Episode 32: The Spy + Mojo's Girl + Middle Age

Welcome to the Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller. I'm your host, Mike White joining me is the rookie mister Chris Stash. Sometimes even I don't have a pithy remark or funny line for what we're about to talk about, because sucking the air out of the room seems to be the job of some of the episodes we're gonna be talking about this time around. Oh boy, we are still in the fifth season of the show, kind of that golden age of the show, except for maybe this time around, we're talking about three episodes. We're talking about the Spy, which was directed while are all directed by Noam Pitlick.

This one, written by Tony Sheen, dropped on January eighteenth, nineteen seventy nine. The second episode is a double episode, but yet they both aired on the same night, and there's not really a break in the episode to go to credits and commercial and all that stuff. Instead, it just plays like one big episode and that came out on January twenty fifth, nineteen seventy nine. Written by Tony Sheen and Danny Arnold, two pretty respected guys. We've got Nome Pitlick still in the driver's seat for that one, and then we got middle Age directed by Noam Pitlick and story by Walton Sorry, Wally Dalton and Shelley Zellman, teleplayed by Reinhold Weegie and Danny Arnold, and that one dropped to February first, nineteen seventy nine.

So with the Spy feels like we've seen this episode before. It is a former CIA agent thinks that everybody in the squad rooms after him. He ends up pulling a gun and holding it to Levitt's throat. I think we've seen this one before, but without Levitt there was the uh the two brothers, one of them was Don Klfa, I believe, and feels like we've been held hostage before. But yeah, this is kind of that thing.

What does Auto say? It's uh, paranoiacs with proof. But I don't think this guy has any proof. I think he's just nuts. Yes, sure, I mean it's not made very clear.

I mean we have a character who is again like you said, I mean he might he's again I believe this guy is probably a CI agent, but he comes into the precinct acting like the precinct is in on something that again, it's this. It's the old it's the old chestnut of the agent who's been burned, thinking that you know the world is out to get him, or that you know, maybe he's you know, being handled and there's handlers everywhere. I mean, it's essentially like the prisoner. I don't get it, Like, I don't get why this show want to tell this story when it's already told more interesting stories without it being like as contrived, like like you mentioned with don Kalfa, they were just like bank robbers, Like it wasn't like this, Oh, he's a spy for the government, Like whoa what?

Like hold on a second show? Like why are it just it seemed like a lot of contrivances to get to a point where it's like there's a spy holding Levitt hostage in the precinct. Right, spy was pretty good Philip Sterling. I'm trying to think if we've seen him before, he's definitely a very familiar face. That's really the a plot, which is not a strong enough a plot in my opinion.

It feels like they're really stretching with this one. Yeah, it wasn't great. Again, when the entire plot boils down to a guy is going to take somebody hostage because he thinks everybody's in on something. There's very little direction to go with that. There's not a lot that can be mined because they've already mined it once before.

It's okay. I mean, I think the better part of this episode is mister Bender and the mind. Yeah, I'd like that story. And I was really hoping that they were going to play on them being in the cage together a little bit and right like do some mime stuff with bars and all that, because he does the wall and I thought he did a pretty good wall thing. But yeah, there just wasn't enough here.

Man. By the way, Philip Sterling was on two episodes before this, will be on two episodes after this. To your point you mentioned Bruno Bender played by Stanley Brock, he is actually a recurring character. We've seen him before as this character. We won't see Philip Sterling as this CIA agent anymore, I don't think, because I think he's spending some time in Bellevue.

Well, and that's and that's the other thing about this episode is we have them sending the spy at the end of the episode to Bellevue, which makes no sense. Like I was really struggling to figure out why they sent the spy to Bellevue because that's the last They should just throw him in jail, like he threatened the life of Levitt. There, what else do you like? There you go, like sending him up to Bellevue for what It's clear this man was probably a CIA agent, but like, guys, just I don't know, just throw him in jail, I don't know. Like again, like they go, they use the go to Bellevue thing so much, you know.

Again, it feels kind of like the YadA YadA of this show, like send him up to Bellevue, all right, yeah, because they're originally taking him to jail, and then once he does that whole thing with Levitt, it's like, oh, he's actually crazy, so okay, thank everybody. Yeah, well, I mean he's convinced that everybody's an actor or actress inside of this because we in the c plot, we have an older lady who has been flashed, so again kind of familiar, kind of feels a little bit like that foot fetishist from just a couple episodes ago, but this time it's I think it's a Stelle Omens as fully Douglass and she has been flashed, and so she's looking at all these mug books and at one point the CIA agent starts to talk about how of course they planted a dame in the office, and then right, you know, but you know, even they know how desperate I am because of what was it loose or something where he must have been undercover with something.

Well he was also in Casson's yeah, because he because he's like, you know, I was there at Cason and Wojo's like, tell me more about Cason, which is again, like you know, this has been a reoccurring thing this season where they keep talking about Wojo It's being in Vietnam. Like this is the second time at least that this has been a like pseudo plot point, if not a complete plot point. So it's it's interesting that this is coming back again the whole like Vietnam thing, because like they have Bojo go over to the to the jail cell and he's like, tell me about it, and we never hear anything. I mean we hear him go like, you know, I was there at fell and it's like right, but it's interesting because Waljo Howitz I think we talked about this in a couple previous episodes this season.

Waldo has been kind of a weird character this season because he's kind of been all over the place. There have been episodes of like extreme idiocy and kind of like writing against character, at least the character that we've seen grow, and then there's episodes like this one where it feels very much like a character caught in flux trying to figure out what he is trying to get out of life, because we've seen the whole thing with Vietnam rear it's ugly head. Earlier in the season with it was like a protester, like an anti war guy. Do you remember when I'm talking about and he's like, you don't call the radical radical when he was like, call the CIA on me, tell him you've got me, and they were like, we don't give a shit anymore.

Right there, there you go. I mean, there's a recycled plotline more or less verbatim, like instead of a instead of a person a radical, it's someone who worked for the CIA. But it's the same have somebody call, you're gonna get hung up on, You're wasting their time. We've seen this before, so yeah, this episode feels a little trite, like surprisingly so. Yeah, though it has nothing, it cannot even begin to hold a candle to the next episode, Woa Joe's Girl Part one and two.

Oh boy, we were warned about this our good friend Otto Bruno, the author of From the Files of the Old one two, the most amazing book about Barney Miller You're ever going to read. He marks this as the low point the nadier of Barney Miller, and I have to agree with him. Even as soon as it started, I was just like, this feels off and if they didn't use a laugh track to at least sweeten this laughter. But I almost think it's all laugh track the whole way through. I will eat my hat because it sounds terrible in there.

This is not a funny episode and there are laughs throughout this episode. This episode should have been called Everybody but Max Gale gets a Break, because I mean, everybody drew a paycheck for this episode, but only Max Gale was the one working like it's you know, the first half of the episode I think is a pretty stock and trade Barney Miller episode because you have Doris Roberts returning, you have you have Doris Roberts returning literally similarly doing the exact same thing we saw her do the first time she was on the show, and you know her husband has been taken in by a pseudo Khan man again. This the first time, it was what like a it was gold y'all wanted to trade everything in for gold because the economy was crashing, and now it's he wants to be a soldier of fortune.

Michael Conrad plays like a great looking character. He has a great Yeah, Michael Conrad is fucking amazing. I don't think that you've watched Hill Street Blues. I have not. Oh he is.

He starts off almost every single episode. He is like the on duty sergeant that reads out everybody's assignment. And then at the very end of it, and I'm getting chills. At the very end of it's just like, all right, let's be careful out there. And then that Mike Post theme starts up and you get the opening credits.

Oh and so as soon as he came in, I was just like, Oh, it's that guy that was so happy. He's so good. Yeah, I know he's I mean again, he leaves a lasting impression on the episode because he may be the best thing about this episode. Oh yeah, I definitely think he is, because then we get into Nancy. Nancy's around, we get a little bit of her at the precinct because she stops by to give Wojoe something.

I can't even remember what he forgot at home, but yeah, we get introduced. The worst part about this episode for me is that Wojoe name drops Wentworth and I'm just like, why are we not seeing Wentworth anymore? You know, I know why we're not seeing Wentworth, but I would so much rather have Wentworth than Nancy. And poor Nancy. She's a nice gal.

She seems really kind of put together. It feels like she used to be a working girl. And we know that Wojo's got this weird fascination slash repulsion with working girls. She was like a phone working girl, right, that's sex line? Like, hey, daddy, so how did they meet Wojo?

Exactly the way we assume they met, which was through the sex line Max Scale calling one night, well not Max Scale, well the character he plays and calling and being like, hey, I've got a really weird fascination with working women for whatever reason, and I just can't stop myself from calling them horrors. It's like, I mean, that's it's fucking bizarre. I'm sorry, Like this plot line makes no sense, Like it makes no sense because Wojahowitz doesn't deserve to have this woman as his girlfriend, given what her previous profession was, given what his character's response is. Every other mother fucking time they show up on the show, a sex worker shows up on the show, it's like the world is falling, and that's what wojeho waz is like getting stuck on.

I find it hard to believe that he would be like, yeah, I'm dating a woman who used to be a working girl. Like, no, you would not. That's why this I mean again, like this episode has plenty of problems, but like the conceit of it is almost unrealistic for the characters of this show. Yeah, and the shame that he has once she shows up. I mean, there's one thing where it's just like us my girl.

You know, it's a whole like, oh, why didn't you tell that girl that you'd love her, Michael, come on, you know that whole thing. But it's just like, you know, like that kind of schoolboy type of thing. But I think it's a little more like, oh, you can tell she's the floozie, right, Yeah, I'm pretty ashamed of that. And I'm like, you shouldn't be ashamed of your girlfriend, no, whatever her profession, and we should say we do not shame sex workers, sex workers, real work on this podcast. We are pro sex work podcast, whether that be prostitution, phone sex, whatever it is.

That's great. You're making a living, you're having a good time, go for it. And Wojoe, you shouldn't be ashamed of Nancy. Yeah, weird in way media is pro sex work, Like you said, I mean, what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is no business of mine, nor is it any business of anybody else as far as I'm fucking concerned. And yeah, it's like, look, it's weird that Wojoe's response to his girlfriend coming to visit him is oh, you guys might think she's a sex worker.

And it's like why yeah, because she's good looking, Like because Wentworth was good looking. Bro, Like what what are what message are you attempting to send about yourself about your abilities as a character to be with someone who's quote attractive unquote Like I don't again, like the episode is posturing in a weird direction, Like it's just I want. I wish I knew what motivated someone to think like we need to go outside of the precinct because man, oh man, what a mistake. Just like, yeah, the show slows down to a stop, not a crawl. That show, you might as well just turn it off.

Like I'm not even joking, Like when the second part of this episode started, it's like a very clear line of demarcation for when we're in the Wojo's Girl part of the show episode. More so like everything that's going on with introducing her and kind of setting up when we go to Wojo's apartment. It is the worst twenty minutes of television I think I've seen in quite some time. It's just irritating and disappointing, and also very revealing as to why the show hasn't left the precinct at all since we saw them going to take care of the people that were squatting or something. But even like, there's a reason we don't go to people's homes in this show, and you're seeing why now.

And I got so excited when we left the precinct. I was just like, oh, fantastic, I haven't seen outside of the precinct and so long. Yeah, no fool me, so munch on rat And that's the that's the other thing. It's like you're doing something that the show does not do almost ever, like so infrequently. We could count on two hands how many times they've done it.

And we're, you know, two thirds of the way through the show at this point. They've only gone outside of the station, you know, the precinct several times, and now this is one of them. And this is just like, you should have done fucking anything else, do anything, anything but this, anything. Have Steve Landisburg read out of the phone book for two hours, like please, I'd take it, I'd watch it. This is just again and again, what the unfortunate thing is?

Michael Conrad, Peter Hobbs, Doris Roberts, they're all saddled with being in the first part of this episode, which is a quote traditional Barney Miller episode, right, and the second half for people that may be smarter than us and avoided this, The second half of this episode is all in Wojo's apartment. Allegedly it's a backdoor pilot for a Wojo spinoff show that I'm so glad never got picked up. It is just Wojoe and Nancy in his little apartment, just the one you know, you get the one angle of this thing. And it's basically it feels it feels more uncomfortable than a tom Noonan play, just the way that they talk past each other. He wants to watch hockey and then a baseball sorry basketball game.

She has no interest. She starts to talk about her interests. He's completely has no idea how to interact with another human being. That's pretty much it. Like he just doesn't even know how to talk to this woman.

He's still embarrassed, he's still kind of like just out of his comfort zone. And then we come back later on and we have her watching this hockey game and now she's getting into it and stuff, and I'm just like, I don't care. I don't care about any of this stuff. And it's just like I said, no joke LANs what soever. It becomes more like a like a drama than a comedy, though they still have the laugh track.

It's like a Tim and Eric skit in a lot of ways. It feels very much like a different show. You know, we haven't watched Fish yet, right, No, we haven't, but man, I get the distinct feeling it's going to be like this where it's like, what the fuck is this? Like who why didn't you watch? Like that's you know, ultimately, that's the thing here.

For me. The thing that I walked away from the second half of this episode is what show were you watching where you thought this is the character of Wojahoitz? Right? Right? This isn't written by people who had never written for the damn Show before.

So Danny Arnold wrote this episode. So I don't even understand then. I don't really even understand then because if Danny Arnold's won writing this episode, I guess was Wojahoe's the show going to be some weird, totally different thing, right, I mean, like the drama you've all been waiting for. What does Wojahowitz do behind closed doors? Like it gives a shit?

Like he's really awkward around women and can't talk to her at all. How did she become his girlfriend? That's my question? Like if she met him out in public, he'd be like, whoa gee, Well, I'm just a dope, I'm a big ding dong, And it's like, what character is this? Well they're talking about this whole thing that they were in Atlantic City.

It sounds like they met there or something. Sure, Okay, yeah, just I mean I can understand, like you look at Mary Tyler Moore show, and then you look at Lou Grant, you look at Mash and then you look at Trapper John MD. It's okay to take a character who's one way in one show and recast them in a totally different show. Like I don't remember laughing at Lou Grant. I remember being a pretty serious news type drama.

I don't remember laughing at Trapper John MD. It was a very serious medical thing. But to go from you know, Barney Miller to whatever this Woe Joe show have been called and it being a completely different tone, this weird household drama. I mean, we've already tried household drama. We already had, you know, the whole thing with Barney's wife that didn't work.

Why do you think it's going to work this time? And the fact that is it in this episode or the other one where they even mentioned Barney's wife, It's like, why are you doing this? Like, don't remind us of the last time you tried to give anybody in this precinct of real life, Like that's again, that's the thing that makes this show work is that each of the characters are just broadly written in a way where they really would never work anywhere else. They would not work outside of the precinct. They work because they interact with each other in a confined aquarium style space.

You know, we the audience are viewing them, and you know, again, like like fish in a tank, they don't have a life outside of it. And I'm and you know what, I'm okay with that because they're entertaining enough in the tank that I don't care what happens when they're not in because I don't even imagine that they're not I imagine that they're in there constantly and they never leave. On the other side of that door when they open it to leave is nothing. It is devoid. They walk It's like in a meaning of life.

They open the door and they just walk out into the universe like and then they walk back in and look like that's not a knock at the show. The show is so good, I don't care that that's what's going on. The show is so entertaining that I don't care that it doesn't feel like it's real, that it feels like it's set bound because it is setbound. We don't need to see anything else, and when we do, it shows us why we shouldn't, which is what personal lives do these characters have. They don't have any Their jobs are their lives.

It's made very clear to us that that's the case. And I kind of wish we had watched Phish before watching this episode, just to see, as the other pilot for a show, how that would stack up to what this is, because again, the second episode of the show is a pilot for another show. Yeah, it's just so wedged in here too, where it's just like, oh, I'm just watching an episode of Barney Miller. Oh oh there Wojo's apartment. Okay, yeay, no, no, yeay right now.

Well, again, I wonder when they were shooting this kind of what they were thinking, what the what they were trying to glean from this character of Wojohoitz, because again, they're trying to do something that will maybe inform the direction the character is going for the rest of the series. But again, like this feels such like a poor attempt at really, I guess expanding on the character because that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to give him a little bit of a more dimensions than he has. Just I don't think Bojohowitz is the right one. I'm not sure any Again, I'm not sure any of these characters are even I mean, we saw what happened when they tried to do it with Barney.

It's like that wasn't the success of this show. It just wasn't. Yeah, just a strange, strange yeah. Yeah, let's try to put some distance between us and this because it's it's never going to get better. It's oh man, it's yeah, it's again.

When when I when I think of bad television and episodes of TV shows that are the moment the show really hits the bottom. We're here, folks, like there is no way wo Wojo's saying something. Wojoe's girl Part one I think is actually fine. Yeah, yeah, Wojoe's girlfriend being around is a pain in the ass, but it pales in comparison to the lows, the depths that we sink to with the second episode. And like you said, it's so bad that it's like just get in the car and stick your foot on the accelerator and fucking go, because I want to leave this as far in the rear view mirror is humanly possible.

I did. I didn't. It's not that I didn't believe Atto any more than you did, but I didn't think this show could go to this this depth. And the only way it went to this depth is because it literally did something different, yeah, which is strange. Like I usually applaud like, oh, you're trying something different, okay, cool.

That's not like, you know, you get those episodes of like your favorite show and they do the one episode where it's like, oh, here's this episode of loss, but it's all from Jack the dog's point of view, and you're just like, okay, well, this is obviously going to be submitted for an Emmy, and it usually you know, oh yeah. The unusual ones are the ones that get like lauded, where it's like, you know, the fucking Buffy musical episode. I've never seen it, but I still remember hearing about it, and I mean nobody would shut up about it. It's like, okay, great, and then everybody has to do a fucking musical episode after that. You know, you're trying something different here, but I can applaud.

You cannot applaud you for doing that. Yeah, I mean, you know TV shows doing something different is fine. The Last of Us did it in their third episode and everybody went Google Gaga over it, and it was a great episode of television like that, in a lot of ways, could have been in any TV show like and that's that's the sign of really great television is when it can transcend to the medium. And I feel like you and I get what they were going for with this. But sure, you guys miss didn't You missed big time?

Oh yeah, you swung at the ball, You missed the ball, You hit the umpire, you bring the umpire, and then you turn the bat on yourself. Yep, they're turning the bat on themselves. My god. Let's move on to middle Age, which is an interesting episode because a lot of it focuses around the title of the episode, middle Age. It focuses on Barney, who is wearing glasses, and it's really funny because growing up and watching the show, I remember him having glasses, So it wasn't a big deal to me to see him in the glasses at the beginning of this episode.

But everybody's making a big deal about it. That's kind of an okay story that we have going on. What puts the nice button on. There is Richard Libertini, the return of Richard Libertini, Ladies and gentlemen coming back as Richard Perito, a middle aged man who looks like rich Libertini with the very few strands of hair over his head and that great, big bushy beard, and he is a he's an Olympic hopeful. He's trying to get into the Olympics.

I don't know if he has a sport, if it's the javelin throwing, or if it's something else, but they arrest him for almost tabbing someone with the javelin in the park. So I was happy about that to see Richard Libertini come back. And then the other storyline that's going on in here is this whole thing of this Hasidic jew Yakov Burger, who's played by Niemiah Pursoff, and he's being robbed by just this kind of piece of shit guy, Herbie Glass, but played by Riley Bond. And I thought that the Glass character was going to have more like anti Semitic feelings or something, but it doesn't seem like it's a hate crime. It just feels like I want to steal from people, and I want to take these diamonds.

I kind of like the whole thing with Yakov Burger and Wojoe again being an idiot and that he's never seen a Hasidic Jew. The guy lives in New York City, He's never seen a Hasidic Jew. Yeah, I guess. I mean again, like they've gone from writing the character one way to writing him back to the way they were writing him before the last two episodes, which is like a complete big dumb dumb a yet like how is that? How is that?

How how just how like actually, how does any It feels like that was for the benefit of the Midwestern news Yeah, oh yeah, what is that person? Like, you don't have to have one of your characters be dumb though, the character that lives in New York City. Yeah, come on, what do they do? Like Grube into the station house and like the roube was like I never seen one of them before. What's going?

And the guy wasn't even like full Hasidic, you know, he just he didn't have like the curls, he didn't have like the you know, the the box on the head, the thing on the arm like he could didn't even have like the talus coming down or anything. He was like the most mild. He almost looked reformed. That's how that's how little he looked a city to me, he did not look very orthodox at all. Well, I mean again, I it's just it's it's this show all of a sudden decided to just like go eight different directions at once with with the comedy, because again it's this episode has its moments with Richard Libertini, but then everything with Theamiah purs Off is just odd and not funny and strange and just it doesn't land because it starts off on the wrong foot, starts off on the wrong with Wojehoitz again, going from the last episode of being a dope who can't speak to women to now just a dope, just a dope, just a total idiot who just is again like you live in New York, Come on, man, Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I feel like we've seen this before. Some of the stuff with the hasidic Jube being a target, like again, someone being the target of a thief. We've kind of seen, you know, bringing two people into the precinct type thing. I did, like the thing with Barney and his glasses though, Yeah, yeah, I thought that was fun, it was cute. I have to say though, that this episode the I guess it might be the c plot, but it's the best part of it for me, which is Steve Landisburg's Dietrich inviting certain people to a party that he's having and describing what a Dietrich party would be, Like, Oh my god, it sounds I would be in heaven going to a Dietrich party.

I don't know if Harris would though. No, though, Harris, I think is going to be the only one that shows up from the precinct. Yeah. Well, what's really funny is you know, my hope is by the end of the show, Harris and Landisburg have come around to one another end. I think we're seeing like the beginnings of that.

Yeah, because I mean, for like what almost two seasons, it was he and Harris could not be more diametrically opposed, and now it seems like again like maybe they might be getting a little bit on the same page, and I would be totally game. Oh yeah, I mean, I look, Landisburg's the best part of the show and will probably stay the best part of this show. I feel like they really gave up on Max Gale's character. Yeah, I just I can it's like they want to do something different, but in a way, it's like they all they've done is just worse than the problems that his character already had. I can see that.

Yeah, it does feel like they've kind of lost the thread with Yeah, of all and of all people, it's the person that they're trying to spin off, right, Yeah, I mean of all the people that they could have spun off. God, sorry that we keep going back, but again it's still here, like it's in this episode again, They've just I don't know, I want. I wanted Bojehoa's to be the character by the end of the show where we're like, this guy is essentially the kind of sun figure to Barney, and by the end of the show they kind of have this father son relationship and I think it's still going there. But I just I hope by the end of the show Wojohoitz actually has some character growth, because this season it feels like he's been up and down and there has not been like a there hasn't been like a middle ground for his character, and there hasn't been like a moment where I'm like, all right, I see that his character is exhibiting some kind of growth.

We see a little bit of it in the Harris situation, but even there it's more just like him being exasperated and not knowing what to say, which tracks with his character. But then you have something like this where it's like what, like what, God, stop writing him this way? He's not this stupid. Writing him like this big of a dope doesn't help the character grow because he's the he's the second character of this show. Yeah, well, going back to what I was about to say, the character that you would spin off I would think is Harris.

You know, Harris is the most right now, he's the most well developed character aside from Barney, because we can't make up our mind on what Wojoe's doing. Dietrich is too much of a cipher, you know. Right now, Levitt is still pretty on the fensis ours annoying versus not. I know, we've come around to him a season and yeah, like he was fantastic with the gun to his throat in the spy episode. But yeah, I mean, why not a Harris show If you're going to do that, and then you could take Harris and you can make that serious show.

You could take that Harris incident and just spin it right out man and show what his struggles are, because Wojoe doesn't have struggles, you know, his struggles are all in his own head where he's just like, Oh, I really like this lady, but she's got this past and I don't know how to talk to her, and I like Hockey. That's not a character. No, that's not a character. That's a series of situations, you know. And I mean the way Wojo was introduced in the beginning of this show, I think it's very telling with the kung fu post that again had nothing to do with anything.

In a lot of ways, Max Gale's character feels directionless. He feels like he's just floating in the ether of this fifth season. And look, I I would feel the same way even without Wojo's Girl, because we were talking about this before we saw Wojo's Girl. We were talking about his character feeling uncharacteristically unlike himself very frequently this season, and Wojo's Girl adds to it. And then this episode.

Again, this episode's fine, but I would have hoped that this episode would help wash the bad taste out of my mouth of the last episode, and this episode more or less opens with them conceding that they've completely given up on Wojo's character, right, and again, I hope that they reel that back. They bring that back, and they find a way to make Wojohoe it's a interesting character who feels like a foil to Barney. I hope that they can bring that back, because right now it's just like, I please just stay in the background. Yeah, I mean, we had the Indian episode. It's a great episode, and yeah, Wojoe kind of learns lesson.

He is very mature in that episode. He's just like, this is that right? We need to do what's right. He goes against orders and takes him back out to the park and all that's great, perfect. I love it.

Let's keep going with that Wojoe instead of whoever this Wojoe is? Right, I said, it's been up and down this season, like some really high highs and the lowest lows and the lowest lows are surrounding his character, so it's hard to not single him out, but they sure did, so why can't we? That was the whole point of spinning the show off was they thought Wojo Whats was a strong enough character to support his own series and I think they realized that that was not going to work the way they were trying to do it, and it clearly did because it didn't go anywhere, and it's regarded by people in the know who care about the show like Otto as the worst episode. And then you have this episode following it up, which digs the hole just one inch further down.

Again, it's already thirty feet down, so it doesn't matter, but you would hope that they would start trying to figure out a way to undo the mistakes that they made. Well, hopefully will start to end this season on a high note with the next three episodes that we talk about where we're going to be discussing the Counterfeitter, Open House, and Identity, and again Gnome Pitlick behind the camera for two of those, but we're back to Max Gale as director when it comes to the Counterfeitter. So fingers cross that we're in for a good episode with that. Fingers cross we're in for good episodes with Open House and Identity, and fingers crossed that people are enjoying the show and we'll come back next month and hear us just kind of shoot our mouths off about this classic detective of wonderful television history.

So, Chris, in the meantime, where can people find you? And more of what you're working on? You find me and everything I work on over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, which is where this show and so many other fantastic audio shows can be found, both narrative and conversational, And they're all over Weirdingwaymedia dot com. What about you, Mike, where can people find you? You know what?

All over Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Kind of weird shocking. Yeah, today was a banner day, the day that we're recording this episode. There were new episodes Who at the Projection Booth. There was a new episode or the Bollywood Cinema Club that Chris hosts that I was a co host on, Thank you Chris.

And there was a new episode of From the Files of Police Squad in Color that you and me and Mark Begley I'll do it was if you like the sound of my awful voice. You were just a pig in slop today because you got probably five six hours worth of me. Just shoot my mouth off. God bless America. Second Amendment eight rights, first Amendment a right.

Second Amendment, A fucking right. Either, but god damn that First Amendment. They let people like us talk on the internet. My terrible Barney Miller opinions. We're going to take some flak for this episode, but I don't think so.

I hope not. I hope every I mean, like that, Scott, that's we can't be in the minority here, guys, this is this isn't this episode was. This is hard for us to get through. Being as positive as we were as folks, we were holding back