Dragnet 1967 (TV Series) Public Affairs: DR-07 (1968) User Reviews

This deck is stacked!

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 30 December 2011]

I enjoy just about all of the episodes from this series, though some are better than others. They're so earnest. Friday and Gannon are just two upright cops doing their no-nonsense duty. Their idea of relaxation is to remove their sports jackets and sit on a soft chair while watching a ball game on the tube. They don't loosen their neckties, let alone take off their shoes. They eat popcorn, but there is no beer.

It seems unfair of Command to send these two squares up against their most rabid enemies on a panel show called something like "Speak Your Mind" or "Spew Your Venom" or whatever it is. Officer Gannon has a little trouble when they apply make up to darken his eyebrows ("everything but lipstick") and when nobody's looking he rubs it off.

The "judge" (Eiseley), who should clearly have recused himself, mocks the fuzz, while the other two members of the panel -- a pompous, ivory-tower egghead and a nasty editor who runs an anti-establishment rag -- call the two officers names like fascists, goons, and machines. The audience applauds each scurrilous attack and later gets to ask direct questions.

Actually, Friday and Gannon acquit themselves well. Their answers embody sweet reason without passion, the way Aristotle defined law. They put their lives on the line for the sake of justice, they point out. They're fair and enforce the law without making it. And they admit to occasional mistakes. Sure, once in a while, a rotten apple gets through but the LAPD is no more happy about it than the citizen is. The percept is almost the opposite of that presented in the movie "L. A. Confidential." The movie has one truly outstanding feature. In the first row of the audience are three black dudes, all wearing shades and Afros. One of them is Mamba Obamba, head of the Black Widow Party. I swear I'm not making that up. His mouth is full of crooked teeth and he sneers as he launches his attack on police force racism.

I mean it when I say I enjoyed it immensely.

Jack Webb's Corrupting Influence

[WillisRohrback · 8/10 · 5 July 2014]

I listen to a lot of Old Time Radio and watch a lot of Old Time TV, so one thing that's interesting to me is the roles played on Dragnet by Stacy Harris and Anthony Eisley. On radio, Stacy Harris was stalwart FBI agent Jim Taylor on the program "This Is Your FBI"—brave, determined, incorruptible and fearless. On TV, Anthony Eisley was Tracy Steele, hero private detective on the show "Hawaiian Eye", yet on Dragnet they always played bad guys or, at the least, heels.

In this one, I think the only show on which both were featured, they were were more heel than bad guy—Eisley, as a smarmy pinko TV host and Harris a smarmy pinko college professor.

I remember seeing this episode when I was a kid and thinking it was funny then, and I still think it's funny. Biggest laugh, when Mondo Mabamba calls Joe Friday "Mr. Charlie". I wonder if this was real ghetto slang or if the writers made it up for the show. That line about the police being "Just like them Nazzies only you don't dress as sharp" has been in my personal joke insult arsenal for 40 years, especially since I have a lot of police in my family. I also loved the housewife who came up to the stand to say she supported the police and thought they were doing a great job. I liked her angry reaction when she was hooted down by the biased audience.

I agree with most viewers that in the 3rd season of this version of Dragnet there was a little too much of the Public Affairs stuff, but this was probably the most amusing of that type of program. Especially telling was the portrayal of a particularly odious type of white lefty who preens and postures and parades around with his concern about "blacks and Mexicans and minorities" as a way of claiming a higher moral character than the rest of his fellow whities. Call it an early version of the Ken Burns disease.

Here comes the fuzz...

[UNOhwen · 8 December 2011]

Jack - and Bill - are on a public affairs show. They're their to do LAPD PR against 'Doctor Johhny Fever' AKA Howard Hesseman, and another debater.

The real fun is when the floor is opened up to the audience.

Then, we get the whole gamut; from the 'angry guy' who warns his gun - to use against an 'invading army,' Lou 'J5 on LOST IN SPACE' Wagner, as 'Johnny Dietz, the kid who wants to smoke some grass, and drop acid, to my favourite; 'Mondo Mbamba' who's there to tell 'honky's' what they can put all that bull about democracy.'

I'm writing this the day after it was announced Harry Morgan - Ofcr Bill Gannon passed away - marking the end of our link to this wonderful(ly) wacky show.

I love this episode, it's one of the standouts in my mind.

In honour of Bill, Joe, and the rest of the Dragnet gang R.I.P., and thanks for the memories

After the Season Two Cliff-Hanger, Season Three Soars

[championbc-99-5005 · 10/10 · 6 May 2015]

As we left season two, Friday and Gannon were taking the responsibility of community relations, trying to ease the hotbed of racial and political unrest that had come from alleged police brutality.

In order to do that, they bravely begin the third season by walking into the den of lions of a highly biased TV talk show that openly hates cops. Among the people there ready to accuse them is none other than WKRP's Johnny Fever, under another name, of course (the character as well as the actor). I'm not sure if this takes place before the infamous incident where he said "bugar" on the air and lost his job, but his bitterness against the establishment here seems to say this was after the fact.

The episode had no mention of Gannon's apparently secretive "project" that he seems to be working on surreptitiously, deep inside LAPD; however, the episode opens with a noticeably nervous Gannon working hard to keep Friday out of the room where he has been, even stepping into the hall and telling him there's no reason for them to go in. Instead, they are being sent to the TV studio.

In the last episode, Friday had warned the police not to address any "negro" civilians as "boy," in order to defuse the situation, but in this encounter at the TV station, one of the black leaders does refer to Friday as a "honky," which he tactfully shrugs off. I think it may have stung, however, as he later addresses a young white weed-advocate as "boy," and you can feel the anger in his voice.

Gannon and Friday manage to calm the overall situation, it appears, and the show ends with the lights going out in the TV studio. As this season premiere closes, we get an inkling of the new direction of the series. The name has been changed (to protect the innocent?) to "Dragnet 1969," and the opening music is noticeably longer, with more opening credits. The LA chief of police, who closed the last season with an impassioned plea, is nowhere to be found, and we wonder if he is still in the mix.

The stage has been set. The easy-going law-and-order scenario of the first season in long gone, and we feel the tension "in the trenches." Even Gannon seems a little concerned about his own home life, and hints at some tension at home between him and his wife.

I am curious as to how this season will unfold, and if Friday and Gannon will be able to pour oil on troubled waters. I detect some pessimism in Friday's own voice that even he may not be aware of. He opens season three with a lackluster, "This is the city; I work here," type of monologue, instead of his usually colorful commentary.

Is the grind getting to him? Will a rift grow between him and Gannon? Will we ever learn what the secret project is, what Gannon is obviously hiding from Friday, so much so that he actually blocks a door to keep him from coming into a room? Season 3 looks to be the best yet. Stay tuned.

Excellent

[shaunabphillips · 10/10 · 26 June 2013]

Joe is asked to come to a show with the title "The Fuzz: Who Needs Them" "Johnny Fever" is a hippie on the "We don't need them" side. Friday & Gannon are defending the police. Joe, in his typical manner, burns the butt of the opposition with his biting one-liners. He is brilliant as he takes on race relations, police brutality, and even the Vietnam war. Police officers have a job that isn't easy. Just like we nurses, the police make decisions that are life or death. He makes a lot of intellectual points. I don't think this is a pointless episode. I think all of our citizens could benefit from what Joe Friday and Bill Gannon have to say on this subject. (And what IDIOTS the uninformed look like)

Imagine Joe Friday on the Morton Downey Show...

[jbacks3 · 1/10 · 24 February 2010]

Dragnet fans tend to avoid 2 types of shows: 1) the ones when Gannon invites Joe home and 2) Joe working daywatch out of Public Affairs. This, the latter, allows Jack Webb to go off on his personal (and now, to be polite, quaint) right wing attack agendas. To his credit he makes no bones about where he stands on drugs, hippies and even here gets a plug in for the Vietnam War, normally a topic he steadfastly avoided. In this episode he conjures up a hippie version of 'Our Gang' that features every caricature of 1960's counter-culture Webb despised: the liberal college professor (in the form of Mark VII regular Stacy Harris--- Webb's best friend in his perosnal life), the black militant, the hippie stoner journalist (hey that's WKRP's Howard Hessman! He must've left Webb unimpressed since he never made any encore appearances). Webb's favorite weirdo teenager Mickey Sholdar is on hand to voice his support for marijuana. This now plays like a bad SNL skit. "It was Wednesday, August 4th... we were working daywatch out of Robbery Division..." except the boys get pulled for public affairs duty in order to appear on a TV show called "Speak Your Mind"... hosted by an emcee who wears judge's robes replete with a peace medallion and love beads (for the uninformed, think Mardi Gras accessories). Gasp in awe over the threads, about the police being continually referred to as "the fuzz" and consider the fact that this show was produced around the same time as the 1968 Democratic Convention riots in Chicago and shortly after both the MLK and RFK assassinations. One interesting vignette: there is a right wing anti-gun registration loudmouth audience member; Webb's retort flies directly in the face of the current NRA platform (to be fair, he could be just as tough on police corruption and police procedural violations as vile unwashed hippie scum). Weird yet dull episode... really only of interest to anyone trying to understand the no-gray area mind of Jack Webb.

The Great Rhabdouchophile Weighs In

[temlakos-1 · 5/10 · 1 January 2019]

Sergeant Friday and Officer Gannon kick off the third season with a broad-brushed, almost ham-handed defense, not only of policing in general, but also of then-current law.

For those of you asking, "Rhabdo-what?": a rhabdouchophile (from the Greek "rhabdos" a rod, "echo" I have or hold, and "phileo" I love as a close friend) is one having an intense, and sometimes unhealthy, love for the police in general or for police officers. The earliest policemen, in fact, were a cadre of municipal slaves in ancient Athens, armed with rods, and tasked with crowd control at public events. The word "rhabdouchos," literally "rod holder," became the ancient word for a policeman.

And here Producer and Star Jack Webb shows off his love for the police--who they are, and what they do.

He faces some of the worst-drawn characters ever to appear on this series, or any series Jack Webb had a hand in producing. "Johnny Fever," of WKRP in Cincinnati, shows up here as a bitter hippy. Next to him is an all-too-typical university professor. He, sad to say, is a realistic example of university faculty, both then and now. Those two constitute the panel in opposition to Friday and Gannon. The moderator is a sick joke: think Jerry Springer twenty years ahead of his time. From the get-up he has on, to his clear slant against the cops, he is just another straw-man idiot (in the correct sense of "in a world of his own").

The audience questioners are a motley crew, and include one (Harry Wilson, combat veteran) who seems oddly out-of-place with the others. He is there to stand up for the Constitutional right of every American, per the Second Amendment, to arm himself at least as well as, if not better than, an infantry soldier. Jack Webb, at least at the time, flatly disagreed and seemed to think only the police, the military, VIPs, or their bodyguards should pack heat. And it shows. It is the most jarring note in an otherwise watchable episode. First, the officers say, "If you have time to reach for your gun, you have time to call us"--never mind that police response time typically runs to 45 minutes or more (as I personally have reason to know). And then, the kicker: Friday and Gannon shake their heads at Wilson's scenario of an invading army "go(ing) to the files, and then go(ing) around confiscating all the weapons," and dismiss it with the "in this nuclear age" argument.

Happily, the attitude of many police and sheriff's departments seems to have changed since then. So as you watch, remember this is a snapshot of police and public attitudes in 1968, not 2018.

So much for the right-wing opposition. All the rest of the opposition comes from the left wing. Here you have a mix of hedonists and outright anarchists. The character Mondo Mbamba looks to a modern viewer like someone who traveled back in time from a BLM rally.

Which brings me to sum up: this show puts those concerned with basic constitutional rights in the same category as anarchists who seemingly want freedom to steal from you without opposition. I find that grossly unfair. Which is why I can rate this episode with five stars out of ten.

Ugghh!

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 22 November 2009]

While I love "Dragnet" and think it's a true classic, every so often they made an episode that just made me shudder with horror. "Public Affairs-DR-07" is clearly one of them. Instead of seeing Friday and Gannon stopping crimes or doing some investigating, here they are doing an on-air debate with a bunch of jerks--a battle of the hippies versus squares. And the problems are many with this bizarre show. It is so very, very talky. In addition, the people all seem like caricatures--not real people. On one side, they have the egg-head professor, hippie (Howard Hesseman) and obnoxious host and on the other, the two officers. And the audience is almost like one you'd see on "The Jerry Springer Show" or the old "Morton Downey Show". There are the gun enthusiasts, the angry Black Panther-like guy with an afro and a dashiki, the Mexican as well as the screaming idiots. It makes no sense why anyone would go on such a show that is so incredibly one-sided and stupid. Overall, a good episode to skip...or just to pretend never occurred in the first place. Yuck.