Norman Buntz (Dennis Franz) has a tough day on the hill, one that will shake him to his core, whether he admits it or not in What Are Friends For? With an original airdate of 5 December, 1985, this episode was written by Dick Wolf.

Buntz and Rodriguez (Del Zamora) are running down a lead but find themselves captured by a recently released murderous mental patient, Tommy Joe Page (Will Nye), who wants revenge on Buntz for his arrest. While Buntz tries to hold it together, and square off against Page, Rodriguez has a tougher time, and when things go south Buntz realizes he has to keep his brave facade up or he’s not getting out of this thing alive.

Belker (Bruce Weitz) is working undercover at a dog impound and sees the horrible underbelly of the business that allows the wrong people to purchase and adopt animals for the wrong reasons. Belker waits until he has the evidence he needs and makes his move. Meanwhile, he and Robin (Lisa Sutton) are making amends after their blow-up following Robin’s injury. They have a quick scare related to her pregnancy, but things smooth out with some required bed rest.

Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) and Joyce (Veronica Hamel) run into problems getting a mortgage for a new place and try to figure out what happened. J.D. (Kiel Martin) and Washington (Taurean Blacque) bust a popular ball player on a DUI only to find drugs in the car’s trunk, which leads to a sting operation on some of his fellow players.

The Virgin and The Turkey sees the holiday season getting closer. Written by David Milch, Walon Green and Robert Ward from a story by Jeffrey Lewis, Green and Ward, this episode debuted on 12 December, 1985.

It’s a bit of a lighter episode. Furillo and Joyce spend some time with Furillo’s family as Christmas gets closer, and spend the entire time taking flak for their choices about not having children. It’s a huge Italian family, and that is going to cause the entire stay at the Furillo family home a problem until things exode, can the family holiday be saved?

Buntz is using a turkey to sniff out drugs (and probably still dealing with the trauma of the last episode’s encounter), and Coffey (Ed Marinaro) is dealing with a problem between a landlord and a tenant over a lack of rent payment, and the purported image of Mary on the walls of the apartment.

Lucy (Betty Thomas) is suffering from the holiday blahs, and ends up having a one night stand.

Robin and Belker set up for the holidays, and decide to make the holidays very special by setting a date for their marriage, two weeks from today.

The rest of the precinct is preparing for the annual Fireman vs. Cops Olympics that will take place in a local public school gym.

Watch for Star Trek’s Tim Russ, hiding behind a moustache!

This puts us almost halfway through the penultimate season of Hill Street Blues, so until next week, let’s be careful out there.