All Wet

Missing scene from the Pilot

"Damn!" Starsky muttered. "My jeans shrunk."

"Maybe you gained weight," Hutch offered as an explanation. "You are getting a little bit of a paunch." He patted his partner's belly.

Starsky glowered at him. "It's impossible to gain that much weight in a few minutes, dummy."

"Who's to say what's possible and impossible, Starsky. Why, not too long ago, people thought it was impossible to send a man into space. Now, men have been on the moon."

"So what about the possibility I'm growing scales and gills, huh? Between the steam bath, the rain, and the dip in the pool, I've been wet more'n dry for most of the day."

Hutch smiled at the opportunity to tease Starsky using his latest cockamamie statement. "Are you saying you're turning into a fish, Starsky? That's ridiculous. I told you not to watch that rerun of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea the other night. You have a hard enough time as it is separating fantasy from fact."

Starsky rolled his eyes. "Ha, ha, Hutch. Aren't we descended from fishes? Like that, uh, Dagwood fella claimed? And why can't we go back, hunh? I mean, there are people who can dive real deep without scuba gear. They're called …" He snapped his fingers while he hunted for the word. Finding it, his eyes gleamed. "Free divers. Yeah, that's it. Like pearl divers. Couldn't they be part fish already?"

Hutch sighed and said, "It's Darwin, dummy." He paused for a moment when he realized he was getting sucked into one of Starsky's convoluted "what-if" scenarios. He had to end this quickly or they'd be in the apartment complex's laundry room for hours.

"Okay, Starsky, let's say, for the sake of argument, you could turn into a fish. What type would you be?"

Starsky's brows knitted in thought briefly, then grinned. "Dolphin. They're terrific."

"Dolphins aren't fish, Starsky. They're mammals, like us."

"Kinda proves my point."

Unable to resist the lure of Starsky's unique logic, Hutch said, "I'm gonna regret this, but what point is that?"

"Fish and dolphins live in the sea. Some fishes went ambitious and came onto land -"

Hutch cut him off with a disdainful wave of his hand. "Don't you mean 'amphibious'?"

"Nope, I mean ambitious. It had to take some chutzpah to leave home and go exploring the possibilities on land."

Hutch sighed once more, kicking himself mentally for unsuccessfully nipping Starsky's bizarre twists of thought, even though it made him a good detective, in the bud already. "Fine. I concede the point. Go on."

"Okay." Starsky became increasingly animated. "So some fishes came on land, while others stayed in the ocean. Some of the home bodies became dolphins, 'cause they liked it there. No reason why humans can't go back home." He tucked his shirt in his jeans.

Hutch shrugged into his jacket. "Starsky, I swear you are the nuttiest fruitcake I know, and I know some of the nuttiest. Sometimes you drive me crazy with your, your … theories."

"Hey, partner, who's to say what's possible or impossible?" Starsky smirked, obviously enjoying throwing that quote back at Hutch.

Hutch pointed his index finger at Starsky. "Let's drop this now, or so help me ..." He let the threat dangle in the air between them.

Starsky wasn't quite ready to drop it. "You know what kinda fish you'd be, Hutch?" he asked as he seated his shoulder harness in place.

"No, I don't, and I don't wanna know," Hutch said, impatient anger starting to come through in his tone.

"Yeah, you do. You're the curious type. Makes you a good detective. Anyhow, you'd be a carp." Starsky, grinning impishly, patted Hutch's cheek several times. He left the laundry room at a near-run.

It took a couple of beats for Hutch to realize his partner had meant more than just fish. "You know something, Starsky, you're all wet!"

the end

July 2019

The VTTBOTS episode Hutch refers to is The Amphibians from Season 1.