Spenser!

I watched Spenser: Ceremony last night with Shari. Spenser was a guilty pleasure of the 80’s. Particularly the scenes with Avery Brooks as Hawk. In fact, even the Spenser books without the counterpoint of the Hawk character are flat. I’d never seen the made for cable movies. And, as usual, the scenes with Brooks are worth slogging through the rest of the movie. Since it was made for cable, every once in a while there would be gratuitous bare breasts shown.

The actor who played Susan Silverman, Spenser’s girlfriend, (Barbara Williams) was the not the same woman who portrayed the character in the series for 2 years (Barbara Stock) and was a disappointment. She didn’t have same flair or sensuality of Stock. Her face was too thin and her lips too big.

Looking her up on IMDB, I found that she is married to Tom Hayden. THE Tom Hayden? Yup. Same guy who was married to Jane Fonda and who remembers that marriage anymore? He apparently appeared as an actor in the 70’s in shows like the Six Million Dollar Man. How that came about I can only guess. Was it while he was married to Fonda and Hollywood was trying to be nice to him?

Tom Hayden as an actor: seems unlikely. I remember he had adult acne.

In Williams’ bio it says that one of the characters she’s played is Joan Baez in a theatre production done in LA.  If I can’t see her as Susan Silverman, I certainly can’t see her as Joan Baez.

Still, there is a scene in which Hawk, while looking at and talking to Spenser, casually shoots someone about to attack them from the side. Made the whole movie worth watching.