Episode 24: The Ghost / Appendicitis / Rape

What I got better things to do with my money. Welcome to the Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller podcast. I'm your host Mike White. Joining me, of course, is the rookie Chris Stashie. Hello Ghost, my name is Christashie.

And joining us from another precinct is the one and only mister Richard Adam. I was trying to do a levid impression, but I just I don't have it yet. I just wanted to serve it right up to you, guys, because I know he's your favorite character. Oh right, yeah? Are you just right out of the gate.

Are you're warming up to him? Warming up as if you left it out on the sun to warm up, as opposed to sticking it in the microwave. Guys, He's a sweet, weird little man. The Goodwill toured Lovett in one of these episodes might have rubbed off on me a little bit. Okay, okay.

We are talking about three episodes from January of nineteen seventy eight. The Ghost, directed by Lee Bernardi and written by Reinhold Weegee, Appendicitist directed by Noam Pitlick and written by Tony Sheehan, and Rape directed by Noame Pitlick and written by Dennis kaneg from January twenty sixth, nineteen seventy eight. And I guess let's talk about ghosts. Let's save the best for last, shall we. Let's talk about Port Kenneth Tegar being plagued again by the supernatural.

He's not going to turn into a werewolf this time, ladies and gentlemen. He's playing a different character who is now besieged by a Poulter Goost. I recognized him from the Werewolf episode, but then I wasn't sure if he was playing Capecne or he was not playing Capecne. And I don't think he was playing Capecne. But then he comes back a third time as a guy who's possessed, doesn't he He definitely was into the supernatural when it came to the Barney Miller reverse.

But he's only playing the same character two of those three times. Is that correct? I think he might be right. When they brought him in in this episode, they weren't like, it's a Capecne again. This time.

He's not aware wolf. This time he's got a ghost. They're not doing that whole routine. It's just like, here's a guy. He has a problem, but he's very recognizable and very good.

I really like him as an actor. He's got sort of a Paul Rudd quality to speaking of Paul Ruddy went toe to toe with a Loki in The Avengers. That's where most most people will know him, like most lay people. Well know, is that right? Is still an actor?

Oh? Yeah? It was on Billions as recently as this year, and he was a series regular. It would seem or a series player on House of Cards, you know, the quality of that show being what it was. But he was on that show, the House of Cards, the big show.

Yeah, that's weird because I watched at least a season or so of that and I don't remember it. But okay, okay, Yeah, he was on it several times. Yeah, he's still acting. Was on another connection. He was on Man in the High Castle where he played of all characters, Heinrich Himler.

Yeah, Frank's a little Frank Spottet's connection there. Old. He has been in let's see one, two, three, four, or five six episodes of Barney Miller we've talked about now this will be the third. He comes back yep as Jesus Christ in the photographer Phil Pollock in The Psychic and Stephen Kopeckney as in Possession, and then he was yeah, okay, so he was Copeckney and Werewolf. So way in nineteen eighty one he'll come back as the same character, and that he was Fletcher in Massage Parlor.

We probably talked about it last time. I was on going back to the same character actors to either reprise a role or play a completely different role and really no rhyme or reason to their chronology of any of this. And in the seventies you watch TV and you were like, fine, but then it's weird that they do they do are going to bring him back as a character he's played before. It is kind of strange. It's a little it's a little strange, like they want to have it both ways.

But like at this point, like you said, like TV is that is in such a unique spot that like nobody cares, like who gives a shit of a continuity, Like these shows are being made to be on syndication, and then they would go on syndication and then they would kill and they still killed in this day, so like nobody is sitting and going well. Kenneth Taguar was in this episode is this character like that's a that's a modern day thing. That's an US problem, not a show problem. The greater burden to create a reality like whatever your show is, even if you're show has werewolves and vampires, there has to be this interior reality to the show. The yards have to be straight from A to B to C.

It has to make logical sense. No one is just watching like, oh, it's just you know, it's just a TV show and this week it's this and who cares? Which is why they go and like they do things like mentioning Wentworth still like on the board or the mic joke that we always bring up, Like the show does attempt to create a larger world around the characters than other shows do. It's trying. It's not just going.

This precinct exists on a sound stage. People are coming in and out for last like they're trying to make us believe that this is a building in New York somewhere with a Levitt coming up from you know, the beneath from the other police officers. Like they try, they really do, and to whatever degree they're doing it, they're doing it probably more than other shows. Maybe Mash had to do that sort of mash also would recycle a lot of character actors as well, including Tito's Vandes, who plays Demetrio Stefanos in this one, the poor Greek guy who is getting his green card because he married a prostitute. I guess sheep Hooker.

According to Wojahowitz, Oh my god. As Hooker's change. Remember he paid a lady a bunch of money in like one of the earliest episodes. We were talking about, Wojo, it's becoming a more mature character, and then all of a sudden, it's like, Wojaho, it's the regression, like what the fuck, dude, You're an asshole all of a sudden. Yes, his character does evolve, maybe more than any other character on the page, but this weird misogyny and it's sort of like Madonna horror complex.

He has, like like he clearly like he'll go to a prostitute, but he hates prostitutes. And he does have a complicated relationship with women because he's you know, the macho cop or whatever it's. It is a little weird to watch. He clearly is angry at the woman in this episode, so dismissive, but he's like I'm not mincing any words, like dude, what the fuck? Like you were not this character two episodes ago, like back it up a little bit, come on, like it's I don't know it we like we've been talking about like his like you mentioned Richard, his character has grown a fair amount and this is just backwards like Sisiphean tasks like the balls rolled back over you, Like what the fuck?

Man, I don't understand. Well, it also wasn't It was a you know, third tier concern for the episode. It wasn't really about Woe Joe's relationship with her. It was about her relationship with this guy. It's sort of two things going on at once.

An escort, a sex worker, marries a older Greek gentleman to secure him a green card and citizenship in the United States. But the unintended consequence of this is that he seems to be showing interest in her by attempting to establish a legitimate romantic relationship with her, ends up interfering with her business life, which is rotating through a bunch of John's as quickly as possible so she can make money. So she sees his romantic overtures as a big problem, and so she's got a problem and he's got a problem, and then it's a legal problem because of the green card. So I mean again, in typical Barney Miller fashion, some fairly sophisticated interesting storytelling going on. Caroline McWilliams is the only one timer in this episode.

Everybody else has been on here multiple times, including Nahemia Parasoff, who plays the person from the State Department who comes in to verify this whole thing with the green card. And it's much easier in this episode than it was for Annie McDowell and Gerard de Paudu in the film Green Card. God bless you, sir. And he actually comes back two more times as the same character. The next two times.

Oh nice, I remember him playing a rabbi in the Riot episode. It's Nie and Mayah purse off and thank you. He was a big seventies He showed up. He was one of those guys you saw and everything. I love him coming in and quizzing so many of the guys on their their heritage, especially when he gets to Dietrich that whole thing of what was that your mother was Albanian and your father dead and before that alive.

Landisburg is just the best character on this show, and they are continuing with this whole thing of him and Harris hating each other and living together. Yeah as roommates. I love that that we have an actual thread through this that is not just something that you drop every episode. I did want to mention Nayah purso Off. I know him as Papa Mouskowitz from an American Tale.

Oh yeah, he was big voice actor. Yeah. Those of you that are into the immigrant story as told with Mice by Steven Spielberg, that's the film for you. Oddly specific film, but it does exist if you want to watch it. Not to be confused with Fight Will Goes West, which is its own thing where you get John Cleese as a mouse correct.

I think so. Yeah, it's a big English dandy. I remember him rolling cigarettes, you know, smoke because mice like the smoke car like everybody else. No, just like anything else. I love Tito's vandas in this episode, He's one of my favorite, like characters from this show that I will remember as this kind of like horny Greek guy, which is kind of the character that he plays in Fletch lives at the beginning of the movie as the yeah.

I when I saw him on screen, I was like, that is the old guy from Fletch Lives. And when I looked on his credit, I was like, that is the old guy from Fletch Lives. At the beginning, who and I kid you not mistakes chevy Chase in a drag for an actual woman And he's like, what's your name, sweetheart? It's like, there is no way you mistook chevy Chase for anything other than chevy Chase in a wig thing You're you're talking about classic comedy. I mean, oh, I'm sorry the Stone Age Camps gets the vaudeville circuit.

I'm sorry, I forgot he was Jacinto Escobar in the Visital Anti episode where he was hunting down people, kind of doing the police's job for them. There's also a storyline like that in an episode we're going to discuss entitled Appendicitis. Yeah, it's correct, yes, but this man was more not necessarily Bernard gets in it, but he was definitely like, hey, the cops are way too busy. I'm going to help take care of things. So yeah, it is very similar to what we're going to talk about in the next episode.

Their definition of polter Geist isn't exactly correct. Oh A, I was gonna say, Richard, of all the times to have you on the show, this is a good time, given that your your side interest in my side interest aligned very much with the title of the episode exactly like you know, I've no doubt Chris could cover this. But you know, since you brought me on as a consultant, I feel that it is a you know, incumbent upon me to comment on the notion that, yes, physical phenomenon might occur in a poltergeist case, it might follow a person outside of their primary location. That phenomena can go with a person. The fact that it's a you know, not in middle aged but you know, thirty year old man is not you know, common, But it could happen.

But at a certain point when he's in the cell, he's named the poltergeist Julius. Apparently the ghost has an identity and then the ghost starts physically attacking him. Now that crosses a line of reality that I cannot condone. Well, the hat rack was just too much for me. No, that cell that's seen in the cell was a little much.

The hatrack was I thought. The hat rack and those kind of things that's like fun. It's like give the audience a little like maybe who knows, but yeah, the stuff on the cell was it was more like the werewolf stuff. It was essense, like put ken a t guard a cell and just say be wacky for five minutes, like exactly, well, and you can with the werewolf, you can do it. With Possession, you can do it.

But with the ghost thing, it's like, well, really it should just be weird things falling off people's right. The cell door opens on its own, like don't have him get a tell Like I honestly thought towards the end of the episode, once you know he's taken off and quote the banana boats, it's just Harris is just so goddamn mean, I love it. Something falls off a Barney's desk at the end. I really thought they kept showing the cell door in the back and it was open. I was like, oh shit, the cell door is gonna close or something, and it's like it happens off screen.

I was like, oh, come on, who cares? Who cares in this show? Put a little fucking fish and wire and pull that thing. Come on, you can do. Well, what's the what's the harm?

They essentially already did it with the coat rack falling over. Well, what they did was they changed it from being a Poulter guy's joke to sort of being a Dietrich joke. Dietrich looking in and going, hey, how are you right him? Dietrich and walking in You're like, okay, now the joke is Is it just Dietrich being a weirdo again? Like?

What are we more scared of the ghost or Dietrich's behavior? Why not both? Frankly for losing a Vagoda which not dead at this time but not on the show, Steve Landisburg has really stood up and decided to make a character really memorable in a Vagoda's stead because again, Fish is a memorable character obviously, but Dietrich, I would think is is verging on being just as memorable, at least for me. Well, and he's also very memorable. In the next episode of Pendicitis, where they arrest a man who has stolen breakfast items or dessert items, I should say he hates sugar, but yet he's addicted this sugar.

Of course, they try to lead us to believe that he's talking about cocaine at first, but he is just as addicted to sugar as somebody else might be to cocaine, and of course Landisburg Dietrich has to give him a whole history of cane, sugar and processing. And I absolutely love it. I love just him pontificating a way to the guy in the cell. You're saying, I'm not crazy. No, sugar has been around forever.

This episode is named after what happens poor Nick, which is kind of scary when you realize that Nick isn't going to be with us for too much longer, I mean on earth. That is yeah, in in reality it's not only that. But isn't it the second time his life is in danger he gets shot in the cheek. Have we hit that episode yet? I remember that.

Yeah, that was a wild number. But it's not it's not this cheek, it's the ass cheek. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's two episodes where they're where they're picking up the phone really fast and how Lindon's like how is he? How is he? And everyone is standing around listening waiting to find out how Yamana is and then he's gonna be okay, oh thank god, thank god. You know, yeah, it was a little uh but this one, we really see it. I mean they got they got to put him on Wojo's desk, which was a great gag the way that oh I loved when he cleaned off the desk.

Yeah, I mean that he just lifts it up. I mean that's pretty great. And Barney has to feel bad because Barney thought he was making it up. I was sleeping on the job, didn't. Yamana in the very first moments of the episode, tell Wojo pretty clearly that he's having stomach paint, right, yeah, He's like, I'm having here.

Yeah, well you oh yeah, ate something you know, didn't agree with you? Fish? Oh it was it bad? No, cooked, you know, Wojo should be feeling bad. He was told explicitly that his stomach was hurting.

It didn't nothing about it except set up a stereotypical joke about Asian people. Well, let's just say the show is not above those kinds of jokes. I mean, oh no, no, I mean, come on, it was the seventies. That's what you did that was considered. That's the I mean, I think about this all the time because that's what the seventies was.

The seventies was we have reached a point of sophistication in the national discourse about race, that the badge of honor of sophistication is to openly make those jokes, either about yourself and your own ethnicity or among a close group of people. You can make or acknowledge those jokes because we are now beyond assuming they're true. We all know that they're jokes. So now you can make those jokes now. That, of course, which seemed just breathtakingly modern at the time when we saw it in all in the Family and the Jeffersons and in a different way on Barney Miller, is now considered so regressive and so unacceptable.

It's like, no, Now the badge of honor is you would never make those jokes or those comments at all on any level, in many ways, even about yourself. I guess I'm more used to the old stuff, just because I grew up in that world, I think the last and it's because I've been watching it incessantly. Okay, so you know, I just spent the last two weeks in Toronto, as I'm sure you guys all know, and the listeners are dying to hear me talk about the fact that Season four of Titans coming up, So we were just beginning to film. So I would go back to my hotel room every night, and my big activity was getting on my computer and watching thirty Rock reruns. Thirty Rock was not that long ago, like we're talking ten fifteen years ago at most.

And I think it's the last show that did a lot of jokes about race. I mean tons, oh yeah, all the Tracy Jordan's stuff, Oh my god, the Tracy Jordan's stuff and beyond. And it's not even like, oh that hasn't aged well. It age is great. It's a hilarious show, and it's dealing with race from again a place of, oh, look at the casual racism in the workplace, even among people who consider themselves liberal, that that is the sort of section of the playground they're playing in, and they play it brilliantly.

It could not exist now. There are jokes that are just like, oh my god, that I mean, I consider that a very modern show could not exist now, but still very very funny that I still consider it a funny show. So Barney Miller's funny. The stuff in this episode, you know, like you've mentioned Richard, some of the casual racism and there's been less than casual. I mean, we had the detective Scanlon character is a horror and racist in this show, there's always a laugh track underneath it.

We look get there. Oh, I'm just preparing the audience for the laugh track is about to The laugh track is about to really work against the show. It's gonna work against the show in a in a way that you would not expect. But I'm pointed out now because the laugh track is here for those quote racist jokes. Again, They're jokes about stereotypes.

That's all it really is. Like you said, Richard, it's a joke about a stereotype. When it's directed at someone of that race, then it becomes racist. But it's a joke about a stereotype, you know. Then you have that being made.

I don't know how lazy or anything else it is. It kind of takes the piss out of said stereotype. Yeah, Yamana makes jokes about himself in terms of being Asian American, and people within the world of the show make fun of him based on his coffee and his filing system. But there gambling and is gambling all right, which all come into play in this episode. Yeah, I'll come into play, But there is that one episode for the coffee doesn't They didn't even mention They didn't even mention the coffee.

In the last episode when they had the ability to mention the coffee, when she went to go fix herself a cup of coffee, they didn't even mention it. Your Mona like looks at her, but nothing, doesn't say anything, which is kind of strange. There's the one episode where he's cooking shabu shabu on the hot plate and everyone's like, oh my god, what's that horrible smell? So there's a little bit of you know, culture phobia going on in that episode, But it does have a very funny punchline where because they're like, oh my god, it smells like garbage. How could you say that?

We got ah, there's a fishheads and carrot tops and potato peels. Oh my god, it is garbage. It's a cell phone, but it was. It's funny and about as close to again kind of dunking on a culture that among our main people you know well, and we alluded to this one earlier, but this one has Jack Bernardi as Able Leiner, who I love how he just comes into the precinct just walks right over to the most Wanted board and starts looking at different people and their bounties. He's a modern day bounty hunter, this tiny little guy who is actually shorter than Levitt, which I love that.

You know, I mentioned at the beginning that he was kind of rubbing off on me a little bit in this and this is the episode. This is when all the guys in the precinct are just like, Hey, he's kind of cute, isn't he, Because he's trying to come in there and talk to Barney about his service record while Nick is having this appendicitis attack, but Levitt just doesn't give a shit. And then eventually he gets hooked up with Abel Kleiner and they go out and arrest Victor Jurassic played by Nick clar who is a very bad man hanging out in New York that Kleiner just happens to recognize and they arrest him. Levitt helps out and brings him back and then turns down any part of the reward very clearly. In earshot of Bernie Jurassic spelled with one S.

Richard before you a yes, I was like, wait, they really are saying Jurassic. They sure are saying Jurassic. It's kind of what his name. That's a good sect of Jurassic. Yeah, is a great name too, Capecne.

They had some great names, you know. I'm Jack Bernardi. Is Abel Kleiner is pretty great. I would let that guy roam around my neighborhood looking for the scum, the wanted posters scum. But he's not like he's not tracking people down and physically like he's not carrying a gun, and anybody's just like they're there, Cops, go get him.

He's gonna In other words, he's the guy who looks at the milk carton really careful. Yeah, okay, he ideas them all right, because again, you know, cops of the seventies are even now, like they don't share all that information. And I like how he calls them out. He's like all that up there. He's been caught for four months.

But you know, you guys are the experts in the ghost episode and now in appendicitis, and maybe I'm just forgetting maybe this is this is more in the mode of Barney Miller. They don't take the concept to the next level, like like, at a certain point, I'm like, is something like is Nick going to go into some sort of crisis and they're all going to happen like, oh my god, we've got to do something right now, and it's going to turn into a comedy set piece that never happens. They get him on a stretcher, they get him out, he recovers the poulter Geist. Is it going to turn into a big comic set piece like the Werewolf episode sort of does know? You know, it goes to third base but never go tries for the home run, which maybe is more the Barney Miller style.

Well, I think it's also a little bit of always having an ABC plot plus the half an hour. You got to shove a lot of stuff to this. Yeah, and they don't go for the goofy stuff. They go for the character stuff. So it's like, yeah, rather than having them all run around like they do a little bit if you go get something cold, okay, I got popsycles, they do a little bitter, but just enough and then it's like, okay, we're done, though we're not.

No one's giving birth in the back of a cab, you know. Yeah, it would seem that the show has moved more into character driven comedy as opposed to being a straight up sitcom, which leads us to the next episode, Oh boy, you want to go there? I don't want to go there, And I don't even want to say the title of the episode. Again, ladies and gentlemen, it's the R word. It's the word that you're thinking of that would get you demonetized if you said it on YouTube.

And yes, that's a real thing. So this episode, Oh my god, on a very special Barney Miller, I was so happy to see Joyce Jamison, who I mostly know as one of the three reporters from Death Race two thousand. She's fantastic. Her husband, played by Michael Pataki, I mostly know him as Myron Count Malachi of the Malachi Crunch fame from Happy Days. Great Voice.

Actor also shows up in a bunch of stuff, including the An Incredible Jail Babysitter from nineteen seventy seven, but in this he is married. Marvin Lindsay is married to Catherine Lindsay and the a story of this episode is that she is a victim of spousal rape, and in nineteen seventy eight, when this came out, that was still very much a odd thing to talk about it was not necessarily recognized as being illegal, and it was the subject of many, many laughs through this whole thing. And my god, my skin was crawling watching this. And this isn't just coming from some hipster wokester type dude from twenty twenty two. It was really tough to watch as a fifty year old man watching this thing from when I grew up.

Man that this not age right at all. You hit on something that I think is central to this episode and the way it's consumed. If you had a little dial at home on your television where you could turn off the laugh track if you wanted to in a heird way, I think that would solve fifty percent of the story's problems, because I again I think on the page, they're not sniggering at her, they're genuinely being people of their era where they're like, well, we're not laughing you out of here, We're just trying to get a handle on the actual legality of what just happened. Like no one is saying you shouldn't be here, but is that illegal? We actually don't know.

And then of course they bring in Okay, so the guy walks in, who is the husband's lawyer. By the way, that struck me as very weird. The husband looks like he works in a sewer and this lawyer comes in in a three piece suit, looks like he charges about six hundred bucks an hour. I'm like, he's got this guy and retainer, very rich sewer Richard. That was weird.

Then they bring in the district or the assistant district attorney, and in what for the time was a very smart bit of writing, it's a female district attorney who hundred percent is like, yes, this is rape just because you're married, you're not allowed to force yourself on your partner. And she's basically the spokesman for that point of view. So again, if it had just played out without a laugh track, it would have been an interesting win into a question that was a live question in nineteen seventy eight. I completely agree, because I was really trying to pay attention. You know, we talked about Woljahoa's having the bad things to say about the prostitute in the first episode.

We discussed in this episode, but yeah, it's not how Lindon as Barney Miller going well, I just don't see the problem with this. Nobody says, I don't see the problem with this. They're more than anything, they're very confused. Yeah, and you know, I think Dietrich talks about, you know, the traditional history of women being basically chattel. I mean, don't forget guys, and I know you know this, but like out there in radio land, this is so close to when the feminist movement really started.

That whole rule of thumb thing is still out there, you know, it's it's just this is not a good time for women. And yeah, this is a very pertinent issue as far as can a spouse rape another spouse because is that woman has property or is she actually a person? There was also a thing that you guys, Mike, you for sure, remember Chris, I don't know because you're a little bit younger. But this is when a phrase swam into our lives where we were suddenly hearing about date rape and and that was a distinction that was being made. And again it wasn't being made.

It was being made because people were confused. So it was like because I think now, I was, you know, a kid in the seventies, I was, you know, my you know, I was twelve or something when this episode aired, and so I'd heard about rape, and it was something that got talked about on shows and on All in the Family. There was a famous episode where Edith there's an attempt at rape, and but in the mind of most people, it was a thing that occurred in a park after midnight between two bias strange two strangers, and then and then and then it was like, oh, there's this thing apparently called date rape. So what it's like, Well, you're on a date with someone, and then at a certain point during the date, sex happens, and then later it turns out that the girl didn't want that sex to happen.

Like this is the conversation that would be going on in nineteen seventy eight about date rape, and you're like, whoa, that's weird. And it was still sort of balanced on the premise that people weren't sure if it was really rape, because it's like, well, but you said you'd go out with the guy, right, so and then you started making out with him. People who were not misogynist monsters were like the men on Barney Miller, except for Bojo, who is a misogynist monster, would grapple with this. So this is not that far in the rear view mirror. This is fifty years ago.

The first case of marittle rape becoming a crime was nineteen seventy five, so this three years prior. The first time it was outlawed was in South Dakota in nineteen seventy five. It was still legal in many states. It wasn't until nineteen ninety three that North Carolina became the last state in the Union to outlaw it, So you've got a long window in there. So at this point in New York City, I don't know when spousal rape became illegal in New York, so it might have very well had still been legal this quid.

I mean, this is a very much a topic of the day. So they were right there with this one. Which is interesting given that what you mentioned Richard about all in the family. They didn't go that route with this episode, which I think speaks to the people who wrote this show is that instead of going well, they brought Wentworth back in, Wentworth got raped. It's instead it's no, let's have this again without the laugh track.

My like you said, Richard, without the laugh track, it is kind of an interesting look at the topic. With the laugh track. It's an abomination in a way, the most disappointing but the absolute inevitable part of the story is the conclusion. They have to kind of steer the story back into the middle of the role they by making it less about a crime of violence and an actual assault and more about how people are treated within a marriage over the course of years and and and it sort of suddenly becomes a story about bringing the romance back into sexual encounters, and which, in a weird way, is the most distasteful part of the entire episode. Oh yeah, yep, the ending is indefensible.

Oh they well, we're gonna go and we'll talk it out, and the husband is just like completely detached and he's just repeating what she's saying, Like, oh my god, what is this fucking nightmare of a show all of a sudden, because the laugh track is bad, but the ending is just well, it's because again it's almost like the language didn't exist, or or even the sort of the logic it didn't exist to actually follow through with the premise. So they again they had to sort of course correct and and make it about Okay, the next time you want sex, how about putting on a record and lighting a few candles before just like does man, how Lindon does and by the way, like but that's a different story, like like you could tell that story with Fish and his wife, you know, and and but it wouldn't start with you raped me last night.

It would start with you're not. It's like it's Valentine's Day and you didn't. The romance has gone out of our marriage. You're no Romeo. Like that's essentially like the solution to I'm a guy who is capable of and inclined to assault my wife, and the solution to that is poetry.

Man, That's that is very hard to reconcile. Even on the page nowadays, I would not say these two parts don't fit. Let's put it that way. There's no this as Wodro would say. No.

And what's really unfortunate about this episode, frankly, more than you know the way they hand I mean, just about as bad as they handle the rape as you have other actors who are here in B and C plots, Because for some reason they didn't just have the entire episode be about the you know what happened in the eighth plot. It's like, oh no, we have to have Dick Baldazzi here as well who comment saw it for whatever reason, and Harvey gold to like, these these poor actors got drug into this episode and like it's a ship. It's that's a shame really because the B and C plots don't even need to be here. Frankly, But but but here's the weird thing. I guarantee you everyone involved in this and this is not I'm not casting aspersions because things change and that's good.

Oh yeah, so things things that we take for granted now we're not taken for granted then. But I don't think anyone felt bad about this episode or felt that they were taking the easy way out. I think everyone felt like we're we should all get a fucking badge for even bringing up the fact that this takes place. And I don't think anyone felt like they were They were not sticking the landing with the landing they stock. Would it have been the end of the world to actually give this a satisfying ending, Mike have her say, Nah, rotten hell by, Like what there?

What would have been the repercussions, I guess is my question, because yeah, I know that, but outside nobody would have suffered. I know, I know, And the problem is, like it's just not like then. Then, in my humble, idiotic opinion, it's not funny to begin with. It's like you're trying to mind comedy from something that's just not funny. So many of these episodes end up with the reconciliation.

I think that's part of the thing with Barney is so few of these people either go to bellevue or they or they make up and they go their own ways. They go home together like husbands and wives we've seen get back together on this goddamn show. It's not even surprising. Yeah, right, And at the time, it was perfectly legal to have consensual, non consensual sex with your wife in New York at the time. Three years after this episode aired is when it became illegal.

Just there you go, So there's you're in New York. Just to answer your question from before mine, I've been reading a book Pictures at a Revolution by Marks, which is about the five movies that were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award in nineteen sixty seven and how they represented different sort of pieces of how Hollywood was changing. Because he had the Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde sort of as sort of these avant garde movies. Doctor Doolittle was the holdover from old Hollywood, and in the middle were these two Sydney Poty a movies guests, Who's coming to dinner and in the heat of the night. And so a lot of what was talked about in the book was how while at the time it was cutting edge, it was already becoming problematic having Sydney Pottyer always play the most unobjectionable African American character you could ever possibly imagine in whatever situation he happened to be in.

And at the time it was like in this episode, it was considered like, hey, we are we're hitting a race head on. The solution, of course, was the racist Southern sheriff in the heat of the night it becomes, you know, finds that he has grudging respect for the most perfect human being in the world, who also happens to be black. That was considered an unacceptable ending for a story which was a white person learns that you can't always judge a book by the cover because sometimes black people are good people. That that was ultimately the lesson learned in the heat of the night. And now the lesson learned here is, hey, every once in a while, don't rape your wife, yeah yeah, put on a record or some candles, yeah, like learn about four play as if these two things are somehow And I think I think the idea now is that it jumped the track because what it's not talking about is violence.

To correctly end this story in a way that makes sense for us nowadays would be to say, dude, you committed a violent crime. Therefore that's the thing that needs to get dealt with, not the moors of romance. You attacked someone, and that cannot happen under any circumstance ever, because it is a crime. And what we want is we want her to say that. We want her to say, I was cool with you up until you physically attacked me, and now I can never trust you again.

So I'm actually going to move in with my sister and begin divorce proceedings and I am going to charge you with assault, and our marriage is over. And that's the end of this episode of Barney Miller. Hard to get comedy out of that, So maybe biting off more than they could chew. I mean, I know that there are versions you can now, I think with that what the Martini said or whatever from Mash you can turn off the laugh track, which I bought it just to do that, because I want to go back and do a full rewatch of Mash with no laugh track. I wish that there was an option for that with Barney Miller, because to your point, had we had no laugh track, this episode would still be uncomfortable, but it'd be uncomfortable for the right reasons rather than the wrong rasons.

Yeah, and I'm not even and I'm not saying any more than I think any of us are that don't have an episode about a show that covers an uncomfortable topic. Frankly, use your platform to talk about something uncomfortable. But man, your jokes with Harris ogling the assistant DA don't really land very well when you're also talking about spousal rape. So it's just it's like, it's weird to me because there should no B no B plot, there should be no C plot, and there should be no laugh track. And I think that would probably not fix it, but it would make strides to actually taking the subject seriously.

As a posed to a woman saying that her husband raped her and the audience goes wow, like what the fucking shit? No, without the laugh track, it's almost almost inverges on an episode that might have been, you know, kind of forward thinking, a little trend setting, really, but with that laugh track, it's just just it's real bad. And the end again, and the ending in and of itself is its own big problem, but the laugh track makes up a bigger issue than I think even the ending does. The ending is less surprising. That's just kind of Barney Millard, like, I'm not surprised by the ending, but I'm disappointed by the laugh track.

The laugh track is having sand rubbed in your eyes, lemon juice in the wound. Oh yeah, yeah, But there was one there was one joke that got close to hitting the nail on the head. It wasn't in that storyline. It was that sort of sub storyline between Harris and the played as very attractive and was very attractive female assistant district attorney. He sort of does a double toe or something and she's like, are you surprised?

You know that I'm the district attorney they sent in. He's like, you don't look like the other district attorneys I've seen, And she's like, you don't look like the other Harris's I've met, and I'm like, oh, is that like, is that like, hey, you know, a female attorney at this point is not that much rarer than an African American police detective. Acknowledge that we're both here only by the good grace of whatever, you know, enlightenment our society has reached by nineteen seventy eight, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. Are they going to keep going with that? But then they kind of didn't.

That was kind of the one joke, and instead they went the other way, which is I'm a bit of a hound dog for that well dressed woman. And then she gives into it at the end. She's like, I'll buy you a lunch, right drop by, I'll buy a lunch. And it's like, oh, okay, so all right, well. Love and Romance in nineteen seventy eight in New York City, I guess, you know, juxtaposed against spousal rape great Barney Miller just well, but but I mean, go watch go rewatch Saturday Night Fever.

Oh boy, yeah, that's another one that like, if you haven't seen it recently, you go back and watch that, you're like, oh shit, I mean literally just casually forcing sex on people who don't want it. That was a thing, and it was not clear to everyone involved that it was always, always, always not okay. Revenge of the Nerds. I mean, that's a movie that people like, go while there's a fucking straight up rape, like great like, and it's just like, aha, it's like not funny at all, aged poorly. If you have sex with a woman who thinks you're somebody else but you're wearing a mask at the time, that's yeah.

Or if you you know, if your girlfriend is super drunk and you just like hand her over to the local nerd while you're more interested in Molly Ringwald. Also right, Yeah, the whole get or drunk thing through the eighties is absolutely in play as comedy fodder. What I did like about this episode was that they were they did bring out the law, like they was like, Okay, here's what the law says. Here is the actual letter of the law as it stands right now, which I didn't know and was interesting and Mike sort of you bringing in real life context is great because even I, even though I knew like sort of emotionally something was going wrong here in this episode, I did not know the letter of the law in New York City at the time this episode was airing, which is really interesting and I'm glad they brought that in because it's like part of part of what the writer was doing was saying, just so you know, guys, this actually is a gray area.

So if you don't like that, maybe do something about it. Don't kill the messenger Barney Miller episode, which is why it's that there's a laugh track, like why include the well, Like why couldn't a cop show be serious? Just we're one episode? Like why not? I don't understand they dropped the laugh track on the Edith Bunker gets raped episodes?

See what I mean? Like it's the precedent has been set already, Like why not do it? Why not? What? What?

What is the worst that could happen? Nobody watches that episode? Guess what? Nobody should watch the episode? Anyways.

Definitely, Now this is one of the episodes of the show. I would say there is absolutely no reason for anyone to watch it. Like what can be garnered from this? Well, what can be garnered is this conversation? Sure, but but like look, if you're I'm talking to the college student who's in the critical studies.

American sitcoms of the seventies and what they say now it's it is interesting. And I know, like, by the way there I was talking about thirty Rock. Apparently there are four, I think four thirty Rock episodes that have been pulled from everything because of characters in black face. Yeah, that sounds about right, and not one episode where Jenna puts on black face because she wants attention. There's four of them, so they've traded in that a lot, apparently.

And my feeling is mixed on these, because like, I'm all for trigger warnings and I'm all for running the disclaimer that says hi, everyone, my name's Tina Fey. There's an episode that seemed like a great idea in two thousand and eight, which now seems a little ill advised. We use blackface, So if you don't want to see that, don't watch this episode. If you want to discuss blackface in the history of comedy, that's another discussion. Welcome to this episode.

Things should get talked about. This episode is uncomfortable to watch. It's upsetting that lasts, but it did take place within our lifetimes, and the complexity of the subject was fully acknowledged within the episode. It was not quote unquote played solely for laughs. I will say that I do wonder then why they included the laugh track if other shows had done it without.

I wonder. I wonder if they were sitting there, if Danny Arnold was sitting there in the writer's room, and just it's a network decision. Somebody probably said should we include the laugh track? And somebody else said yeah, and somebody else said, I don't know about that. I mean, there's got to be some pushback.

Otto Bruno's book hopefully covers it. I would hope Otto's book covers this in some respect. If there's a story behind it, I would love to hear that story. I know Ken Levine, who was one of the writers and then eventual showrunners with his partner David Isaacs on mash and he talks all the time about how Larry Gelbart, the original showrunner and you know, co creator of the show, begged the network CBS to have no laugh track on any part of the show ever, and fought them to a draw where they could suspend the laugh track during the operating room scenes. So there so from episode one to episode last, there are no laughs in those scenes.

But then outside of the operating room. There is a laugh track in almost every episode. There might have been one or two exceptions. That being said tells you it was a big network thing. Networks really really like dollars and cents, wanted it would It would almost be like asking a network not to air any commercials during Sure it's it's like, what do you think we're doing here?

No, So it was a big deal. This was not a crea. In other words, this was not up to the creator decide whether laugh track or not. It was a network decision, and networks were not willing to lecture. I just wonder how much pushback there was that I would love to know.

Yeah, the last time I remember them show something without commercials was Schindler's List and it was still sponsored, you know, it was sponsored by Apple or whatever, which would be ironic. Oh, very God, damn, that would be ironic. Horrible, horrible irony. What do you think of these three episodes, Richard? Since you only come on once a season, what did you think of these three episodes?

What do you think of this fourth season of Barney Miller. Well, I'm a huge fan of Barney Miller. It's actually one of my favorite shows I've seen all the episodes numerous times. I own the series on DVD. I've watched it for pleasure within from beginning to end within the last five years, so revisiting episodes sort of out of context is always interesting.

I would say that the rape episode, which we have now discussed pretty thoroughly, notwithstanding that these episodes I enjoyed, I would say they are mid level. They are not among again rape notwithstanding, they are not my least favorite episodes, which I think would collect more towards the beginning of the series run. They are not among my favorite episodes, which I think if you graft, might fall into upcoming episodes. But these are good sort of mid series Thursday Night, Let's watch Barney Miller. I'd say they are all in the good to slightly good plus grouping.

Tonight's showing, sponsored by Ford Motor Company, will air without commercial interruptions. NBC Enterprise President John Agiola said last week that it was the first time that so lengthy of film three and a half hours, would be shown on primetime network television without commercials. Ford will air a special made sixty second ad before and after the broadcast. That's from nineteen ninety seven when they showed Schindler's List on NBC. Oh no, yeah for Reels.

Yikes, Man, somebody don't know day history too, yaikes? Could couldn't they have gotten Volkswagen right? Yeah? Now presented by Ford and Volkswagen, great US and the US government specifically NASA and other defense contractors. Guys, I swear to god that was a I believe you, of my ilie.

The fact that that's real is mind blowing to me. Yeah. And I didn't see anything in that article from the Washington Post that talked about the irony of Ford being the ones to present I think that I can't remember the latest Ford who's in charge of stuff. But they have definitely owned up to that and they're trying to fix the reputation. But and that was probably one of their first acts of penance, was the special hosted by Mel Gibson.

Yeah, oh, God, Mother of God, what's you about to see? He's a work of fiction. It's not real, unlike the Passion of the Christ, a factually real, phil real. That's why they shot an air made right, factual truth from from the real documents gathered at the time. Before we talked, you know, on this episode about the show I would say, like we were trending in a direction of like, this show is really hitting its stride, and yeah, gonna continue to say it really is.

Like again, the rape episode, notwithstanding appendicide is pretty good, Ghost pretty good, the rape episode, the laugh track, and the ending being what they are, still gotta it's kind of ballsy to do an episode about it. My prediction is that you guys will let your opinion of the show will just continue trending upward. But you know, we'll see. I so love coming on like once every Barney Miller season just to kind of check in with you guys and see where you are with the show and where the show is with the show. And it's always fun to rewatch episodes.

So if you guys, you know I would. I would love it if I got another invitation to join you in season five, and you probably will, And just think, next time you're on, Jack Suit will no longer be on the show. Oh yeah, yeah, because that's what in between four and five, right or sometime early on in season five, never to truly be replaced by a new cast member. So the Jack Sue retrospective would play at the end of the next season. Oh okay, so the end of the fifth season, yes, but I don't think he's on the show anymore in the later fifth season.

I forget when jack Suit passes away, but I'm pretty sure it's like it seems to be about halfway through the season. Well, you'll get there and it'll be you know, they'll be a lot to cover, so be heartbreaking and we'll be crying our eyes out. I'd say one big disappointment, Chris with all three of these episodes. No Luger, No Luger. Yeah, where's James Man?

Can you imagine James Gregory walking in on this Bonnie why do you say it? Bonnie Day still his wife? Like, oh, time to leave, James Gregory, time to lee. He would his character would not have been a welcome voice. Oh in this episode, Scanling in there too?

Well, I mean Scanling isn't even I mean, you don't even you know he's he's he's a reoccurring character. He is, I mean right, but I mean, like, there's no question, but Luger, who can sort of like vacillate between the two, vasolate like like, oh, it was great to hear him. I'm glad we did not get his fake Good God, in Heaven. That's a take I do not want. I want to thank everybody for listening to the episode.

Especially want to thank John Walker for our theme song, and Richard HadAM, thank you so much for stopping by. It was great having you. Thank you so much for having me. I love dropping in on the twelfth Precinct. If folks want to help support the show, go on out to iTunes or wherever you get it and leave us a rating and review.

That would be great. And until then, we will see you at the twelfth Precinct next time talking about Eviction Part one and two and finding out what wo Joe's problem is in an episode directed by the one and only Max Gale