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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.
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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:
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Marijuana is the flame, heroin’s the fuse, LSD is the bomb.
This episode is one of Dragnet’s 1960s runs most meorable as Joe Friday enters a druggie guru’s lair and takes him on in a war of words, which translates into an extended 2 on 1 debate on drugs and democracy.
There’s one big reason to not like this episode and this is that this lacks the look and feel of an episode of Dragnet: the story of police investigation. Instead, we’re given the story of an afternoon debate between our hero and a criminal.
However, this episode is a favorite of mine for two reasons. First of all, the debate is a classic, with many fine rhetorical jabs, and great eloquence. I view a good debate as good entertainment. Many people disagree, but I’m not arguing the show is one of the best. Only one of my favorites.
First of all, it’s the ultimate counterculture v. mainstream culture debate. Joe Friday v. a Timothy Leary stand-in. In the 1950s, Joe Friday was at the vanguard of an era when entertainment honored the law and the values most Americans held dear. In the 1960s, Friday stood as a bulwark in an entertainment world that had returned to portraying police as corrupt, incompetent, and worse, and seemed to be deconstructing America.
Dragnet was counter-counter culture, and the audience that was drawn to the show would have found it refreshing for someone to speak for what they believe and actually come out on top in the entertainment media.
The episode itself was uncharacteristically unrealistic. A police officer would not spend thirty minutes debating democracy with a suspected drug dealer. The episode with its surreal groovy setting takes the show and makes into a police fantasy, rather than a police procedural. While, there are many officers who would like to do what Friday did, most police officers couldn’t. However, Sergeant Friday could, and the LAPD had no problem with him doing it. And for many police officers, as well as the audience at home, Friday was doing something they’d love to, but couldn’t.
For better or for worse, this episode has an iconic place in the 1960s run and it explains why Dragnet is so discounted by modern day critics.
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While waiting for a drug buy, Joe Friday and Frank Smith overhear a confession to murder, but when they get up the man is gone. Who confessed and how are they going to prove it.
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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.
