This Season 1 epsiode was a classic Dragmet bunco story. Even though the crime was non-violent, the show established how much harm was done by swindling senior citizens.
This episode was the earliest episode featuring Bust Martin, though his role was not as prominent as it would be in future shows. The episode had a great payoff in the final scene that makes it truly a must-watch.
*A search for a man wanted in another city turns deadly.
Original Air Date: March 1, 1953
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This episode has a lot to commend it as Joe Friday deals with young shoplifters. The show has some fascinating (including some that could be considered breeches of 21st Century political correctness.)
The show, however features Friday facing a very unusual juvenile foe. Friday delivers a decent “Jesus” speech but it fails to impress the young delinquent, who is a real smart mouth. In this episode, Friday and the juvenile are fairly equally matched. The ending of the show is classic, it’s completely unexpected and surprising, and counter to the usual Dragnet youth show formula.
The episode addressed a meme of the counterculture to disenchanted youth. The cops “don’t understand you.” This episode told disenchanted teenagers that it was possible for despised authority figures to understand them and what can drive them to the point of frustration, and even crime.
Friday and Smith investigate the murder of an elderly man who let it be known that he kept a lot of money around the house.
Original Air Date: February 22, 1953
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This episode introduces us to Daniel Loomis, Mr. Daniel Loomis. The Story begins with Mr. Loomis walking off with everything his wife’s blind grandmother owned. And from there, we learn to really hate the guy as we learn that he stole the money for his own mother’s funeral and has another wife.
This episode was noted for marking a falling out between Jack Webb and Burt Prelutsky, who wrote seven episodes for season three, but only this one episode for Season Four. Pretulsky wrote:
In the script, the perp had a fondness for bowling. For him, it was a pastime that approached a compulsion. The way I had it, he committed a couple of crimes involving bowling alleys, was arrested while trying to pick up a 7-10 spare, and in between there was a lot of Friday-Gannon banter that revolved around bowling.
Webb wanted to change the compulsion to butterflies, partly because someone he’d grown up around somone that had that compulsion, and mostly because it would avoid a trip off the studio lot. Pretulsky had a solution for the problem:
Through the use of sound effects and a glass counter full of bowling shoes and score sheets, I advised, we could easily indicate the venue in the earlier scenes. And instead of arresting the perp on the lanes, Friday and Gannon could cuff him at the coke machine.
However, all was not well between the two:
For in Jack Webb’s world, I had committed the unpardonable sin. The problem wasn’t that I’d come up with the solution to his problem. It was that just prior to solving it, I had told him that I’d done all the work on the script that I was contracted to do, work that he’d already accepted and approved of, and that if he insisted on my turning our villain into a butterfly collector, it would entail a page-one rewrite. In other words, I would expect to be paid to write that brand-new script he had in mind.
Watching the episode as shot, only two scenes actually involved bowling. The core of the story was about the incredible Mr. Loomis’ career in crime not his career in bowling. I can sympathize with why Webb felt like Prelutsky was trying to shake him down for more money when a page 1 rewrite really doesn’t seem necessary. As a writer, I can also understand Prelutsky fighting for his vision. He just may have chosen the wrong tactic to use with Webb.
A woman is missing. Her husband swears she fine, her daughter insists there’s been foul play. Who’s telling the truth?
Original Air Date: February 15, 1953
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One beef on Dragnet and Jack Webb is that the bad cop is never portrayed. Webb responded to this in a 1972 interview with TV Guide:
We’ve admitted many times that the police make mistakes, both on Dragnet and Adam-12. People tend to forget that; nobody can possibly see or remember all the shows we’ve made.
Regarding not being able to see all the shows, Webb hadn’t met me. 
However, one show that contained the baddest cop in the history of Dragnet is this Season 3 episode, “Administrative Vice: DR29″ where Friday finds himself partner to a seasoned vice cop gone bad by the name of Drucker, perhaps the worst cop gone bad in all of Dragnet history. Friday really has to walk a careful line and do everything just right to protect his own career and integrity. This is a sensational highlight of the lackluster Season 3 as Lt. Drucker proves a worthy opponent for Sgt. Friday.
The episode also illustrates Webb’s view of how bad cops should be portrayed:
If I do a story of a crooked or a disturbed policeman, either he’ll be eliminated from the department or he’ll be straightened out and remain on. But I won’t just leave it raw. I think it’s improper reporting not to tell the other side of the story. Of course, you sacrifice something in the area of sensationalism when you do that. Dragnet and Adam-12 aren’t as exciting as the Wambaugh books or “Dirty Harry” in that respect; we don’t have the heavies inside the department itself. We’re not doing stories about the guys we know will eventually be weeded out. We’re doing stories about everyday working policemen.
Webb understood the power of television. He chose to tell it the way it usually happened, rather than finding an aberration and emphasizing it as many TV and movie producers have done in the search for higher ratings. Webb, however held the firm moral high ground in portraying honest police department that rooted out the bad apples.
Friday and Smith are searching for two paper hangers, and their printing press.
Original Air Date: February 8, 1953
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Recall back to our #37 episode, the Season 1 episode , The Kidnapping. The episode ends with Officer Gannon trying and failing to leave Joe Friday to take the heat for what seems to be a minor bureaucratic oops. When borrowing some money from a bank to payoff the kidnapper to lure him out, Friday and Gannon had forgotten to get a receipt from the Bank President. However, everything turned out well, but the Captain wanted a few words with the boys.
We find out why in AID: The Receipt. In this episode, Friday and Gannon are working out of internal affairs and investigate the case of two police officers who are accused of stealing $800, and their long time careers are put on the line because of a missing receipt.
In some ways, this was a definitive explanation of Dragnet’s approach to policework. Dragnet often worried about small details that wouldn’t matter on any other show, little processes and procedures. But these processes and procedure are vital to keeping officers on the job and safe. If you don’t like details, policework simply isn’t career for you, because failing to follow the details has serious consequences.
The show features a good performance by Virginia Gregg, some good dramatic tensions with Gannon and Friday being friends with the officers involved, and an ending that will be appreciated by those of us who tend to lose things.
Joe Friday and Frank Smith find themselves in a Check Forging case that’s been going on for nearly a decade. The description of the perpetrator: A kindly looking elderly woman:
Season 2, Episode 9
Original Air Date: January 8, 1953
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