The episode was "King of the Hill." I got the impression that Hooker was a hill racer after he got back from Vietnam, because James Darren's character says something to Romano along the lines that he and Hooker were supposed to race to see who would be King of the Hill, but Hooker skipped out to take some kind of exam related to being a cop (maybe to get into the police academy . . . can't remember the details).
This show, while thouroughly entertaining, was never too concerned with plot details/inconsistencies. After all, Romano was a Vietnam vet, too, even though in one episode Hooker refers to Romano as being 22 or 23 years old. In the early 80s. Unless you can enlist in the army at age 10, I'm not sure I understand how this makes sense in any universe. Better to just ignore these details, I suppose . . .
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Just_Call_Me_Nathan
16 years ago
I suppose the Romano-Vietnam vet angle could possibly be explained if Romano was meant to be in his mid-to-late twenties (i.e. older than he looked) and he had only served in Vietnam in the last years of the conflict. (The last American troops left Vietnam in 1975)
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w22nuschler
12 years ago
I never remember Hooker referring to Ramano's age. He always called him junior. His actual age was 28 when it started, so he could have served at the end of the Vietnam war.
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