The brief first season--only five episodes--delved into the dark side of Hooker's character, brooding over booze and mounting debts, riding his recruits because of his own regrets. All that went out the window as the second season roared into action, turning Hooker into a standard tough guy with a heart of gold. But the classic Spelling elements were there from the start: Almost every case involves a relative or an old friend; the bad guys announce their sleaziness from the moment they appear; and no opportunity to show a little skin is missed (short-shorts and tight, nipple-emphasizing tops are de rigueur). Featuring street gangs, snipers, Bible-toting psychos, baby-faced arsonists (a very young David Caruso, NYPD Blue), and vengeful cops (Shatner's old pal Leonard Nimoy), T. J. Hooker had no pretensions to anything but roiling melodrama with some midlevel stunts thrown in every few episodes. It all rests on whether or not you like Shatner. If you do, you'll hug yourself when Hooker's ex-wife tells him, as if intoning a zen koan, "You'll do your best, and I know you already have, because you always do." No commentaries, alas; the only extra is a pointless compilation of "Next week on T. J. Hooker" snippets. --Bret Fetzer