"Joe Friday" (Jack Webb) and "Bill Gannon" (Harry Morgan) get to work early and it's a good thing they did. Immediately, they are told of a dangerous burglary followed by a report that someone reportedly threw a hand grenade at a car in the same area.
They discover a large quantity of high-velocity gelatin dynamite had been stolen from a consumer storage magazine at the Donnelly Construction Company. "We had to find it before somebody used it," says Joe Friday, very dramatically
One of the thieves threw a hand grenade at the night watchman, who had chased the car in his vehicle, but the grenade didn't go off. The bomb squad is sent to diffuse it.
Talking to the night watchman and a demolitions expert, Friday and Gannon learn that the amount of dynamite stolen would level two city blocks. What's more, the caps the crooks stole don't really go with them and are very dangerous. If the thieves don't know how to handle them, there could be a huge accidental explosion. Either way, this is serious business.
You can always tell things are getting tense when the drum beats and we see Joe pause, purse his lips, and stare at his partner and vice versa. It's pretty funny! This program always uses drum beats to signify a tense moment. It's tough to laugh at the stories, though, when you know are based on real-life crimes that were committed in Los Angeles. However, the overly dramatic way they are portrayed by Jack Webb and Harry Morgan are very entertaining to watch and do make you laugh at times.
This turns out to be a suspenseful show all the way through, even though very little happens. The music is eerie, and that helped with the atmosphere. The suspect, a Nazi supporter nicknamed "Siggie," was a cool-and-collected but scary-looking dude. Don Dubbins played him.
Notes: It the beginning, Friday comments about there being "three million people in L.A. at this time, 1,000 new citizens every day,"......Quote of the program: "You keep harping about minorities. Well, mister, you're a psycho, and they're a minority, too!"