User Reviews

Police procedurals are by definition formulaic, and by the time "Dragnet" in its 1960s incarnation entered what would be its fourth and final season, this archetypal cop show masterminded by creator, director, producer, writer, and star Jack Webb couldn't help but become parodic despite (or perhaps because of) its strait-laced, straight-faced demeanor.

A dyed-in-the-wool conservative of the old school, Webb had a plethora of targets to shoot at in the 1960s, and the 1968 election of Richard Nixon as president, a precursor to the law-and-order mindset ushered in full-force with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, enabled Webb, through "Dragnet," to revel in his flag-bearing for the Nixonian "Silent Majority" opposed to the hippies, antiwar protesters, and social justice warriors (civil rights activists, feminists, gay rights advocates et al.) that marked the American social and political landscape of the decade.

A favorite target of Webb's dating back to "Dragnet"'s original radio incarnation were illegal drugs, and "Missing Hypo" provides a pedantic soapbox for declamations not just about heroin but, more crucially, a perceived permissive, even indulgent attitude toward the drug culture just begging to be pilloried by Webb's by-now patented sober, remorseless tongue-lashing.

Working out of the narcotics division, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are visited by probation officer Fred Deemer (Marshall Reed), who, in seeking a favor to locate one of his charges, John Aldrich, a teenage former heroin addict trying to go straight, recites the litany of the gateway drug theory--smoking marijuana leads to popping pills and then to shooting heroin--that introduces the theme of this heavy-handed diatribe.

After discovering John's "works" (heroin paraphernalia) hidden in his bedroom in the home of his upstanding, white, middle-class family, Friday and Gannon head to the local college to speak to his girlfriend Nancy (Kelley Sebring), who has a tip on John's former roommate at the drug rehabilitation center, red herring Peter (Mickey Sholdar), when sociology professor Ralph Thursdon (Vic Perrin), who has both John and Nancy in his class, happens by.

Thus begins the centerpiece of "Missing Hypo," and it's a doozy. Evincing an air of condescension if not outright arrogance, Thursdon immediately assumes an air of academic superiority, blithely labeling himself an expert on drug policy--which prompts an exchange of weary, skeptical glances between Friday and Gannon--when it is pointed out that John had argued violently in class with the professor and his lecture topic of "the hoax surrounding marijuana and the use of drugs in our society."

As Friday cross-examines Thursdon, the haughty professor digs in smugly while mocking Friday for being a "typical cop sticking up for antique laws and archaic methods of dealing with our modern social problems," classic liberal scorn for tradition that is systematically dismembered when Friday, ascertaining Thursdon's educational background, methodically excoriates Thursdon for being an ivory-tower intellectual too wrapped up in scholastic abstraction to have experienced the real world where real people have real problems that require real cops to address them. "Dragnet" could not have built a better strawman to demolish if it had a hectare of hay bales from which to build one.

At the close of "Missing Hypo," Friday launches into his final, gritted-teeth jeremiad, seething with anger to match the tragedy that immediately preceded it, a condemnation that reprises the gateway drug theory while indicting the shadowy criminal element responsible for proliferating misery for profit, stirring stuff to rally the Silent Majority.

Through his alter ego Friday, Webb expresses a perspective that, on its surface, is impossible to refute: drug addiction is an affliction that can lead to tragedy. However, as the television incarnation of Harry J. Anslinger, America's first 20th-century drug czar who ignored the evils of alcohol, even during Prohibition, to demonize marijuana (the 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film "Reefer Madness" was inspired by Anslinger's efforts), Webb too ignores that alcohol and tobacco, both legal drugs deemed socially acceptable, are also gateway drugs--and Webb, a heavy smoker, was an enthusiastic spokesman for Fatima cigarettes, a sponsor of the "Dragnet" radio series in the 1950s, when linkages between tobacco and cancer were already established and nicotine, a stimulant found in tobacco, was known to be highly addictive.

The dangers of any drug with the potential to harm or kill should not be dismissed with the blinkered, eggheaded high-handedness of an imperious Professor Thursdon, as Perrin plays the game adversary to Webb, but just as melodramatic is the clenched-jaw self-righteousness of a Sergeant Friday, both caricatures that cancel each other out as "Missing Hypo" hypes drug hysteria with a hot shot of "Dragnet" copaganda.

REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?

Jack Webb directing himself is dangerous for the watcher -perhaps special lenses should be worn to watch the result.

In this case we have a half-hour tract, which frequently halts for Webb to recite an idiotic, overwritten monologue on the dangers of drugs, in this case amphetamines, barbiturates and marijuana. In one case, a bearded intellectual has to listen to his drivel and the script doesn't let him have a comeback. Jack is God-like in his knowledge and prescriptions for solving society's ills, when not haranguing the viewer like a Spiro Agnew combating "pseudo-intellectuals". Watching this tripe in 2023, a fascist name of DeSantis came to mind.

I suppose one expects more from this descendant of one of the original police procedurals but "Dragnet 1970" (filed as "Dragnet 1967 Season 4" in ever-pedantic IMDb land) episode is just a shaggy-dog story -my least favorite form of drama (or is it comedy? -only Joel & Ethan know for sure). They're hunting for a missing Johnny Aldrich, budding drug addict, and he never shows up. I know, because I tried to hunt for the episode using the character name for my search, but no actual actor was hired to show up in the role. Perhaps a harbinger of the AI future, as I had just watched a newscast on today's SAG-AFTRA strike, and prexy Fran Drescher opined on how background players are being subjected by money-grubbing producers to AI and only need be hired once (then endlessly reused without even a trip to Zuck's metaverse) -ouch!

Webb intoned pompously on "how do you want to be remembered?". His legacy includes idiotic trash like this, and as far as marijuana is concerned, even if I am skeptical about the current rush to legalization being a good idea, let's face it, Jack's legacy is simply -he was wrong. We may laugh at his right-wing propaganda, but 53 years later jerks resembling him are ready to turn the clock back not to 1970 but to 1951 or 1949 (tv versus radio) with their buddy Clarence Thomas leading the charge.