A Classic Episode

While trying to write yesterday, I turned on the TV and watched most of an episode of "Dragnet". It's a terrible show (although I find enough enjoyment in watching that I can't claim it's all bad) and I have a hard time believing it held up in the short term any better than it does in the long term. You have a couple of stone-faced detectives slinging emotionless dialogue at rapid fire pace, and invariably over some crime so minor as to scarcely bear a mention in passing.

They are always working out of a different department, making one wonder if that is how little valued they are. You would think that if they were very good they'd be in homicide, but there they are investigating people posing as officers, or busting puppy-snatching rings. Typically the despicable culprit looks every bit as square and establishment-minded as the cops themselves, except when the show is making a point about how wrongheaded hippies are. That's when you see some real cartoon characters.

This recent episode took all the worst parts of the show and honed in on them to the exclusion of everything else. Friday and Gannon (the two leads of the show) appear on a TV talk show to debate a liberal professor and the hippie publisher of a countercultural newspaper (the latter being portrayed by Howard Hesseman, of all people). One might wonder why the police department would send a couple of detectives instead of the department head or a PR representative, but to no avail.

Probably there is no purer distillation of Jack Webb's vision than this episode. There is no crime to investigate and no action to be had. This episode is talk from beginning to end. Again and again, the cops easily bat down points raised by their liberal fellow panelists and members of the public, making you wonder why their intellectual prowess has not lifted them above their meager station in life. There is no answer on that.

As bad as the show was, I watched it to its conclusion. Some people call that hate-watching, or indulging a guilty pleasure. I don't believe in those things. I'm inclined to say that I only watch things out of genuine affection. There is something I like about Dragnet. It's a snapshot of a moment in time- a snapshot taken from the perspective of the people who then held power. Watching it, I see how they saw people, and through that I see them better. The show is conducive to understanding. Maybe that's what I like.