User Reviews

There's a phenomenal soliloquy by Jack Webb about the duty and all that comes with being a cop that highlights this episode of the 60s reprisal of Dragnet augmenting the tense interrogation of an undercover narcotics cop, Paul Culver (excellent performance from the handsome Kent McCord of "Adam 12" fame), who is being investigated for an armed robbery of a liquor store. I applaud the daring to feature an entire episode in one singular location, a small, isolated interrogation room in the Internal Affairs department, as Sgt Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and partner Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) question Culver about his whereabouts and activities surrounding the robbed liquor store on a specific night covering a certain area in LA. As he is being interrogated, Culver's story changes as he becomes more and more disenchanted with Friday and Gannon's questions, particularly "slip-ups" in times where he met with certain characters under narcotics investigation, and the knowledge that the liquor store owner positively identified him as the one who robbed him only makes matters worse. Culver takes a lie detector test, and the results are a mystery we will learn at the end, but the irony of this is that the young policeman doesn't allow his interrogators to tell him due to his voicing disgust with being considered the suspect of a petty robbery, further lamenting about the price for being a cop, the toll it takes on his life. This is quite a model for police interrogations later used on all the cop shows that have come afterward. I think Webb states loud and clear his feelings for the police in that minutes long statement of the unglamorous and unappreciated tasks facing the men in uniform, everyday, specifying the kinds of criminals and victims they encounter, impressing upon his young police officer that the job isn't for everybody but he doesn't regret hitting the streets and dedicating himself to the badge.

Kent McCord must've made a helluva impression on Jack Webb as he'd continue to appear intermittently in these later color Dragnets even after landing his co-starring role on Webb's second hit show Adam-12 in 1968. I usually give McCord rather low marks for his acting range, but he's almost impressive here, expressing enough anguish to evoke the first truly great color Dragnet Friday rant. It's a terrific spiel, Webb's heartfelt-yet-monotone delivery is DVR worthy (paraphrasing: "The citizens of Los Angeles pay you nineteen cents an hour to do a thankless job with an unflattering haircut...") And it has a cool twist-a-roo ending where McCord discovers his mother had apparently given up his monozygotic evil twin brother up for adoption. Watch this and see why you should never volunteer for a polygraph! Really good entry folks!

This is a spare episode. It all takes place in one room and there are only three people involved -- Webb, Morgan, and Kent McCord as an undercover cop suspected on having held up a liquor store while on duty. The liquor store owner has identified him in a show up.

Well, I'll tell you. McCord is angry and impatient and after he bursts out with too many objections about affronts to his dignity, Webb manages to pull out the reason for so much anger. It's personal and McCord doesn't want to discuss it but is finally induced to admitting that he and his fiancée have just broken up. ("Haven't even finished paying for the ring.") The reason: the girl doesn't want to be married to a cop.

This is Webb's cue to say that maybe the girl is right. A cop's life is a tough one. Then he spends five minutes on a dramatic speech detailing the ways in which a cop's life is a tough one -- you see nothing but the dregs of society, your hours are irregular, etc. Webb has been through it all but he's still "damned glad to be one of them." McCord takes a polygraph and passes it. The liquor store owner declares he was mistaken in identifying McCord as the hold up man, because another miscreant -- practically McCord's double -- has admitted to the 211 -- that is, the crime. McCord leaves, happy to be off the hook and now ready to deal realistically with his girl friend.

There's no particular message behind the story except that witnesses can be mistaken and that cops suspected of being particeps criminis are treated just as heatedly as civilians suspects.

I kind of enjoyed it, but then I always enjoy this program because justice is invariably served. It's a reassuring myth.