- Title: Street Hawk – A Second Self
- IMDb: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back in time to when a motorcycle cop turned vigilante helped keep the streets of Los Angeles safe on an experimental bike known as Street Hawk. The show’s second episode guest-stars George Clooney as Jesse’s (Rex Smith) old racing buddy Kevin Stark. While Norman Tuttle (Joe Regalbuto) can see the obvious bond between the former racers, he’s not too happy with the competitive nature Stark brings out in Jesse (or the reckless abandon Stark takes to win a private race between the pair). At the same time the head of auto theft ring (Robert Lipton) who blames Street Hawk for the death of his brother, reaches outside the state for a driver capable of helping take down the vigilante once and for all.
As plans go, it’s not the worst one in the world, but the show has trouble visually making the antics of the Phantom Driver make sense outside the final chase sequence where he lures the vigilante into a trap. Obviously Stark and the Phantom Driver are one and the same, but neither Jesse nor Stark catch on to the fact they are working against each other with Jesse’s life on the line. Baiting and delivering Street Hawk into a trap, it’s only then Stark discovers the truth and sacrifices himself to save Jesse’s life earning some measure of redemption (and taking Jesse’s secret to his grave). The episode also sees Jesse roller-skating and dirt biking in public, suggesting his healed knee isn’t as big a secret to keep under wraps as the pilot suggested.
