Hooker and Romano team up with a Gamblers Anonymous counselor to bust a drug lord who blackmails compulsive gamblers into serving as drug mules.Hooker and Romano team up with a Gamblers Anonymous counselor to bust a drug lord who blackmails compulsive gamblers into serving as drug mules.Hooker and Romano team up with a Gamblers Anonymous counselor to bust a drug lord who blackmails compulsive gamblers into serving as drug mules.
- Willie Stack
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaGuest stars Stephen Liska and David Cadiente would later appear in Star Trek III The Search for Spock as Klingons.
- GoofsThe gunman Conners shoots out the left rear tire of Hooker's patrol car, yet Hooker is able to "squeal" his tires when Hooker gets in the patrol car to pursue Conners.
- Quotes
Capt. Dennis Sheridan: [Reading a business card found in Connors' effects] Gamblers Anonymous. Sam Miller.
Capt. Dennis Sheridan: Looks like Connors has other problems in addition to dealing dope.
Sgt. T.J. Hooker: Well, at least this one he was trying to shake. Shall we check it out?
Capt. Dennis Sheridan: I guess so. It's a long shot, but it's all we got.
Sgt. T.J. Hooker: What better place to check on a long shot? Gamblers Anonymous is the last refuge of the longshot bettor. Let's roll, Junior!
The players don't match the level of the buy which puzzles Hooker and his colleagues. It is not until they trace it poker room gambling czar Barnett (Jim Brown) who is using gambling addicts in heavy debt to him, as drug mules that it makes sense. Hooker enlists ex-girlfriend Nancy Winters (Cristina Raines) - a gambling addiction counsellor, to help take Barnett down.
This is another instalment in a series that could be classified as a "dumb cop show" based upon viewing unremarkable episodes like this one. At times what we are seeing looks like it was gleaned from a bad movie-of-the-week storyline. At other times what we are seeing looks like a public service announcement. I would much rather have seen Cristina Raines in a better episode.
Yet the timing of when this episode was first broadcast (February 19th, 1983) is interesting. The Superbowl had been played on January 30th. The college basketball ' March Madness' tournament was weeks away. What gambling action could there be besides casino gaming? Other shows like 'Cheers' and 'Tales of the Gold Monkey' also had episodes involving poker the very same week. Why? Completely coincidently 13 people were murdered at the Wah Mee gambling club in Seattle on the exact day this episode was broadcast. Earlier that same month Mickey Mantle had been threatened with a ban by Major League Baseball for accepting a job as a greeter at a casino. Pathological Gambling had begun to be part of insanity pleas in court trials and had by then resulted in multiple acquittals.
It stretches the bounds of believability to see uniformed officers Hooker and Romano in their police car in plain view, broad daylight being able to sneak up on baddies and witness then in the act of committing nefarious deeds. In this episode Hooker is even able to recognize a known felon from the same distance that the felon fails to see the police cruiser.
I didn't buy Jim Brown as a baddie but he definitely had a reason for being in this episode beyond his football fame and associations of gambling with that sport. His father Swinton Brown had a gambling problem.
- JasonDanielBaker
- Apr 17, 2014