Dragnet 1967 (TV Series) The Big Ad (1967) User Reviews

Joe, the contract killer!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 18 November 2009]

The episode begins with Friday and Gannon being told to see an ex-con who had contacted the police. It seemed that he had run an ad in the paper saying he'd do anything for a buck--assuming he'd get an odd job to make a few dollars. However, when someone responds with what appears to possibly be a solicitation to commit murder, he wisely notified the authorities. Since it's unclear WHO sent the ex-con the post card, Joe assumes the man's identity and eventually learns that a rich guy DOES want his alcoholic wife murdered. However, the guy is slick--never giving enough information to merit an arrest. So, Joe goes along with the plan up until the very end--and it ends with a slight twist...as well as a nice closing line by Sgt. Friday.

While this is not a great episode, it's very solid. Entertaining and tense--it's well worth a look.

Dragnet 1968: The Big Ad

[Scarecrow-88 · 8/10 · 10 December 2011]

Sgt Joe Friday will go undercover assuming the identity of a recently released and very broke poems-writer who put out an ad hoping to score some "quick bread" to get himself to Colorado with the possibility of a job writing greeting cards. Instead, a card was sent to him possibly soliciting a hit! So Friday will take his place and try to ensnare a man looking for someone to murder his wife. This will be a taxing, tense experience for Friday as he must "go all the way" and catch his suspect at the very end of the solicitation, having to follow the rules by the book without crossing the line into entrapment. What I found really suspenseful about "The Big Ad" is how treading that tightrope can be really difficult, but patience and good police work can pay dividends. This episode really establishes how hard it is to catch red-handed someone arranging a hit on someone they want dead, and the dangers such a task entails. The recently departed Harry Morgan, as Bill Gannon, has a funny opening scene where he frustratingly tells Webb's Friday that his sister-in-law, a health nut, is in town, forcing him into a diet.

Great episode

[kvuo-1 · 7/10 · 8 April 2010]

Halfway through this weird under-cover episode, I realized this episode almost to a point, is the same plot of the movie Fletch (chevy chase). And now that I see this was 20 years earlier, I suspect the story was probably done before also! The surreptitious hiring of the hit-man -- come to my house, find your money, the target, etc etc... in an expensive wood-paneled study, all to be confronted by the guy who hired the hit-man -- with a revolver! The only differences I could figure, is this was an actual hit against his wife, and not a desire for an alternate identity, and as is usual all Dragnet episodes, there is always backup uniformed officers waiting right outside!

Kill My Wife -- Please.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 23 September 2016]

Interesting episode that has Joe Friday working under cover as a killer for hire.

A young man with a record, not wanting to get into more trouble, brings a post card to Friday's attention. The man had placed an ad in a "Hippie newspaper" claiming he would do any jobs for $1000. In return he received a post card promising even more if he wanted to "make a killing." It could mean anything but Friday pretends to be the young man, meets the suave author of the post card (incandescently smug and handsome Anthony Eisley) and indeed the job is to commit a murder.

Sneak into Eisley's house, hit his drunken wife over the head with a cast iron pipe. "Hit her as often as you like." Eisley runs Friday around the block a few times to check his willingness to follow directions until the moment arrives. But the police figure out that Eisley has another plan entirely. He's at home, not establishing an alibi elsewhere. He's going to double cross Friday, wait until his wife had her head coshed, and then shoot Friday and claim he was a burglar.

The end? It doesn't work. In the last shot we see Anthony Eisley, looking uncomfortable and put out, and we're told he's serving time for conspiring to commit murder at Chino, which is sort of a rest home for nice, connected criminals.

"Solicitation"

[ccthemovieman-1 · 14 November 2010]

"Solicitation of murder." What exactly is that? Is that when someone wants to hire someone to kill for them? Yes, basically, and we get a full explanation of "solicitation" in this episode. It's interesting, and educational. What's kind of shocking, at least to me, the sentence at the very end of the show.

Whatever, "Joe Friday," poses as a guy who posted an ad in a "hippie newspaper" in Los Angeles, saying he will do anything for $1,000. The real guy who posted the ad gets nervous when someone responds who sounds like they might want somebody murdered. He calls the cops and Joe winds up impersonating to trap the guy who may want someone killed.

The story is another interesting one and gets tense because Joe gets into a tight spot.

Gannon: I can't wait until three o'clock, Friday: What happens then? Gannon:I get to have an apple.

[sol1218 · 7/10 · 12 November 2011]

***SPOILERS*** LAPD Sgt. Joe Friday and his partner Officer Bill Gannon,Jack Webb & Harry Morgan, are sent to the L.A suburb of Venice to check out a possible violation of Section 653F of the California Penal Code: Solicitation to commit murder. It's there they interview ex-convict Steve Deal, Don Dubbins, who after placing an ad in this underground hippie newspaper to do anything for $1,000.00 received an reply from a reader that wrote he wanted him to murder someone; no questions asked.

It's decided that Friday would impersonate Deal and go undercover and trap and arrest the person who contacted him before the murder is committed. It soon turns out that the person who wants Fraday or really Deal to do a job for him is Harvey Forrester, Anthony Eisley, and is willing to pay him as much as $3,000.00 to do the hit for him. The person whom Harvey want Friday to whack the next evening is his his old lady who, being an afternoon drinker, would be dead drunk at the time and not be able,if she ever survived the hit, to recognize him!

Not trusting Harvey for a moment in his plans to just have his wife murdered Friday as well as Officer Gannon surmises that he's also planing to murder Friday right after he finishes off his drunken old lady who's so out of it that she'll never see it coming! Harvey plans to knock off two birds with one stone by having his wife killed by Friday and then kill him in return making it look like he was robbing his house,after he murdered his wife, and killed him in self defense.

***SPOILERS*** It's was quick thinking on Friday's part that prevented Harvey from going through with his murderous plan. It was also smart of Friday to get Harvey to implicate himself in his wife's contract murder and paying him off to do it without entrapping or encouraging him, by playing stupid in not knowing what hes up to, to make the charges against Harvey stick in a court of law. As for Harvey's wife she was so out of it, lying dead drunk on the living-room sofa with a glass of booze still in her hand, that she never got to know that she was the center of attraction in this Dragnet 1967/8 episode!