My Favorite 1960s Dragnet Episodes #2: The LSD Story
This episode is perhaps the most definitive episode of Dragnet. If people know anything about Dragnet, they know about this episode which brought it back to the air eight years after left.
The show does a great job showing how those who are charged with enforcing the law are often frustrated by the law. It was also cutting edge in dealing with the issue of LSD in 1967.
For some, this represented a hard hit back against the emerging counterculture. When Dragnet had left the air in 1959, it’d been a tired franchise worn out by nearly 600 radio and TV performance over the course of the decade. This episode began a new life with this episode as Friday re-emerged as the rock solid hero we needed in a time when everything was shifting.
For many advocates of legalized drugs, this episode began a lifelong hate affair with Webb and Dragnet that continues to this day.
For fans of classic television, it’s simply a classic. TV Guide and Nick at Nite’s TV Land voted this episode #85 on its list of greatest TV episodes of all time.
I probably would have made this episode #1. This was a good episode and was very definitive. It was interesting that this episode was written by John Randolph (Who, incidentally, was Jack Webb himself.), who also wrote the pilot episode “The Impossible Mission” for “Adam-12”.
[…] 4) The LSD Story […]