It's great that someone here acknowledged the Hill. It ranks up there with Trek, Twilight Zone and Once and Again as one of my all time favorites. Bravo was, until recently, blanketing their daily schedule with Hill episodes (three times daily, two hours on Saturdays.) Then, as usual, Bravo just cut down on its daily runs (once per weekday.) No doubt Bravo will soon send it off to collect dust on the shelf, like it's doing now with thirtysomething, St. Elsewhere and Moonlighting.
IMHO, the best episode of the Hill was the fourth season episode where Frank Furillo and Joyce Davenport marry, Lucy Bates goes undercover as a bus driver (and has an encounter with a punk and his radio similar to Kirk's in Star Trek IV), Vic Hitler the comic is revealed to be a narcoleptic, and Ray Calletano confronts Furillo about his future. Great show, with a top flight cast.

Jesse Bochco, son of Steve and Barbara Bosson, played Frank Furillo Jr. in a few episodes of the Hill. He is now one of the producers of NYPD Blue.

There was one plot point of the Hill that's bothered me. In an episode in the middle of the series' run, Fay reveals to Frank that she's pregnant by Judge Grogan (Donnelly Rhodes, who now plays the Doctor on Battlestar Galactica.) Yet, it seems like she's hitting Frank up to pay support on this kid. (Frank smartly says no.) Being that I have to pay child support myself, any man who voluntarily pays support on a kid he didn't father is an all-day-sucker in my book.

Well, to me, Fay never seemed to be the sharpest tool in the shed, if you know what I mean. Maybe she figured he'd do it out of sympathy for her. That ploy worked quite a bit over the life of the series...

January 31, 2006 (a few days after the 25th anniversary of its NBC premiere) is the street date for the first season DVD set.

Fox recently reduced prices on their DVD sets. I picked up season one of the Hill (17 episodes) for $13. Almost a steal. Seasons one and two are all that's available, and Fox is reluctant to release more, as the sets that were out sold poorly. Maybe with the lower prices, more sets will sell, and more will come out.

Also, reruns of the Hill, along with NBC's two other '80s signature shows, St. Elsewhere and LA Law, are now on the cable channel American Life TV Sunday evenings. Each episode is run twice.

Yeah, I caught that the other day. They're in a 3 hour block.

I was stressed out last night, and the Hill episode that was rerun (Am. Life TV runs them in sequence) gave me a great laugh that I needed. One of the plot points was that the cops had to perform an annual search of the city sewers for alligators. That job fell to Howard Hunter and his EATers. So, Washington and LaRue play an extremely juvenile prank on them, by obtaining a fake motorized gator and sending it through the sewers. I don't think it's a Spoiler when the EATers blow away the fake gator, and LaRue and Washington are on the ground, laughing hysterically. I was too, it was great.

That's the beauty of it.

LaRue and Washington were the comic relief, yet they also had a very serious side -- cf. LaRue's alcoholism.

And of course, Trekkers know Howard Hunter (aka James B. Sikking ) as Captain Stiles of the Excelsior.

In a recent repeat on Am-Life, one of my favorite scenes was cut. It was the episode in which Sgt. Ezterhaus' prized 1959 Buick Electra 225 convertible was stolen, and only the steering wheel was recovered. The scene that was cut was when Esterhaus interrogated the alleged perp, while trashing a chair to bits with his bare hands. A bleeding shame.

I was wrong in the post directly above this. Esterhas didn't break the chair over his stolen Buick, he broke the chair in front of a perp whose partner walked off with the engagement ring Phil got for Grace. A "tag team" of thieves; one faked an epileptic fit in a jewelry store while the other perp lifted jewelry off the counter. Including Esterhas' engagement ring.

Whenever Howard and the EATers are on, I always think of "The Blues Brothers" movie, when the SWAT team is going "hut hut hut"

I posted a while back: The best episode of the Hill was the fourth season episode where Frank Furillo and Joyce Davenport marry...yada, yada.
Actually, it was a third season episode, titled "Eugene's Comedy Empire Strikes Back." Am Life ran it last night. Michael Conrad must have been ill during filming, because except for roll call, his Sgt. Esterhaus was MIA.
Fay was even more whiny than usual in that episode. After Frank told her that he had just gotten married, she started to cry, and told him that she had hoped to get him back. Yeah, I'd take back my ex-wife, even though she's pregnant with another man's child. Not!
In a prior episode, Frank tried to put his foot down, and told Fay to stop coming to the station to complain to him. I guess it didn't work. (Barbara Bosson would eventually leave the series. But, she received five Emmy nominations for playing Fay.)
Terry Kiser (Vic Hitler) would acheive film "immortality" a few years after this episode. He played the title character in the unfunny "comedy" Weekend at Bernie's.

For some odd reason, Am. Life "re-booted" its Sunday night 80's lineup. They were an episode or two into the Hill's fifth season when they started over this past Sunday with the pilot; they also ran the St. Elsewhere and L.A. Law pilots. Ironically, Am. Life ran Robert Prosky's first episode last month within a few days of his death.

Yeah, I caught all three reboots.

I don't think any of them were near done.

I meant "near done with their series run".

AmLife... pardon me, the new ALN... will be running Hill Street, LA Law, and St. Elsewhere 4 nights a week from 7-10 (and 10-1).

That didn't last long, as Am-Life is now called You-Too. And, they dropped most of their old series, while picking up The X-Files. (IIRC, they still run Batman and The Green Hornet). A channel titled Nuvo-TV was running the Hill Wednesday nights, but I think they've dropped it.
I picked up season two of Hill Street for $9.99 at Wal-Mart the other day. Unfortunately, after all these years, seasons one and two are still the only ones released.

The entire series was recently released on DVD by Shout! Factory. More here.