- Title: Spenser: For Hire – Brother to Dragons
- IMDb: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back to the mean streets of Boston and the travails of a smart ass private detective. The death of a second student by heroin overdose in Susan‘s (Barbara Stock) school leads to Spenser going undercover as a teacher. There he discovers a troubled teen (Patrice Colihan) and a vice principal (Timothy Carhart) pushing vulnerable young women into the arms of a pornographer and drug dealer (Stephen McHattie). The episode takes steps to present Corbett (McHattie) as a legitimate threat to Spenser through the eyes of Hawk (Avery Brooks) who knows both men and warns each that any confrontation between the pair would be too close to call.
While the episode starts off a bit like an 80s anti-drug special, it doesn’t take long for the story to develop into something that fits the show’s themes with the discovery of the child pornography and the introduction of Corbett as a legitimate threat. Susan is given a bit more to do in the episode given her role as a guidance counselor in the school as well as her attempts to broach the young woman’s troubles with her emotionally-distant father (Michael Zaslow). The episode is also notable for the one-on-one fight between Spenser and Corbett inside an aquarium (which Hawk ensures will be a fair fight).
