I've always seen it as an excuse to beat your characters and then get 'em laid.

SA is not wrong--h/c goes back just as far as Mary Sue does. Occasionally it even gets filmed; I recall a Xena episode that was basically hurt/comfort. But without the healing sex.

Starsky & Hutch was pretty much four seasons of hurt/comfort interspersed with cheesy costumes, dance numbers, and hookers.

Starsky & Hutch was pretty much four seasons of hurt/comfort interspersed with cheesy costumes, dance numbers, and hookers.

Good times.

I mean, what, six episodes in and one of the leads is kidnapped and forcibly addicted to heroin. It just doesn't get better than that!

Was that the one when Hutch collapsed and Starsky was cradling him desperately in his arms? Then wrote I love you on the ICU window?

Yes on the desperate cradling, but I'm actually not sure about the ICU thing because that show had so many near-death I love yous. The bullet wounds, the poisonings, the kidnappings, the car accidents, the hotpants...

It was the poisoning one, right. And Starksy desperately searching for the cure.

I wonder if I could stand to track down the DVDs for a glorious wallow in '70s hoyay.

You should check deepdiscount.com (formerly deep discount dvd) and Amazon's blowout sales because sometimes they'll have dvds half off and Starsky and Hutch has been a part of that. Or check ebay.

I've seen S1 and really liked it, definitly slashy. Plus they take their clothes off a lot (or at least their shirts).

If only they didn't have those girls popping up all the time and getting in the way of the One True Love.

Oh, lord, Starsky and Hutch and the Grand Torino are the ancestors of Dean and Sam and the Mettalicar.

S&H is a surprisingly current fandom. It always has reccers on crack_van, and apparently there are still people writing it on a regular basis.

H/C is a staple of the Big Fandom, I think, particularly of the Big Slashy Fandom. SG1, Sentinal, due South, Buffy--even SGA and SPN are making with the Big Slashy Manpain/Manlove. It's not something I read often, and usually if I do it has to break the h/c convention somehow. Generally I find that h/c twists characterization more than I'm comfortable with, in the name of creating a situation that enables the two characters to Realize Their Love in the act of caring. A little too off the mark for me.

I'm thinking of that one really egregiously long SGA story where Rodney ends up in a hospital bed again and again, and John still doesn't buy a clue until the very end. Rodney may have been blind at some point.

It occurs to me that the above description probably isn's specific enough...