuring a character in crisis include `The Bear That Didn't Get Up' where Gillis believes that he has shot and killed a student, and `A Bloody Shade of Blue' where Webster is blinded, and befriended by a nurse with some hang-ups. There are times when things go way over the top, and then fly over a cliff as in `Three Hours to Kill' when a man's wife and an accomplice enter an operating room and hold a patient and the operating staff hostage, in order to try and get the woman's husband released from prison. Interesting and provocative, `A Farewell Tree from Marly' features Tyne Daly (then married to Georg Stanford Brown), as a mentally retarded witness to a crime. `Crossfire' is another provocative tale, involving an African-American officer (Percy Rodrigues) who clashes philosophical swords with Webster. And it is old school meets the `new breed of cop', in `Life Robbery', when Ryker's old friend needs some help dealing with a crime wave.
Like many programs of this era, violence is emphasized over reality. Some thirty-five plus years later, some of the stories may not hold up that well, but if 70's cop shows are your thing, The Rookies, with its strong cast, is certainly worth a look.
Description of The Rookies - The Complete First Season
The Rookies stars Sam Melville as Mike Danko, Michael Ontkean (Twin Peaks) as Willie Gillis, and Georg Stanford Brown (Roots) as Terry Webster. They portray three young and handsome new police officers learning to protect and serve the public under the watchful guidance of Gerald S. O'Loughlin as Lt. Ed Ryker. Also starring is Kate Jackson as Jill, a practicing nurse married to Mike Danko. The Rookies depict the personal and professional adjustments officers make as they embark on their careers and focus on the dramatic police cases they are assigned.
Notable guest stars the first season include Martin Sheen, Tyne Daly, Cheryl Ladd, Academy AwardŽ winner Louis Gossett, Jr. (Best Supporting Actor, An Officer and a Gentleman), and Dick Van Patten (TV?s Eight Is Enough).
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