Series / Hunter (1984)

Hunter, the first series in the Hunter collection of Buddy Cop media, is a drama series about two Los Angeles homicide detectives, sergeants Rick Hunter and Dee Dee McCall. It was created by Frank Lupo and produced by Stephen J. Cannell Productions, and ran on NBC for seven seasons starting in 1984 and ending in 1991.

Rick Hunter (played by ex-football player Fred Dryer) has a reputation for being a Cowboy Cop, which makes him less than popular among his superiors. While he tends to bend the rules and disregard orders, he only does so to get evidence against the bad guys, and his intuition never fails in picking out who is a bad guy or who isn't. He would never stoop to manufacturing evidence or framing an innocent.

Dee Dee McCall (Stepfanie Kramer) is Hunter's partner. As tough as she is good-looking, she is sometimes called the "brass cupcake". She is just as pro-active as Hunter when fighting crime and doesn't hesitate to get into physical fights with the criminals, but she is less hot-headed and often acts as a calming influence on her partner. In the last season, McCall leaves the series after getting married to an old flame and is replaced by two other female detectives.

The entire series is available for free streaming on YouTube via Filmrise TV.

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This show provides examples of:

• 0% Approval Rating: Captain Lester Cain, Hunter's captain in the first season, is this to everyone else in the squadroom, except for By-the-Book Cop Professional Butt-Kisser Sgt. Bernie Terwilliger, as they feel he is too out of touch to really know how dangerous the crime filled streets of Los Angeles can really be.
• Accent Slip-Up: In "Lullaby," the Serial Killer (played by a pre-Forrest Gump Gary Sinise) has a refined British accent. When this trait is leaked to the media, he begins affecting a strong Texas drawl...until his car door is almost taken off by another vehicle, at which point he starts yelling in his native accent. His next intended victim hears him and runs away.
• Action Girl: McCall. Despite being much smaller than Hunter, she is just as active in fights and or chasing down criminals on foot — often in high heels. Sergeant Kitty O'Hearn is another example.
• The Alleged Car: Any car driven by Hunter in the first season either is this, or becomes this during the episode. Sometimes it is literally falling to pieces. Because of his reputation for wrecking cars, the police department will always give him the worst vehicle available. On the occasions where he, through luck or trickery, can obtain a new car, he will invariably get in a car chase and wreck it. This is downplayed in later seasons, where several episodes can go by without even a scratched fender.
• Always Murder: Subverted in "Allegra" and "Murder, He Wrote" where the "murders" turned out to be suicides.
• Amoral Attorney:
  • Some lawyers depicted do fit the mold of "amoral person who almost seems to want their client to commit more crimes", which is not atypical for a Cowboy Cop show.
  • On the other hand, some (usually female) lawyers do genuinely believe in the legal process and are willing to work with Hunter when they feel something obviously suspicious is going on. District attorney Esther Wyman is a recurring one.
  • Hunter even uses Mike Snow, a lawyer he's butted heads with in the past, to defend himself in "Hot Pursuit" when he becomes a suspect in a murder, despite acknowledging that the lawyer would find this hilarious.
  • The same lawyer is also hired by a man in "Playing God" who murdered an Asshole Victim who killed his wife — Snow openly wonders if Hunter recommended him, which would be illegal for a police officer to do, as Snows points out.
  • Mike Snow later defends a housewife accused of murdering her husband in "Boomerang" and successfully gets her out of the conviction. He later drops her as a client, not because she committed the act, but because she lied to him about committing the act.
  • "Burned" has a lawyer who faked his death after being indicted for bribing jurors.
  • Felicia Greene is an adoption attorney who runs an illegal baby-breeding ring exploiting underage girls in "A Girl Named Hunter".
• Anyone Can Die: Ambrose Finn and Joanne Molenski. The latter is replaced by Chris Novak.
• Asian Babymama: Rick Hunter, who is a Vietnam vet, finds out that he has a teenage son from a one-time Vietnamese girlfriend in "Yesterday's Child".
• Asshole Victim: Drug pusher Jimmy Duggan in "Brotherly Love", who succumbs to Death by Falling Over, thanks to one of his clients.
• Avenging the Villain: In "High Noon in L.A.", a foreign man comes to LA to challenge Hunter to a duel. It turns out that he is the brother of a rapist diplomat who was killed by Hunter in an earlier episode. Hunter does not give the man what he wants, but shoots the gun out of his hands instead and has him deported, earning his Villain Respect.
• Baby Factory: In "A Girl Named Hunter", Felicia Greene, an adoption attorney, runs an illegal breeding operation exploiting vulnerable underage girls.
• Back for the Dead: The season 4 episode "The Jade Woman" had Hunter helping one of his old Vietnam buddies Randall Fane (played by Dirk Blocker) rescue his kidnapped Asian wife. A season later, in "Dead on Target pt. 1" Fane returns, only to kill himself since his wife left him due to him being obsessed with learning the truth about something that happened in Vietnam.
• Banana Republic:
  • The fictional country of Caraguay mentioned in "Rape and Revenge", where military strongmen hold political power, and a diplomat got off a rape charge due to being a general's son. After Hunter traveled to Caraguay and killed the diplomat in self defense, it was covered up as a hunting accident, with the diplomat's brother looking for revenge.
  • El Santiago is another one mentioned in "The Nightmare", which underwent a recent revolution which led to the execution of the former dictator, but the Torture Technician escaped to the US under another identity.
• Big "NO!": In "Requiem for Sergeant McCall", we see flashbacks to five years earlier when then patrol officer McCall's husband (the "Sergeant McCall" of the title) was murdered. When told of his death, she reacts in this way.
• Blackmail Backfire: Witnesses who try to blackmail the perpetrators in exchange for silence generally doesn't end up well, often with either themselves or their loved ones dead.
  • Sporty James witnesses a group of Colombians killing a pusher in "Love, Hate and Sporty James", and tries to blackmail them in exchange for silence. The Colombians instead kill Sporty's girlfriend when she delivers a message to them, leading to a Heroic BSoD as he tries to hunt down the killers.
  • In "Broken Dreams", Hunter's high school classmate recognizes a killer from a newspaper photo, but her greedy husband pressures her not to identify him at a police lineup. The husband then blackmails the killer for a large sum of money, which he pretends to deliver, but kills the husband instead and gets the address of the wife from his corpse.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: In "Fagin 1986", Rick Hunter shoots an underage crook and is asked by a reporter why he didn't shoot the weapon out of his hands. Hunter ridicules the idea, yet "High Noon in L.A." shows Hunter doing this to a man who challenged him to a duel.
• Boxing Episode: "Ring of Honor", guest starring Sammy Davis Jr. in his final on-screen appearance.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Happens at the end of a few episodes, such as "The Beautiful and the Dead", when Hunter looks at the camera and lampshades a case of What Happened to the Mouse?.
• Bulletproof Vest
  • In "The Shooter", the Villain of the Week is a Cop Killer using silicone bullets that go right through their vests. Hunter goes on a rant about how such bullets should be outlawed because the only reason for owning them is to kill cops. Apparently no-one told Hunter that they were originally developed for cops, for better penetration of windshields and automobile doors.
  • In "The Beach Boy", Dee Dee McCall puts a couple of bullets into a hitman from Hawaii and he doesn't even flinch. Hunter comments that he must have been wearing a bulletproof vest, but that doesn't explain why the audience doesn't see it given that the hitman spends the entire episode with his Hawaiian shirt half unbuttoned to show his Carpet of Virility. After that Hunter gets out a Desert Eagle to take the hitman on, and uses it to Shoot the Fuel Tank and blow him up, vest and all.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • After leaving the show at the end of season 6, McCall returned in the 2002 Reunion Show Hunter: Return to Justice.
  • Captain Cain was Kicked Upstairs after season 1, and came back to the division in season 4, only to resign in disgrace after he pressured the department to drop a soliciting charge on behalf of a powerful judge.
• By-the-Book Cop: Sgt. Bernie Terwilliger thinks Hunter is a disgrace for the department and never fails to point out any time he breaks a rule. Unfortunately, however, Terwilliger is not that good a detective himself, and usually fails where Hunter's "cowboy" methods succeed. In the second season, he gets transferred to Internal Affairs, a job which brings him into frequent confrontation with Hunter, before succumbing to the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome in the third season as his actor, James Whitmore, Jr., had begun working behind the scenes as a director.
  Hunter: Bernie Terwilliger couldn't catch the measles if you broke a bottle of the virus over his head!
• Camera Sniper: Shown at the start of "The Avenging Angel" where the Villain of the Week is a vigilante who has become obsessed with Rick Hunter and is stalking him and his partner, in a montage with the song "I'll Be Watching You".
• Character Catchphrase: Hunter's "Works for me".
• Character Development: Hunter himself in later seasons. He becomes less of a Cowboy Cop and follows the rules, and also usually wears more suits (early seasons has him constantly being bawled out for his less professional attire). He also has a less fractious relationship with his superiors (to the point of actually being friends with Captain Devane).
• Chase Scene: Most episodes have several, both by car and by foot.
• CIA Evil, FBI Good: Brad Wilkes (Stanley Kamel), the CIA agent featured in several episodes, is depicted as amoral at best and not unwilling cross Hunter and McCall to protect suspects if they are deemed to be vital for US national interests. Meanwhile FBI agents are depicted as more moral but willing to follow rules to the letter.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In "Unfinished Business", McCall comes across as this both professionally and personally regarding female detective Megan Malone, who has a good rapport with Hunter. This would normally be just Ship Tease but for the surprise reveal that McCall and Hunter had a one-night stand the last time she met Malone, and it brought back concerns that she'd just been pushed aside by Hunter afterwards.
• Continuity Snarl: In the pilot Hunter said that has never met McCall's late husband, Steve, but in a flashback in the later episode "Requiem for Sergeant McCall", they worked in the same squad and were on a friendly basis, and Rick actually meets Dee Dee through him (and he later informs her about his death). In addition, in the pilot, they were both rookies and newly married and McCall says he was shot by some joyriding hoodlums, but in said later episode, Steve was now a full-fledged homicide detective while Dee Dee was still a rookie and he was working on a major homicide case which got him killed.
• Cool Car: McCall's red Dodge Daytona.
• Cool Guns: Hunter has a Heckler & Koch P9S with muzzle compensator that is shown in the opening credits. He calls it "Simon". He later switches to a Beretta 92. When Hunter needs More Dakka he has a SPAS-12 shotgun in his car, and a Desert Eagle he supposedly got as gift from his mobster dad (even though dad died in 1971, before the Desert Eagle came into production). Dee Dee carries a .380 automatic (either a Walther PPK/S or a Beretta Model 90) with a .25 Beretta as a backup pistol. She later switches to a S&W Model 36 snubnose revolver.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat:
  • Judge Unger in "City of Passion" is a corrupt legal worker who uses his connections to get away with major crimes. He was initially busted for solicitation by McCall, but it is revealed that the sex workers were ritually murdered as part of a Satanic ritual.
  • Deputy Chief Curtis Moorehead (played by Robert Vaughn) in "City Under Siege", a tough-on-crime bureaucrat, uses his connections to get a popular vigilante released, which inadvertently led to the latter being murdered. He also blackmails the local DA to get what he wants, having gotten the DA off a drink driving charge years before.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: A frequent villain archetype:
  • "Code 3" involves Dee Dee investigating the drunk driving death of a nurse friend, who she suspects is murdered. The villain turns out to be a property developer who exploited his medical connections to have a stubborn fruit shop owner killed during a medical episode with the wrong drugs, so it could be dismissed as an accident and he could take over the fruit shop which stood in the way of his building project. The nurse was killed for getting too close to the truth.
  • "Unacceptable Loss" has the detectives investigating the sudden death of a young boy who died of cyanide poisoning. Turns out the culprit is a chemical company director trying to cook the books by dumping toxic chemicals in a suburban sewer rather than disposing of it properly.
• Cousin Oliver: Hunter's final partner in the series, Chris Novak (Lauren Lane), is a single mom with a young daughter, Allison (Courtney Barilla).
• Cowboy Cop:
  • Hunter has this reputation among his colleagues, and some journalists. While he does tend to play loose with the rules, he does not show the disregard for life and property that tends to be a sign of a true cowboy cop. In addition, many of Hunter's colleagues actually support him for his actions, while completely disdaining Captain Cain for being too much of a stick in the mud regarding police protocol.
  • Captain Devane himself becomes one after his ex-wife was murdered in "Girl on the Beach", as he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after turning in his badge. Hunter is the one who has to talk him out of killing the culprit.
• Criminally Attractive: Hunter generally avoids romantic entanglements with female suspects. However in "Waiting for Mr. Wrong", while tracking down a jewel thief, he falls in love with the thief's girlfriend, and comes clean to her after she accidentally exposes his undercover status. She volunteers to act as bait to lure the thief out, but her greed got the best of her and she kills the thief and attempt to flee with the stolen jewels, only to get killed in a car crash. Hunter is visibly devastated as he cradles her body from the wreckage.
• Da Chief:
  • Hunter's captains in the first season, Captain Lester Cain and Captain Dolan have a very adversarial relationship with him. Cain especially views him as a dangerous loose cannon and a Cowboy Cop, and frequently threatens to take his badge away. While Dolan is also often frustrated with Hunter and would rather him not be on the streets, he's also a lot more reasonable than Cain was and will work with Hunter.
  • His captains in later seasons, Captain Wyler in season 2 and Captain Charlie Devane in season 3 on, tend to have a more sympathetic attitude to Hunter, with Devane having a very trusting, friendly relationship with Hunter and McCall. Despite frequent irritation over Hunter's insubordination and liberal attitude to the regulations, they tolerate this (up to a limit) because of his good results. They will do their best to keep Hunter in line — with varied success.
• A Day in the Limelight: "Girl on the Beach" and "Shillelagh" deal with Captain Devane and his love interests. Both episodes result in less than happy endings, with his ex-wife being murdered in the former, and his girlfriend leaving in the latter.
• Deadline News: A non-lethal version happens when Hunter and McCall chase a criminal into a news studio during a live broadcast. Captain Devane is at home watching all this on television. He just shakes his head at the sight of his two detectives looking embarrassed at the camera.
• Dead Person Impersonation: The episode "Fire Man" features a pyromaniac former Vietnam War soldier who, in order to hide his arsonous activities from the cops, poses as one of his deceased buddies because they looked so similar.
• Death by Falling Over: Happens to several people in the series, often accidentally as a result of fighting, such as the young mother in "A Girl Named Hunter" and the drug dealer in "Brotherly Love".
• Did They or Didn't They?: At the conclusion of "Unfinished Business", Dee Dee invites Hunter in for coffee, and we cut to credits just as Hunter is about to reply. As viewers now know that this is how a previous romantic liaison started, we're left wondering if it happened again.
• Didn't Think This Through: McCall gets exposed in several undercover assignments such as "Double Exposure" because she carried her pistol along.
• Diplomatic Impunity: The episode "Rape and Revenge" has McCall being raped by a South American diplomat who claims immunity when Hunter tries to arrest him — and shoots Hunter just to twist the knife further. Said ambassador assaulted McCall for simply turning down a date, and strangled another woman in an earlier assault. In the following episode, Hunter tracks him down in his native country and kills him in self defense.
• Dirty Cop: Show up as villains from time to time, such as Jackie Molinas in the "The Snow Queen" two-parter,^note Played by a pre- NYPD Blue Dennis Franz, who had already played a dirty cop in Hill Street Blues. "The Big Fall" and "Think Blue".
• Dirty Coward: Rapists Raul Mariano ("Rape and Revenge") and Bigfoot ("City of Passion"), when faced with a gun pointing at them, Ain't Too Proud to Beg.
• Dirty Harriet: In the first season McCall often goes undercover as a streetwalker or callgirl. Downplayed in later seasons, where she goes undercover more seldom, and then usually with more conventional covers, such as a singer (twice).
• Disconnected by Death: Happens to several associates of the villains who wanted to snitch to Hunter, such as the villains' accomplices in "Partners" and "Return of White Cloud".
• Disney Villain Death: Several villains of week fall to their demises. The villainous psychologist in the pilot episode accidentally jumps off a building when he charges Rick Hunter during a final Rooftop Confrontation. The villain of The Return of Hunter: Everyone Walks in L.A. (played by Miguel Ferrer) deliberately jumps to his death after getting what he wanted from Hunter.
• The Dog Bites Back: In "City of Passion, part 3" McCall entraps a Serial Rapist, nicknamed "Bigfoot" to her home for the purpose of killing him, but can't bring herself to do it. The next day, the guy is going to be let out when his wife, whom he frequently abused, arrived at the police station, and realizing people were right about him being a sadistic rapist, takes an officer's gun and shoots him dead.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Used in at least two episodes:
  • In "Partners", a border patrol officer is murdered, and much of the investigation focuses on his cop wife, who he abused, or her partner, who knew about the abuse and was in love with her, as the possible suspects. Turned out to be the owner of a garment warehouse who was using illegal immigrants for labor, who had been interviewed for maybe, two minutes and didn't appear again until the end.
  • In "Return of White Cloud", a woman who owned a museum is murdered and four Indian tribal masks in her possession are stolen. The investigation reveals they were stolen by a Native American guy who was her lover, and he also has a wife who aware of the affair. It was actually an archaeologist friend of the victim, who only appeared for a few minutes at the beginning of the episode, prior to the The Reveal.
• Don't Answer That: It's Rick Hunter who does this despite being a Cowboy Cop, in an episode involving a Vigilante Man who killed a gangster who raped his wife. The man is just about to confess when Hunter says "Stop!", and then advises him of his right to contact a lawyer — who just happens to be a skilled Amoral Attorney who's frustrated Hunter in the past. Of course, a police officer advising a suspect to contact a particular lawyer would be illegal, as said lawyer points out.
• Downer Ending:
  • "Rich Girl", with its Alas, Poor Villain ending.
  • "Crime of Passion" has a woman killed and her estranged husband (played by Ray Wise) being the prime suspect. Turns out the real killer is a Hollywood director's wife whose young child actress daughter confided in the victim to being sexually abused by her husband, and the wife wanted to cover it up (and demanded that her own daughter allow it) to maintain their affluent lifestyle. Even Hunter's eyes wells up while the poor girl sobbingly tells McCall her story.
  • "Last Run" has a Cowboy Cop searching for his missing female partner who was undercover. By the time he finds her she is already tortured to death. Against Hunter's advise, the cop kills the handcuffed drug lord in retaliation before turning the gun on himself, resulting in Hunter throwing his gun at a window in disgust.
  • "Not Just Another John Doe" ends with the villains escaping justice due to intervention by the CIA, being "vital to the interests of national security".
  • "Son and Heir" ends up with the mob boss (played by Jerry Orbach) eating his gun after losing both of his sons - one, an undercover cop, being unknowing killed by his mobster half-brother, who is later in turn killed by Hunter.
• Dress Hits Floor: "Hot Prowl" has a rich woman (played by Cindy Morgan) who was robbed by some criminal, and later finds him and bargains for return of some jewelry piece. When the robber suggests she is "wired", she drops her clothes to the floor to prove she is not. This leads to Karmic Death of said robber, at the hands of the woman's jealous husband who wrongly assumes she's having an affair — she is, but not with the burglar.
• Driven by Envy: In season 1 there's an episode where a guy on a bike goes around killing cops in Quick Draw-style shootouts. There is a Wild West arcade game in his favorite bar where he's routinely the best, and he goes after people who beat his high score. Rick Hunter deliberately scores higher on the machine precisely because he knows it will draw out the cop killer.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • "Rich Girl" Cynthia, (the title character) has tried to kill her wealthy father, and succeeds in having his new younger wife Ginger killed by getting her partner to throw Ginger off a penthouse balcony, while making it look as if she jumped. Hunter and McCall soon come on to her, but unable to legally prove her involvement, decide to take an alternate route and explain to her father what's she's done. He then changes his will so that his daughter won't inherit unless the killer of his wife is found and convicted, puts in a stipulation that will force her to forfeit everything if she challenges the will, cuts her off from all of her funds, and refuses to speak to her when she tries to call him. This leaves Cynthia with a Sadistic Choice: if she keeps her mouth shut, she keeps her freedom, but will be completely cut off from her inheritance, and her father's money and resources and, having no job history, skills, or prospects, and likely little education, would be in for a long painful struggle, and if she confesses, she gets to keep her inheritance but will have to spend the better part of her life in prison (if not the rest of it) before she can enjoy any of it. The episode ends with Cynthia eating some ice cream laced with pills in a deliberate overdose, having decided to Take a Third Option and not live at all rather than live locked up and rich or live free and broke...
  • "Son and Heir" features a mobster who shoots and kills an undercover cop, but unknown to him, the cop was his half-brother. The mob boss, his father, doesn't know that his cop son was killed by his mobster son, nor the fact that the latter is running smuggling operations from underneath him. He is devastated when he finds out the truth, and despite his pleas for his remaining son to give up, the son chooses Suicide by Cop when Hunter corners him. With both of his sons dead, the mob boss shoots himself at home.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Season 1 episodes tend to be more gritty and mostly set in the less savory parts of Los Angeles, plays up Hunter and McCall's conflicts with their superiors (one of whom is Captain Dolan played by John Amos before he was Put on a Bus), and contains an ongoing subplot about Hunter's familial connections with the mob. It also uses more licensed music every episode.
• Ephebophile: Judge Unger, in addition to using his status as a court official to impede legal action against him, is a cult leader who has partaken in sex rituals and human sacrifice involving underage girls.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Car chases often end with one car catching fire and/or exploding.
• Evil All Along: "Shillelagh" features Devane's girlfriend's brother, an Irish peace activist, visiting for a peace conference. Turns out he's an undercover IRA operative who is planning to assassinate the British ambassador during the conference, as the said ambassador killed their brother during The Troubles. Devane's girlfriend is devastated when she finds out the truth via Landline Eavesdropping, and even more so when Devane is forced to kill the brother.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • Raul Mariano, cultural attache of a Banana Republic in "Rape and Revenge", rapes McCall for daring to turn down a date with him.
  • Iris Smith, the Serial Killer antagonist of the "City Under Siege" three-parter, murders a school teacher because she gave her detention when she was young.
  • The Cop Killer in "The Shooter" kills police officers who beat him in a Quick Draw arcade game.
• External Combustion:
  • In the third-season episode "Overnight Sensation", this happens to a journalist who is investigating Hunter, convinced that Hunter is a dirty Cowboy Cop dealing out vigilante justice. The real culprit uses this to frame Hunter for the murder.
  • In "Turning Point", a journalist writing a story on the mob is apparently blown up in his car. Later his wife is shocked to find him turn up at their home in the middle of the night; when she asks who was in the car he replies: "The unluckiest car thief who never lived."
  • "The Hot Grounder" has the bomber using "someone else starts the car" to his advantage. He wants to kill his wife, so he leaves his car in the driveway so that she will have to move his car to get hers out, activating the car bomb that was supposedly left for him.
• Facial Composite Failure: In one episode, Hunter comes home to find the body of a beautiful woman in his house, which later vanishes. He has a sketch artist reproduce her features, but is later embarrassed when Hunter shows the sketch to someone who knew her in life, who says it's a good likeness but whoever made the sketch must have been in love with her because she wasn't that beautiful.
• The Fagin: The antagonist of the episode appropriately named "Fagin 1986". Ironically, said Fagin has never read Oliver Twist.
• Fair Cop: McCall. Her good looks not only make her a suitable Dirty Harriet, but also attract romantic attention from both desirable and undesirable quarters.
• Faked Kidnapping: In "The Contract", a rich man's wife is kidnapped by a masked robber. Turns out it's organized by the butler who is cheating with the wife.
• False Flag Operation: "62 Hours of Terror" has a series of bombings against Qurac diplomats which were blamed on a dissident group. In reality they were organized by a diplomat (played by Persis Khambatta) to frighten the ambassador into leaving the country, so she could cover up a string of affairs.
• Fanservice: Very mild by today's standard (this show is, after all, a decade older than NYPD Blue): there is no nudity and even sex scenes tend to be of the fully clothed variety, but there are still some instances.
  • McCall's good looks are always prominently featured, and though she dresses professionally at work, she frequently wears tight tops and short skirts.
  • There are some scenes with McCall in sleepwear or taking a bath.
  • Hunter has many ShirtlessScenes, has plenty of attractive female contacts and girlfriends, and is not above sleeping with female suspects and witnesses to solve the case.
  • Many scenes involve streetwalkers or showgirls in more or less stripperiffic clothing. The trope is usually averted, however, when McCall goes undercover as a streetwalker: with the exception of a few early episodes she tends to cover up a lot more than her supposed "colleagues" (which makes sense for the plot, as she's there to collect information, not to seduce anyone).
  • Two of the most daring examples from the first season are shown in the opening credits: Dee Dee fighting in a backless top and tight pants, and her aiming her gun out of a foam bath, with bubbles acting as convenient Scenery Censors.
  • As the series faced increasing competition from Miami Vice, there was a noticeable increase in Fanservice Extras.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: There's an episode where a Pyromaniac villain uses a flamethrower to commit arson as well as burning the occasional Innocent Bystander. Naturally the song played during the teaser is "Burning Down the House".
• Firefighter Arsonist: "Fire Man" sees Hunter and McCall dealing with a masked firebug who torches abandoned buildings with a flame thrower. A traumatised veteran insists that it's a war criminal he served with in Vietnam, who randomly burned a native village to the ground, despite him officially dying several years earlier. As they eventually discover, the firebug actually murdered another person and stole their identity, and is presently working as a firefighter for their day job.
• First-Name Basis: Hunter and McCall have this dynamic with Captain Devane due to all three having a very trusting, friendly relationship with each other.
• 555: Pretty much all phone numbers in the series start with 555.
• Follow That Car: Detective McCall does this in an episode, with the grizzled cab driver replying "I've been waiting twenty years for someone to say that!"
• Freudian Excuse: While most of the villains on the show are motivated by either Greed or For the Evulz, there are a few culprits that have sad backstories or mental problems that caused their actions, such as one of the killers in "Fatal Obsession" and "Kill Zone."
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Detective Dee Dee McCall has several stuffed animals in her bedroom, as noted by her new partner Rick Hunter. She counters that despite being an Action Girl, she's still a woman inside.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Before interrogating someone, Dee Dee McCall (a short Fair Cop) insists that she be allowed to play "bad cop" despite Hunter's (tall, middle-aged) claims that he's usually the "bad cop" in these situations for a reason. The perp immediately sees through the act and tells them to get lost, so she upgrades to breaking in his door and threatening him with a baseball bat.
• Gunman with Three Names: In the "City Under Siege" three-parter, William Joseph Powell, AKA "Billy Joe", is a notorious serial killer who conspires with his paramour, fellow serial killer Iris Smith, to go on a murderous rampage across Los Angeles.
• High-Altitude Interrogation: Hunter does this to the Dirty Cop in "The Big Fall" to make him confess to the killing, although the dirty cop only ended up there because he clumsily tried to escape.
• Hollywood Satanism: The Sons and Daughters of Darkness in "City of Passion" are a satanic cult that engages in sex orgies with prostitutes then sacrifices them as part of their ritual. One of their leaders works as a judge in the daytime, so when McCall busts him on a solicitation charge she gets more than she bargained for.
• Homophobic Hate Crime: "The Fifth Victim" has Hunter and McCall alongside a gay detective investigate a string of killings targeting gay men. A homophobic Serial Killer confesses to all of the killings except one, which turns out to be a gay architect who was killed by a property developer for trying to whistleblow on substandard building practices.
• I Made Copies: In "The Hot Grounder", a private investigator is blackmailing the police commissioner for photographs of a homosexual affair, then the latter asks if the blackmailer made copies. The PI just smirks and says that if his friends call with another demand, he'll know they made copies. Unsurprisingly the commissioner decides to take the chance of shooting him on the spot, in the belief the PI is working alone, but Hunter and McCall interrupts before they can finish each other off.
• Immoral Journalist:
  • In "Saturday Night Special", an Intrepid Journalist is being stalked by a Serial Killer after investigating the murders of several homeless people. It is later revealed that the said journalist herself committed the serial killings and reports them to boost her ratings.
  • "Turning Point" features a journalist targeted for assassination by a crime boss when his investigation got too close, but survives thanks to an unlucky car thief. Instead of reporting the incident, he decides to blackmail the crime boss for money, using his own wife as bait.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In the season 3 episode "Down and Under", Hunter stops an aircraft from taking off by firing a rifle through the window of a car going down a bumpy dirt road parallel to the runway, and taking out the plane's engine without hurting the pilot or passengers.
• The Informant: Arnold "Sporty" James (played by Garrett Morris). In a subversion of this trope, however, Hunter and McCall see him as a valued friend.
• In Love with the Mark: Happens to a female assassin in ""Straight to the Heart", who was hired by the villains Hunter is planning to testify against, and pulls off a Sex–Face Turn and betrays her employers.
• Intimidating Revenue Service: In "Sniper", Hunter finds himself being audited by a visiting IRS accountant (played by James Cromwell) who is quite annoyed by Hunter's habit of paying police informants out of his own pocket and falsely declaring it as business expenses. Captain Dolan is initially amused by this, but quickly becomes a target of the accountant himself. Hunter even calls the accountant "a bloodsucking vampire" and keeps to the streets to avoid the guy.
• I Work Alone: This is why Hunter and McCall team up in the first place. Captain Cain demands that Hunter work with a partner to keep his Cowboy Cop tendencies under control, so Hunter makes a deal with McCall (whom he already knows, but apparently hasn't been partnered with before) to pretend to be his partner while they work their separate cases. However Cain quickly gets wise to this trick and threatens to call them on the radio and if they both can't answer to show they're working together ("In the car, or in the can"), Hunter will be in trouble. However our heroes quickly find they like working together anyway.
• Land Down Under: Downplayed in the season 3 episode "Down and Under" where Hunter goes to Sydney, Australia, in search of a murderer. Apart from a few establishing city shots, most of the episode takes place indoors or in generic back streets. Only in the last ten minutes of the episode, where Hunter goes outdoors in the Outback together with the local constable, does the trope come into play.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • In "Turning Point", a journalist survives an assassination attempt and decides to blackmail his attempted killers, using his wife as bait while he flees with the money. His wife, after realizing how little he cares about her safety and well-being, switches the bags at the last minute and flees to Mexico, leaving the journalist with nothing but a bunch of phone books in his bag.
  • In "Boomerang", a housewife (played by Wendie Malick) finds out that her husband has disinherited her, and decides with his business partner who she is cheating with to kill him via a boat bomb. When the case went to court, she was found not guilty due to the unreliable evidence the detective collected. Just when she thought she got away with murder and consummates her relationship with the business partner, she was arrested again after another woman who was injured alongside the bomb died, and this time, the evidence is stacked against her.
• Locked Room Mystery:
  • "Night on Bald Mountain", where Hunter and McCall are trapped in a mansion with murder suspects during a heavy snowstorm.
  • "Murder He Wrote", where Hunter and McCall are invited to a dinner party by an eccentric millionaire and a Jessica Fletcher expy, which escalates into a murder investigation after the said millionaire is found dead.
• Long-Lost Relative: In "Yesterday's Child", Hunter discovers a teenage murder suspect is his son, from a woman he was in a relationship with during the Vietnam War.
• Mad Bomber: The villain in "Blow-Up" uses mail bombs to target those who helped lock him away previously, including Hunter.
• Master of Unlocking: Dee Dee McCall is adept at picking locks. She and Hunter often gain entry to the homes of suspects or missing persons this way, which is especially convenient when they can't call a locksmith because they don't have a search warrant.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Happens in several episodes, especially the three-part "City of Passion" where a judge arrested for soliciting prostitutes led to the discovery that he was involved in a satanic cult practicing human sacrifice.
• Name of Cain: Captain Cain, Rick Hunter's exasperated superior early in season 1. While not an overt antagonist as he's just doing his job trying to rein in Hunter's maverick tendencies, he's a pretty venal example of the "obstructive chief" since he's far more concerned with maintaining the appearance of an orderly department than protecting his officers. Cain returns to the department in season 4, only to resign in disgrace after trying to get his officers to drop a solicitation charge on a prominent judge as a political favor.
• Never the Obvious Suspect:
  • The show usually plays this straight. In the episode "True Confessions", though, there is a Bait-and-Switch. A girl dies during a drug-fuelled party, with the culprits let off on a technicality due to one of them confessing without being read their Miranda Rights. When they are shot one by one, the victim's sister is the obvious suspect. Then it looks like a Corrupt Corporate Executive brother of one of the victims has a motive, and she's being framed as a patsy. Nope, it was the sister all along.
  • A similar bait and switch is used in the later episode "Heir of Neglect", where a young boy is suspected of shooting his parents, and then the investigation is shifted to a group of Corrupt Corporate Executive businessmen who the father was blackmailing. Only at the end the said boy was re-investigated, and turns out he did it in retaliation for parental abuse.
  • Played straight in the episode "Informant", where the recently released bank robber is actually innocent of the murders of his associates, and the real murderer is the criminal's girlfriend, who also poses as an informant for Hunter in order to manipulate them against one another while she plans to flee abroad with the stolen money. Hunter is understandingly pissed since he was almost sent to jail for refusing to disclose the identity of the witness for court.
  • "No Good Deed Ever Goes Unpunished" has an elderly woman trying to expose her Corrupt Corporate Executive daughter for strings of illegal dumpings and the murder of an EPA agent. All signs point to the said daughter due to her confrontational demeanor, until shortly before the episode's end where it is revealed that her supposedly retired husband, the former CEO, organized it all behind his daughter's back.
  • "Hot Pursuit" has Hunter investigate a series of prostitute killings alone after a gunman severely wounds McCall. He focuses on a "honest" car dealer who secretly runs a prostitution ring, and receives help from a woman named Laura Decker who is supposedly a vicim of the said dealer. Hunter is later framed for murdering the dealer, a charge which he narrowly gets out of, and only later he finds out that Decker is actually the dealer's wife, organzing the killings behind his back and manipulating Hunter so he could be framed for murder. And she would've gotten away with it too, had she caught an earlier flight out of the country.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • Also overlaps with Trailers Always Spoil, as the "tonight, on Hunter" segments that aired before every episode (expect for the last season) would either spoil things that happened in the show, or deceive you to think something was happening that didn't.
  • Perhaps one of the most blatant of the examples is from "Change Partners and Dance", where Hunter is seen telling McCall "this partnership is over." He does say that in the episode, and McCall initially believes him, but it is a ruse; Captain Devane has temporarily partnered Hunter with another cop who is under investigation for doing assassination work for the mob.
  • In "Requiem for Sergeant McCall", the "tonight, on Hunter" clips shows the D.A. saying that he's going to charge McCall with murder, and then cuts to her screaming a Big "NO!". In the actual show, we see that the Big "NO!" was a flashback to her reaction to the shooting of her husband, five years before she was framed for murder.
• Not a Morning Person: Hunter's informant Sporty James is a night owl. In "Shades", McCall has asked him to meet her at a bar in the morning, and when she arrives he's not happy:
  Sporty: Excuse me for not standing, Sergeant, but, you know, my system is recovering from a shock of major proportions.
  McCall: What's wrong?
  Sporty: This is what's wrong. [Shows her his watch] You getting me up at the crack of dawn.
  McCall: It's practically noon, Sporty!
  Sporty: Not in my timezone, Sergeant. I work the streets and the streets don't sleep for nobody.
• No Warrant? No Problem!: Hunter and McCall often bypass requests for warrants by either employing lockpicking skills or suggesting to the associates that they'd look into their own police records, in addition to the suspect's.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: McCall is fond of doing this in her undercover work, specializing in playing ditzy girls, as is the Columbo expy Sergeant Kitty O'Hearn.
• Off on a Technicality: In "True Confessions", a group of teens spontaneously confess to accidentally killing a girl at a party, before the cops even had a chance to read them their Miranda Rights, so the confession supposedly becomes inadmissible. This sparks a vigilante-kills-the-killers plot. In Real Life, the technicality wouldn't have applied in the case of a spontaneous confession, and even if it did, the police could investigate to find other evidence that would support the case.
• One Thing Led to Another: An ex-girlfriend describes to Dee Dee McCall how she once got involved with Hunter by saying, "This lead to this, that lead to that..."
• Overt Rendezvous: Played for Laughs in "The Jade Woman" where a small-time crook steals a package of drugs from a crime boss, and says he'll sell it back to him. To avoid his inevitable death, the exchange takes place in the foyer of a police station.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Hunter and McCall are extremely close, spend a lot of time together outside of work, and though they sometimes date other people, even then they seem to prioritize each other above their current boy/girlfriends. Despite this, their relationship stays non-sexual, apart from a single occasion (which is referenced in the episode "Unfinished Business").
• Playing Drunk: When Dee Dee McCall investigates the trailer of a suspected cop killer parked next to a bar in "The Shooter", he comes back earlier than expected so she acts like a drunken patron who just stumbled into the wrong place.
• Police Psychic: In the episode "Second Sight", a psychic man with the apparent ability to predict the killings by a serial killer goes to the police with his predictions. Unsurprisingly, he is investigated as a possible suspect.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: In the fourth season, Charles Hallahan as Captain Charlie Devane
• Propping Up Their Patsy: In "Case X", when pornographer Tony Cochran's brother appears to be a suspect in a series of strangulations, Tony deflects accusations against his brother Vinny to throw suspicion off himself, knowing full well that Vinny is innocent of the crime Tony committed. After Vinny dies confronting Tony over his crimes, Tony makes Vinny's death look like a suicide and tries to make it seem like Vinny was the murderer.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: While Hunter does get called on his actions from time to time, it's quite amazing he suffers no punishment for traveling to a foreign nation and killing one of its high-ranking diplomats in "Rape and Revenge", albeit in self defense. Yes, the guy was a Jerkass rapist/murderer who raped McCall and almost killed Hunter, and hid behind his Diplomatic Impunity, but still.
• Pyromaniac: "Fire Man" features a villain who uses a flame thrower to set various buildings on fire, with a backstory of burning civilians in the Vietnam War.
• Psycho for Hire: In "Death Machine", the titular character (played by footballer John Matuszak) is a punk rocker hired by a wealthy man to track down his stolen jewellery. His investigative method is simply tracking down known fencers of stolen jewellery, and torture them to death. The killings freaks out the robbers so much that they mail back the jewellery along with an apology note.
• Psycho Psychologist: Dr. Bolin from the pilot episode, who is hired by Captain Cain to make psychological assessments of all his officers, in particular Hunter himself so Cain has grounds to fire him for being "unstable". It later turns out that Dr. Bolin is a Serial Killer who is being treated by another therapist for sociopathy. In fact, he specifically picks out blonde women because they resemble his therapist.
• Put on a Bus: Several of Hunter's police superiors throughout the series, including Captains Cain, Dolan, and Wyler. Captain Devane remained for the rest of the series.
• Quick Draw: The brother of a man who Hunter has killed turns up for revenge in "High Noon in L.A.". He's a fan of Westerns so he kidnaps Hunter and says he will duel him for his life. Hunter shoots the gun out of his hand, then repeatedly shoots the pistol as the man keeps grabbing for it. This is despite Hunter having ridiculed the idea of Blasting It Out of Their Hands in a previous episode.
• Qurac: The fictional country of Baraq, which is under threat by a group called the Students Revolutionary League in "62 Hours of Terror". The group claimed responsibility for a car bombing but Hunter suspects something else.
• Racing the Train: An episode has Rick Hunter jump onto a train traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco in order to tail a suspect, with his partner Dee Dee McCall having to chase after him by car to provide backup.
• Rape and Revenge: The plot of the two-parter "Rape and Revenge". When McCall is raped by a foreign diplomat, who uses his Diplomatic Impunity to flee the country, Hunter tracks him down in his homeland and ends up killing him.
• The Rashomon: "Unfinished Business" has Hunter and McCall visit a therapist to hash out their differences, they both give very different accounts of an incident that happened several years earlier—McCall recalls Hunter as being completely indifferent when she returned from a trip, virtually ignoring her while chatting happily with his replacement partner, while he remembers her being rather rude to him and the woman in question.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In "On Air", Hunter gives one to the woman he was protecting and dating, a romantic advice dispensing radio host who was being stalked by a crazed fan. Hunter finds out that she blew his cover to get more publicity for herself, and let someone else take the blame. Coupled with Is This Thing On? when instead of listening to Hunter's criticisms she tries to do the same thing to him and ends up deriding her listeners. Not until she finishes does she realize that he's flipped the "On Air" switch.
• Recap by Audit: Da Chief does this about an offscreen car chase, before deciding to get Hunter and Dee Dee new partners.
• Recycled Premise: The show sure liked doing episodes that were basically "Hunter's old partner/friend/girlfriend gets in trouble/is killed and he takes the case."
• Re-Release Soundtrack: The DVD and streaming episodes removed several licensed songs and replaced them with more generic ones. The German DVD sets retained the original music.
• Retcon: In the third season episode "Requiem for Sergeant McCall", the murder of Dee Dee's husband Steve is revealed to be the result of a case he was working on, contradicting the first season episode "The Shooter" where he is said to have been killed by some punk kids during a routine traffic stop. Steve is also changed from a rookie cop into a seasoned homicide detective.
• Retool:
  • The first was during the second season, when Roy Huggins became the executive producer. Among other things, Huggins toned down the violence, softened up Hunter and McCall's fractious relationships with their superiors, dropped a backstory concerning Hunter's family ties to the mob, played up the chemistry between the two leads, and moved the setting out of the backstreets and into the more desirable areas of Los Angeles. In a case of Tropes Are Tools, these changes helped the show fare better ratings-wise and with critics. Cannell himself also praised Huggins's work on the show. Cannell had previous experience with Huggins of couse.
  • Following the departure of Roy Huggins as executive producer in season four, seasons five and six saw more complex stories for episodes, with Hunter and McCall working on separate cases and come together at the end. The theme tune was also jazzed up.
  • After McCall was written off the show due to Stepfanie Kramer's departure, season seven saw Hunter and Devane moving from LAPD Homicide to Metro. As a result, the stories became more gritty while the show's action budget was reduced, together with a new intro and moodier lighting.
• Revival: The original series ran from 1984 to 1991, plus a couple of Made-for-TV movies in the 1990s. There was also a very shortlived revival in 2003 starring an older Hunter and McCall that was Cut Short after only five episodes.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: In "Bad Company", Hunter and McCall are captured by a White supremacist militia and has to figure out a way of escape, along with the leader's daughter who defected.
• Ripped from the Headlines: In "Any Second Now", Theresa Saldana plays a character who is being stalked by a crazed fan. Saldana herself was the victim in an infamous stalking case.
• Robbing the Mob Bank:
  • In "The Jade Woman", a not very smart crook steals cocaine from a courier, and then tries to sell it to the courier's employer, who finds it very interesting that he's being sold the exact amount of coke that's just been stolen from him...
  • Another small time crook robs a literal mob bank in "Payback", where the used money he stole turn out to be counterfeits that owner tries to pass off as legitimate damaged money, which he plans to give to the Federal Reserve to be destroyed and be given clean ones in exchange. Unsurprisingly, the crook finds out about the scheme and decides to blackmail the mob bank owner.
  • In "Death Machine", a couple steals money from a sleazy businessman who employs a Psycho for Hire to get it back. The latter kills so many people while looking for them, the terrified thieves mail the valuables back with a note attached saying We're sorry.
  • In "Brotherly Love", a drug addicted teen accidentally kills a dealer and steals his drug money, earning the wrath of the drug lord who sends a hitman after him. The teen eventually realizes that he went way over his head, and calls the drug lord to return the money, only to be murdered anyway...by the hitman who wants to keep the money for himself.
• Running Gag:
  • The CB Radio handset getting disconnected in Hunter's Alleged Car.
  • McCall being unable to open the side door of the Alleged Car and having to crawl out the window.
  • The mortician Carlos who practices his tuba hobby at work, often when Hunter and McCall are trying to visit.
• Serial-Killer Killer:
  • A parole officer in "The Garbage Man" (played Ed O'Neill) hunts down and kills parolees who committed serious crimes such as murder, as well as one of his colleagues trying to expose him.
  • In his last appearance in "Silver Bullet", Lieutenant Ambrose Finn becomes this in grief after his wife lay dying of a terminal illness, killing criminals he felt escaped the justice system.
• Serial Rapist: "Bigfoot", who targets single women with new houses, due to the fact that he works for a real estate company with spare keys to their houses.
• Sexy Sweater Girl: McCall often wears tight sweaters that show off her figure, though in winter she tends to wear a jacket on top.
• Shoo Out the New Guy: When Stepfanie Kramer left the show in 1990 after six years as Sgt. Hunter's partner/sidekick Dee Dee McCall, her character was replaced by Officer Joanne Molenski, who quickly became Hunter's new beat partner. However, actress Darlanne Fluegel was unable to get along with series star Fred Dryer or others on the show's staff, and she soon resigned less than three months into the 1990-1991 season. It was decided the new girl — Molenski — would be murdered by a Serial Killer.
• Shooting Gallery: In "Sniper", Hunter and McCall are investigating a mad sniper shooting women has them going to an army range, where they naturally encounter both the standard Red Herring suspect, who shoots all targets innocent or guilty with great enthusiasm, and his older sergeant who is the real killer. At the end Hunter chases the killer onto the range and activates the targets. The killer reacts to the first couple of targets, so when Hunter appears his reactions are lax enough that he gets shot.
• Show Within a Show: Street Heat. Hunter and McCall are sent to be technical advisers on the show in "Killer in the Halloween Mask", only to be dragged into a homicide case when the main star of the show is unexpectedly murdered.
• Small-Town Tyrant:
  • While Hunter and McCall are escorting a prisoner through a small Midwestern town in "A Long Way from L.A.", a local girl is raped and beaten and the incident is blamed on the prisoner, who is later killed. In fact, the culprit is the sheriff, who has been abusing his power and his position as the stepson of the richest man in town.
  • In "The Biggest Man in Town", the town sheriff is in the pockets of the corrupt tycoon who runs the town, and assassinates an employee trying to blackmail the tycoon. He also tries to kill Hunter and McCall on the tycoon's orders when they try to investigate the assassination while undercover.
• Stock Unsolved Mysteries: The episode "The Black Dahlia" has Hunter and McCall investigate new leads in the famous unsolved 1947 murder known by that name.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: In the episode "Overnight Sensation", an Intrepid Reporter called Raul Marcado continues to butt heads with Hunter over his policing tactics, and even accuses Hunter of trying to stalk him. After Hunter catches the culprits who tried to kill Marcado, the reporter appears to reconcile with Hunter and would clear his name on his program, only to be blown up in a car bomb. Turns out the culprit is the station manager seeking revenge on Marcado for cheating with his wife.
• Teacher/Student Romance: A subplot in "City Under Siege", where a high school teacher is in a relationship with a vulnerable student of his. A delinquent student discovers this and uses it to blackmail the teacher to reveal McCall's undercover status.
• That One Case: Sgt. Doyle, Hunter's former mentor, joins him and McCall in the episode "The Black Dahlia" when it appears that a recent murder may be the work of the infamous Black Dahlia killer. That case was the only one Doyle never solved.
• Theme Serial Killer: Another recurring threat, appearing in episodes such as the three part "City Under Siege", "Lullaby" and the two part "Fatal Obsession" (a.k.a. the one where Molenski gets killed).
• Torture Technician: "The Nightmare" features a master torturer and Former Regime Personnel of a Banana Republic, noted for giving victims slow and agonizing deaths while listening to Mozart. When the regime was overthrown, he faked his death and fled to the US by pretending to be one of his own victims and cutting himself with his own incisions, all while using the money stolen from his victims to create a new identity as a philanthropist. When one of his victims recognized him, he and his henchman begins to track down her associates, even torturing one to death, to ensure his real identity never gets revealed.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Rick Hunter is often seen snacking on chili dogs or buying other people one. His partner McCall often protests Rick's cheap tastes.
  • Hunter goes on a health food kick in later seasons and McCall isn't too thrilled about that either.
• Trashcan Bonfire: In "The Beach Boy" a drug dealer is murdered by a Professional Killer, and at the end of the episode Hunter and McCall find his fellow dealers holding a wake in an alley around a burning trashcan. They explain that this was where the deceased made his first drug buy (and also where Hunter first busted him).
• Undercover Model: In the third-season episode "Double Exposure", McCall goes undercover as a photo model to infiltrate a model agency suspected of foul play. She doesn't even have to Clean Up Nicely: using her natural good looks, she has no problems producing a portfolio that impresses the agency into hiring her on the spot.
• Unfriendly Fire: Detective Bernie Terwilliger is played up to be so incompetent that during a shoot-out in a hotel hallway, he opens fire on his fellow officers until McCall restrains him.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Typhoon Thompson (Isaac Hayes) in "The Return of Typhoon Thompson" is this toward Hunter. Rick went to bat for him with the Governor and got all charges against Thompson dropped (including auto theft and assault on a police officer) for crimes committed when he tried to clear his name after being paroled for murder. Thompson is still upset because it doesn't change the fact that people only see him now as an ex-con, despite the fact that he was innocent of the murder charge that sent him to prison. In fairness he'd spent eight years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, so it's not like Thompson didn't have reason to be bitter against Hunter, who put him in there.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Hunter and McCall are obviously attracted to each other, and even admit that themselves, but manage to keep their relationship on a professional, Just Friends level, while dating other people. At least, they manage most of the time — one episode reveals that they actually did sleep with each other once.
• Vapor Wear: In "Overnight Sensation", an investigative TV reporter is depicting Hunter as a dirty cop. When McCall visits the reporter to try to persuade him that he's on the wrong track, she wears a thin, white sweater with her nipples and areolae clearly showing through. Unfortunately, it doesn't help persuade the journalist.
• Villain of the Week: With the exception of a few double episodes, Rick Hunter and Dee Dee McCall will always investigate one case a week involving a criminal who will be either locked up or shot dead by the end of the episode.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The crime boss in "Playing God" likes to present himself as a charitable community leader, even though he engaged in various assaults, including the sexual assault of a woman. The women later committed suicide when she discovered that she was pregnant, leaving the distraught husband, who himself is infertile, to assassinate the crime boss.
• Villainous Crush: The crazy surveillance expert in "The Avenging Angel" who wants to be together with Hunter, and to that end he tries to kidnap and kill McCall and replace her as his partner.
• War Hero: Hunter is a veteran of The Vietnam War, and regularly meet up with his former comrades.
• Watch the Paint Job: Sometimes Hunter manages (by audacity, oversight or sheer luck) to requisition a new car from the department, rather than the Alleged Car he will usually be given. The people in charge of the car pool will invariably be very upset about serial wrecker Hunter getting his hands on a pristine vehicle, and there is a lot of angst over in which shape he'll return it. Of course, the car is totaled or at least severely damaged during the episode. This leads to another show of angst and anger when the car is returned.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • After leaving the show at the end of season 6 to be married, McCall returns in the 2002 special Hunter: Return to Justice, where she is married to a new husband, with zero mentions of the previous one.
  • Hunter's de facto relationship with Chris Novak is not mentioned in the 1995 special The Return of Hunter: Everyone Walks in L.A., as he started a relationship with another woman. Hunter's half-Vietnamese son is not mentioned again after his sole appearance.
• White Sheep: Hunter comes from a Mob family but has chosen to join the police. He sometimes uses his connections to get information from his relatives, who also try to use him to get inside police information (which he doesn't allow). This only happens in the first season, and Hunter's mob background is never mentioned in later seasons.
• Witless Protection Program: In "The Big Fall", the other team of detectives guarding a murder witness is comprised of a corrupt cop and an alcoholic. Hunter suspects that something bad is going to happen, and it does. The witness winds up taking a fatal fall from the hotel balcony.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: In the episode "Sniper", an army Sergeant goes on a shooting spree with a Sniper Rifle to kill random women in public parks who remind him of his ex-wife. When a young boy runs into him in the process of chasing after a football while he's scoping out his next target, he tells the kid to take a hike. This backfires when the boy alerts a police officer and the sniper has to flee the scene.
• You Got Murder: In "Blow-Up", explosives expert Otto Minsky uses exploding parcels to kill his targets, detonating them using a phone line.
• You're Not My Type:
  • In "Dead or Alive", a Bounty Hunter shows an interest in Hunter's partner Dee Dee McCall. Hunter tells him curtly, "She's not your type." The bounty hunter smirks and says they're all his type.
  • Pretty much repeated a few episodes later by Dirty Cop Jackie Molinas in "The Snow Queen".
• You Watch Too Much X: In "High Noon in L.A.", Hunter tells Curuguyan National Carlos Mariano, who's determined to kill him in a shoot-out, that he's been watching too many John Wayne movies.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me:
  • A pimp says this to Dee Dee McCall in the premiere episode. It's no surprise he turns out to be wrong.
  • In the second episode McCall's old partner, who has become a hitman after getting fired from the force, says this to her when she tries to arrest him. He's right in this instance, and almost kills McCall before Hunter intervenes.

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