Episode 01: The Broken Promise

Police Squad in Color, starring Leslie Nielsen, also starring Alan North and Reck Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln, to night's special guest star Lorne Green Tonight's episode The Broken Promise, Welcome to from the Files A Police Squad in Color. I'm your host. Mike White. Joining me is, of course, mister Chris Sasshew, you should call me the Assassin formerly known as Zasu Pitts, And of course along with me is mister Mark Begley. I am not an animal.

I was looking for my quote. I'm like, what did I Right down? On tonight's episode, we are talking about a substantial gift. It is the first episode of Police Squad, the sadly short lived series from David Zucker, Jim Abrams and Jerry Zucker, the team known as Zaz. This one originally aired March fourth, nineteen eighty two.

I will be harping on these air dates because these were not aired in order. You can go ahead and just suck it Firefly fans, because this show was played all out of order and if memory service, they moved it around channels and times as well. They just they wanted to kill this show pretty much right now to the gate they just said, Yeah, people didn't get it. I don't think you had to pay attention, and that's not what TV viewers like to do. Apparently, according to TV executives, Tonight's special guest star Lorn Green, though in the script for a substantial gift, it is William Conrad, but he will show up in the I think the sixth episode.

I guess they were trying to figure out who they're going to get to show up as those special guests, and of course Rex Harrison, no, Rex Hamilton, rexham Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln. Basically, we are starting off in Joe Clan from the very first shot of this series, which I fucking love. So I won't keep saying that throughout the entire thing, because if we didn't love this show, we wouldn't be talking about it. Yes, the jokes start with the credits, I mean, and continue through the end credits. It'll just like an airplane.

If you miss them, watch it again and catch the ones you missed. There are still jokes all the way to this day that I was still catching. Yeah, I've seen this I don't even know how many times, because I remember I watched this originally when it aired I think I watched pretty much every episode but the first time when they aired it. Even though they were hard to find and hard to see, this was one of those shows that was just kind of burned into my brain where even watching again last night, there were so many lines that I was able to say before they were saying them on screen. Of course, we're going to talk about how a lot of this stuff was recycled for Naked Gun, which we've all have seen.

But these jokes are so classic, Oh my god, they just worked so well. I mean, the whole exchange about Sally Decker and Jim Fell and filled in I mean twice, so good, so good that in Sergeant Taker Away in Sergeant Booker as well is another great verbal gag. The names. There's a plethora of name jokes in the first episode alone. Talk about constant gag it throughout and I don't remember so I watched the first two.

I don't think they're as many in the second one, but they still place names and people names just get ripped on constantly. I watched it when it aired two, I guess on the strength of remembering Airplane and I don't know if Airplane two had come out already. I think it was the same year, if I'm not mistaken, which I also saw in the theater. Barely remember any of that though, But this was something that I watched with my dad, and it's one of those like my daughter all through airplanes saying that is such a stupid joke. I mean, he would I remember him saying that that's so stupid while laughing.

They're dumb jokes, they're groners, their dad jokes, whatever you want to call them, right and left. But I don't know, like you, Mike, probably didn't catch maybe all six I don't really remember. I feel like when I watched it this series a couple of years ago, I didn't remember the last couple of episodes all that well. I know that they moved things around. I know that there is controversy about the order.

I think they had them in the correct order on the DVD, at least according to air date. I didn't have an opportunity to see them until who knows when, because I didn't have cable for a very long time. But by the time Naked Gun came out, I saw that on the strength of this, but it had been what six years or so. Yeah, so I was going. The first four aired the month of March in eighty two, so I was going from twelve to thirteen.

We're just like prime stupid joke years in a young kid's life. Really stuck with me for decades and decades. The whole thing of them showing out of order really kind of ruins one of the best jokes that they have because they are constantly name checking the previous people in the end of the episode. So even in the second episode, which we'll talk about next week, there's a reference to Sally Decker, and that list is going to grow as these episodes go on, and then they will keep talking about the previous criminals in the next episode, which is great. I love that they give this little thing in here.

There are so many recurring gags. The one that I love the most is that we don't know for sure if Frank Dribbin is a serial killer or not. I mean, even the first time we meet him, we see him in his car is giving his voice over talking about how there has been a recent wave of gorgeous fashion models found naked and unconscious in laundromats on the West Side. Unfortunately, I was invested to getting hold ups of neighborhood credit unions. I was on the wrong side of town doing my law.

Is he the one that's putting the fashion models unconscious and naked? Or is he just hoping to catch a glimpse of the fashion models? Because then later on in the same episode, he's driving around and you see another basket of laundry next to him. I love that. I love that.

Frank Dribbon is a total pervert. Speaking of perverts, the character of Q in this show, who shows up in the movie, obviously he is um boy. That's a different character than I remember. It is essentially just Peter Graves airplane. I mean, doing literally the same gag the you know, there's a kid.

He's talking to him and he's like, hey, you're seeing a grown man naked or something to the effective. Like, it's a little different because in this it's not him being a pedophile, and this it's just him being a creep because he's like, Hey, does your bring your mom's clothes in you know, next time, or bring her bathing suit? And that's Ed Williams as Ted Won, and he's just his character is so different from the movie because in the movies he's not perverted he's just he's no selling all the gags. None of it's funny to him, which is fine because it's like multiple straight men in a scene. But I didn't remember him being so drastically different.

I can't remember. If it's the way that the water glistens off of your mom's skin when she comes out of the shower, yeah, I love it. Bring back some swimwear next time when you come. Yeah. Yeah, it's the Peter Graves gags all over again, which is great.

I love that. Actually, it's like a mix of Airplane and what Naked Gun would become the movies. It's still kind of writing that line because they do have a lot of verbal gags. There are a fair amount of visual gags as well. I think overall this hues closer to Airplane than it does to Naked Gun.

I mean, yeah, there are jokes that are repeated, like the shooting at each other from like two feet away, which comes back, I want to say, in the second Naked Gun movie, and then the thing with the pillow in Naked Gun. They do that with the wig in this episode. It's weird to me, like I remember watching this when it was just kind of floating around there. It only came into DVD in twenty twenty, so it's only been on Blu Ray, so I've been on Blu Ray for two years. But I remember seeing and thinking like I was not expecting when I initially watched it there to be so many repeated jokes.

But yet they're all here. Everything that you've seen in Naked Gun will come back in the show, because that's where they're essentially workshopping. All of these ideas is on the show. But I just didn't remember how many gags that I remember from Naked Gun one, two, and three are just already showing up in the show. Yeah, they recycle a lot of gags.

Well, they're even recycling gags here from Airplane Cigarette right, Yes, I know, yeah, And I wonder that was the thing when I watched it all the way through a couple of years back, I thought, is that a recurring gag on purpose? Or is this just like recycling their own material? I mean, you know, there's different writers for the episodes. I want to assume that everything's on purpose, but I don't know. It gets after a while you kind of go like, how many times am I going to laugh at the cigarette gag?

They do an airplane gag in this halfway through it where they're driving in the car and all of a sudden the coliseum is behind them in Italy, right, And then they're at the apartment and then you can see the leading Tower of Pisa out her window, though it's clearly supposed to be Chicago, New York. Lay, yeah, the script has Chicago. I read that. Yeah, I read it on something else too, or no, it might have been in the commentary where they were talking about Chicago, and I'm like, I don't get a sense of anywhere in this except for back lot. Right, Yeah, that's it is very much set bound at that, so okay, I mean they're not trying to convince us that Leslie Nielsen is walking around the streets of anywhere.

The movies obviously set in la plays a big part in those movies that it's set in La. Here they mentioned the Cubs one time, Well, tell him you were trade. He was traded to the Cubs for Reggie Jackson. That scene has my favorite line in the entire episode, which is we would have come sooner, but your husband wasn't dead yet. When Leslie Nielsen hits those deliveries, the way the only way that he can.

He just says it and skeeps going like that. You say that to someone and they would be like, what the fuck did you just save it? Just no stopping here for me. MVP of this episode and a lot of episodes as Alan North as ed Hackin so good because he does the dead pan like Leslie Nielsen, but he plays slightly less intelligent, which I really like that. He just seems very confused a lot of times.

It kind of gives that Lovett look a lot of times, just like huh. And I love that. I love him and his approach, and I love to the introduction of him in the credits with the guy on fire running out squadroom the police as being shot up in the process. You guys have already mentioned it, but the show sets exactly the tone that it needs the moment it starts. I mean, you see Leslie Neilson being shot at and you're like, Okay, this is a serious show, and then the moment it hooks you, it subverts your expectations immediately.

I really appreciate that this show is not really interested in hewing to the conventions of television at the time. It really wanted to do its own thing, which is why I think the three of us would agree it did not succeed. This show was way too far ahead of its time to be really appreciated at the time. And watching this first episode, what a fucking chore writing these scripts must have been. My God, doing airplane is one thing, but doing this weekly like it only runs for six episodes, but who knows how many episodes it really would have run for if it had been able to run a full length, because I feel like za Z would have a left after a while, or be it would have just completely diminished in quality of comedy.

Because again, this is the first and only episode that they write throughout the run. I mean, there are other people, and one of them is actually an rather well known actor in the next episode. It's interesting, this is the one that of all the episodes that I remember, I remember this one and none of the other ones. I am very curious how they approach this because most of the time you do a pilot, the pilot cells, they say, Okay, we'll take thirteen episodes, twenty two episodes, whatever it is. But this one lasting six episodes is and it comes out in March.

So I'm like Okay, is this a midseason replacement? And if that's the case, I mean still it's probably thirteen. But then I know there were six scripts written. There was actually a seventh script at least out there, and we'll talk about that when we get to the last episode. So it's like, Okay, what were you guys doing.

Did you do six at a time and then start writing the script for the seventh? I mean, it isn't more like a cold check thing where you're just like writing a script. You know, you've got like three or four scripts all being written at the same time, and they're all getting ready to be shot at the same time. Because obviously they didn't have all of this stuff shot and ready. They shot the six, they didn't shoot a seventh.

My question has always been, how do you keep that constant? There's not a minute that goes by on any of these where there isn't a visual, verbal, or combination of the two jokes happening. There's no stretch of time where there isn't something happening. I don't know how anybody could keep up that pace with jokes that wasn't just a comedic genius, not that they're not comedic geniuses. I mean, that's up to debate.

I can't even imagine thinking beyond here's your order for six for this mid season replacement, We'll see what happens. David Mish wrote the seventh script, Testimony of Terror, and his note about it was while all the produced episodes were written by three person teams, and he says that he worked with Robert Wall and Tino Ensana, the seventh was to be written and directed by me, meaning David Mish. We were canceled after six is more of a parody of goal Finger meets Ironside, and some of the gags actually ended up in Top Secret. Omar Shari being crushed as a gag. That's from his Testimony of Terror.

So I'm so curious just about the history of this. I would love to talk with these guys and find out more information. Ing if maybe I can drop a note to Joe Dante, who will talk about in the next episode, since he directed that one, find out a little bit more. You mentioned M Squad, so you've got the shell of things by parroting M Squad, just like how we did Zero Hour in Airplane and then after you know, even in two episodes, it's like, Okay, the case gets tough, and so then Frank goes to Johnny, and I fucking loved Johnny, and I know that the gag is supposed to be that Johnny is supposed to be like the young kid who's polishing shoes and stuff, but he ends up being this really old man looking guy.

He's so good, and I love the way he's always looking around furtively and giving so much more information than he could ever possibly know about any topic in the entire world. And for me, the best part of it is always who's the next person to sit in the shoes shines a chair, because that is always great? And this one is what life after death right priest so good. I'm a huge fan of that gag. I'm surprised that gag didn't make its way into the movie about all these gags that I know were constants, because I know that's that's a returning gag.

It's wild to me that that one didn't show up. Also want to point out William Duel pretty good in Elvira Mistress of the Dark as well, which is the only thing I can think of him being in, and he plays I think that the horny hotel husband to the h the I forgot that actress, another fantastic character actress who's just like, you can't wear makeup, and he's great in there, he's great in here. I wish that gag it showed up in the movie because they could have done that three times in the movies. Had you bat me money, I would have said that Johnny was in the movie. Right, Well, that's my point.

It's like, that's the one gag where I'm shaking my head, like, why didn't they The actor was alive until two thousand and four. Maybe they didn't think it laid. I don't. I can't imagine what it is. It plays really well on TV.

I think it plays really well within the framework of the episode, given what they're spoofing and what that is trying to evoke. Yeah, it's very strange to me that that has no place in the movies, and there's not even like an analogous in the movies. I guess there isn't the first one where he's like that whole back and forth with the guy on the dock where he's paying the guy on the dock and the guy on the dock pays him money to get the information. But that's as close as we get within the entire framework of those films. They never reapproach this joke, but they do it at lease in the first two episodes.

I think he's in every single one. Yeah, and I'm only familiar with him from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, that's right, he's one of the patients. Yeah. Wow, I forgot all about that.

Was that Edie mcclergy were thinking of earlier Chris Robly. Okay, so ran to put you on the spot. No, no, no, she is? Is she an Elvira? I want to say that she was part of that whole comedy club.

She plays Chastity Pariah. Oh it's Pat Crawford Brown, thank you, who plays William Duel's husband. But again, like all of those eighties actresses kind of fall into the same camp, the same kind of character, always playing that uptight female character. But they do it so well. Obviously it's funny because, like you said, of all the gags in this show that really are returning in that work, and that even show up on the Wikipedia page for each of these episodes has a Wikipedia entry completely.

You don't even I mean not saying you don't have to watch this show. You should totally track the show down. It's like twelve dollars on Amazon. You can see a lot of the show just by reading the Wikipedia entry because they have like half of the gags just laid out for you. It's kind of insane, but I think it speaks to the quality and the kind of intricate writing of the show that even to write a synopsis of this show is an in depth process.

You know. I think I have an answer as to why maybe he's not in the movies. It feels like with this they did the same kind of approach as with Airplane, where it's more of a time There are modern for the time references, like the Reggie Jackson reference, but it feels like they're harkening back to fifties and sixties cop shows, and this would work. Johnny the shoeshine boy gag would work in a fifties or sixties cop show if I remember correctly. And again, it's been a long time since I've watched the Naked Gun movies, but that's really contemporary that's supposed to be set in the here and now of late eighties LA.

Maybe it just doesn't work with that to be fair though, wouldn't that be the that would bring again, that would be the joke. Yeah, yeah, I could see it in the movie. But yeah, I think you're probably right to your point. It just doesn't it wouldn't. Yeah.

Also the city, the city that they're setting it in the movies is La like right, yeah, yeah, And this is timeless and placeless and set bound and studio bound and projection. Yeah, very much in reference to those shows where I mean, I didn't watch Dragnet a lot when I was younger, but I did watch Perry Mason and Ironside, and trying to think of some of the other cop shows where it was very much that generic, wide open set space that's prominent, and especially in this first episode in the Acme credit place that the whole action takes place in, or the main action where it's just it's wide open. Your building wouldn't be that big in same with their police station and everything else where. It's just this huge, wide open space.

It doesn't quite look right to the eye, but that's how those old shows were. It's gotta be big for Norbrook to fit in there. Or Al you mean Al Sorry, I thought his name was Al Nordberg. Nordberg comes on the third or fourth episode. Oh really, Nordberg is the Dufus cop that comes in a little later, And I thank you, Al.

That's what I always thought too. And I had to look at the cast lists and the Wikipedia and all that stuff to straighten that out for myself, because I'm like, is Nordberg the tall guy? That's what I always thought? If we're seeing his face now or what? Is this a separate character because he comes in later.

You know, he's not in the first two episode. Nordberg the character. I just remember him mainly from the Locksmith episode because he has a lot to do in that one. I can now picture him now that you say that, I can picture the actor in my head. Yeah, you're talking about this the role that ends up getting replaced by O.

J. Simpson, everybody's favorite Hurts Rental car folks person. Oh yeah, I was confused as well. I thought that Al was I thought his name was Alan Norberg. So my bad.

So I kept waiting for the tall guy to show up in the movies. And I love that gag, and I love the gag of you've got something on your face. I know the other side and It's a half of a goddamn banana, right, I mean, just boom, just the landing of that on the table. So good. Ah.

I think my other question about, you know, watching this show now in twenty twenty two, knowing why it gets canceled, knowing how quickly it got canceled into its run. Could a show like this work? And is this show doesn't show already exist? I mean in a lot of ways, Matt Graining talks about this show and how this show would have killed if it had been on twenty years later. It would have.

But I would contend Matt Graining built upon the ideas of this show. With The Simpsons, I mean, yeah, The Simpsons is not a live action show, but plenty of visual and verbal gags in the early seasons of the show, maybe not so much recently. I cannot speak to most of the Simpsons past season thirteen. A lot of what modern comedy becomes is doing a lot of part to not this show, but za Z and kind of where their influences lie and who they influence and what they're trying to do, which is never give the audience an opportunity to catch their breath. That's what it feels like I don't know if that was their intention, but as an audience member watching this show critically or non critically, there's not going to be a lot of time where you're not being fucking bombarded with stuff incessantly.

The show works in spite of that being a really hard sell. I feel like it's a hard sell to really like, we're gonna have a twenty minute episode of a show where you have to be engaged the entire time. That's not easy. Yeah, I would say the closest we come to this kind of stuff for now is probably the Seth McFarland stuff, especially Family Guy, Right, But with that, you've got the way that those jokes are structured is so different from how this is because the jokes are very much I think you obviously Chris. They hang a lantern on them right where it's like, oh, well, that reminds me of the time when blah blah blah, and then they have the joke reminds the time Chris Walkin went to go order froyo at tcby and they didn't have chocolate.

It's like, wow, it's like that, and then they cut to him doing it. That's for a long time that was all Family Guy was and probably still is. I'd be able to wager a guess. I mean, whatever, those what was it dolphins with balls with names on them that they just pushed into the tube and then they come out and that's how they write the jokes. Yeah, I mean would put a bunch of monkeys in a room with a bunch of time writers South park Man.

The way that they went after those guys, holy shit, that was the best of times. It was the Blurst sometimes Blurst uptimes, that's Spenny. That is what this feels like that but less reaching. The Family Guy always felt like at some point it just started reaching for the jokes as opposed to letting the jokes happen organically, right, And I appreciate Police Squad. Yeah, the second episode maybe not so much.

But this episode really is just every cool, funny, worthwhile gag that Zaz has, and they pull it out of their bag for this episode, for understandable reasons, the first episode of their show, so they want to make sure it lands. That's why they directed it, that's why they wrote it. This episode, in particular, I think, really is start to finish, very funny and also full of like a lot, Like we've kind of already mentioned a lot of gags that not only come back in this episode, but are going to resurface over and over again too. Like you mentioned Mark, a lot of diminishing returns. Well, this also does that thing that you were talking about Mark in the last episode where you're talking about the zaz rules of comedy.

And I really was picking up on that while I was watching this, this whole idea of if something is funny happening in the background, don't have it funny in the foreground. So Frank and the Captain speaking, and you've got the guys with the gurney wheeling out, that long gurnee that just keeps going and going and going, and then they cut and you see the end of the gurney inside of the building, and I love that. You know, the conversation that Alan North and Leslie Nielsen are having isn't that funny, But that psych gag going on in the back is amazing. Or like the opening of Act two where it's Act two Yankees one. I like the recurring title card gags.

Yes, those are total non sequitors, like that is what I love. I am a huge fan of the I believe the comic panel is called bizarro, Is it not the one that's used to be in the newspaper, which was all just non sequitors all the time. I love a good non sequitor, and Zaz are kings of non sequitors. There's a ton of them in Naked Gun. There's plenty of them.

An Airplane and Act two Yankees one is a very good example, and there's an even better one in the second episode that I think is even funnier. But it is nowadays the comedy is it? Throughout? Nobody does comedy credits anymore. We didn't even talk about that with Airplane comedy credits, A recipe for brownies in the credits.

I think at some point in one of these Zaz movies we get it. It may be as far down the road as something like Mafia. Nobody does that anymore. That's not a thing anybody does. It's comedy from start to finish.

You're eating a salad, and the salad is funny, and then the appetizers funny, and then the main course funny. In the dessert is funny. It's throughout. That's not a thing anymore. Everybody wants to have, you know, a moment of character grow within a moment of characters having a triumph.

It's like, why can't we just do this anymore? Why can't we just do a joke fest throughout Naked Gun coming soon to a theater near you, starring Liam Neeson. There you go, folks, I forgot Now. It's all improv until you find something that you can put on the screen. Do you hear riff for twenty minutes, and then we'll cut it all together, you know, the Paul Figue and Judd Apataw.

Yeah, that's what we've come to. Well and za Z recently we're talking about, you know, not stupid opinions. Everybody's entitled to their opinion. But you know, the death of comedy blah blah blah. I would contend the death of comedy is not wokeness.

The death of comedy is improv. That's the death of comedy. Movies is not writing the jokes and confidence in writing the jokes. It's, oh, we're gonna have funny people and they say funny things. That's not necessarily the case.

Ghostbusters twenty sixteen, it's a fantastic example of what happens when you go we got four funny women. Let's just let them do their thing. Everything is written down, this script is everything that we see is in here. It's very important to write this shit down, get this script as tight as you possibly can. You want to let people riff on on set.

You know, you do one take that's of the script, you do another that's for you. You go ahead and you riff. If you're fucking Robin Williams, go ahead. It might be something genius. I'm not saying that the level of comedian is not up to what it was, but I think the level of comedy is not to what it was.

And it's just like, okay, don't you don't have to say quiff jokes all the time. It's okay. It's a different way of writing comedy. This was three dudes at the Helm, very structured. They knew what they want, they knew how they wanted to get there.

And like with Airplane, they're showing these movies to people and they're using that as an opportunity to tune and take the movie and tweak it down into what they want. Now it's we're gonna do it on set, and it's like okay, Like I guess, I guess that is a way of doing it, and there have been movies that have been successful. A lot of those Jet Apatow movies are very funny, rewatchable, I don't know. Again, there are parts from forty Year Old Virgin that I can quote that are funny. Okay, there are parts in Police Squad that are just as funny.

It's a different kind of comedy. I think this comedy has been around for a lot longer. And this comedy also benefits from people sitting and looking over it a bunch of times. It's not just one guy doing his thing, which is fine. That works for stand up not for a comedy movie.

I don't think all the time, not emulatably. I'm going to take four people who are funny and put him in the movie. Guaranteed success, not necessarily. And Leslie Nielsen was a comedic actor before any of this. That's not what he was doing.

He wanted two That's what they've said. That's what he said. I wanted to do comedy. He would play jokes on people on set, whatever the fuck that means anymore. He's sending condoms to Robert Stack on the set of Airplane.

A used condom like Jared Letto. I don't know what the fuck he was doing, but it's funny to me that I would assume a lot of the people in this show are not comedic actors. I mean, that's not the point. And it's not about you being funny. It's about the script being funny.

That's the difference. Now it's not the actors that are funny. It's the script. Now, it's the actors not the script, which with them prob there's no script cool How do you even sell the project? Oh you got Kate McKinnon and Kristin Wig and Leslie Jones and that other actors whose name I always get wrong, so I'm gonna say her name is Melissa McCarthy.

I think you're right. That's how you sell it. And we got Paul Fiegan. He's he's a comedy guy, so he gets it. It's like, ah, yikes.

Sometimes it does work, but it's a harder hill to climb than just writing a script and having them execute your funny lines. These are still played straight. The Police Squad episodes are also no one's telling jokes, there's no laugh track. No, they fought against that, which I think if there had been a laugh track, this show would not work nearly as well as it still does. God, can you imagine if you want to laugh track, just listen to them on the audio commentary and there's your laugh track.

Because they laugh at their own jokes quite a bit. I don't blame them. They're pretty funny. So yeah, improv thing has become like the gold standard, and it's not even really improv because you're recording something so you can do it a million times. Improv on stage, and what we call improv for movies or TV shows is really just like testing things out unless it really is improv.

Some of the best moments of improv in film are not even kneedic movies. The thing that jumps to my mind, not a huge fan of the movie, not a huge fan of the director, not even a huge fan of the actor involved the scene in Django where Leonardo DiCaprio actually cut his hand and he went through the rest of the scene. That's improv, that's improvisational acting. He is sitting there with his hand fucking bleeding like crazy getting through that scene. The scene in Zoolander where Ben Still legitimately forgot his line after David Kovney's monologue and goes, but why male models, that's improv.

It's an accident. He didn't mean to, but why male models? And then David Coovney just picking up and going, I just told you that's all improv. That wasn't them doing it a million times. It came out of necessity.

And that, for me is when improv works. Is it when it comes out of necessity? That's all you've got. Would naked gun work in a improv only comedy sphere. It's not a totally modern thing because I remember watching Grumpy Old Men and at the end of the film, I believe it's running through the credits they have Burgess Meredith giving alternative lines to some of his crass jokes in the movie.

It's different every take. To me, that's sort of what they're doing now in these movies, Like for every fucking line, it's like insert funny line here. Even all the way you know, back to like Diehardened stuff. I know Stephen Lee Desuza was unset just feeding lines to Bruce Willis and he would say a bunch of stuff and they would record him. But at the same time, the script existed before that, and then it's a matter of like picking the best line, so I don't fault that.

But the one that really gives me, though, is when the comedian will think that they have a funny line, and then they'll do two or three more funny lines, and it just the scene lasts for way too long. And I get that a lot in things like twenty one Jumps Street or some of these Paul Fieg move Sport. It's just like, Okay, one joke was enough. You don't have to have three jokes in this. You tell one joke, you move on to the next joke, You move on to the next joke.

Sometimes you come back to that first joke if you need to or want to have that little callback. But it is not just layer layer, layer layer. The first one was funny, the second one was kind of dumb, the third one was absurd. Yeah, no, we don't need that for me. That kind of comedy sometimes does work.

It's a very specific scenario. And not only is this specific scenario, it's a specific kind of comedian. If it's Tim Hidecker and Eric Wareheim or Eric Andre someone who understands comedy and anti comedy, even someone like Tim Robinson on I think you should leave playing it three times, as long as there's a point in that third time, I'm on board. But yeah, it's this like beating it into the ground and then beating it further and then now it's like dead, it's buried. Stop beating and it's already now you gotta stop.

And a lot of this improv nowadays is just how much further can we push the joke. I don't think you need to push it in this scene. You can revisit it. Revisiting jokes is great za z or like the fucking Kings of that for fuck's sake. Yeah, it's like in the same scene right next to the previous jokes, like this is a little much like you don't do you not have anything else to say?

You have an other jokes to trot out here? You just want to say the same thing three times, all right. I kind of mentioned that on the Airplane episode, where it's like that Austin Powers thing where you go so far it's become absurd and then at some point it's supposed to be funny again. That was the comedy thing for a while, and that's when I sort of stop watching a lot of comedy films. I guess it's Saturday Night Live type humor in a way where that works in a sketch, But you're talking about a movie here.

Of five minute sketch versus five minutes of your movie is a different ball game. As as far as I'm concerned, taking Pat and stretching Pat to one hour and a half log movie is a good idea. Tarantino had to pass that script, so he punched it up. He's a funny guy. I've heard, yeah, very a lot of comedy in his movies.

I have to give this show credit for having an elephant man gag. Oh good? It yes, the most timeless of all gags. Elephant man, Oh good. I'm like, would people watching it now who aren't our ages, would they get it?

You know, I'm not sure, but god damn, it is funny. I watched a reaction video earlier today as part of my research. Oh Boy, of a couple watching the first three episodes, although they watched him out of order the third episode, in the fifth episode or switched blah blah blah, but the first two were the correct ones that we were going to be talking about. That was the gag that they both missed. There was no reaction other than the spit and stuff coming out of his mouth.

Yeah, they didn't catch it, and they were probably Chris's age. I would guess maybe, dare you lump me in with the rest of these people. I have a little that you don't know what you're talking about. And here's the little hunch little guy. That is the kind of dumb I love it.

Oh my god. That and I think this is the first time that I have caught this joke. Is when he leans over like he's talking into an intercom. That's the joke I thought you were talking about. Chris is talking about the joke with the hunchback at the end, at the end when they're doing right after they did take her away, and here he is right here.

I love. The one I'm talking about is in the police station and Frank lean's over like he's pressing the intercom, but and gives out these orders and then they cut two right away. Captain a little person. I'm like, I have never noticed that joke before. That was brilliant.

I love that. Got a big laugh out of my daughter too. I appreciate the fact that it's just they don't leave a moment without a joke. The scene where you have Drebn talking to Sally Decker on the phone and he calls already puts the handkerchief over the phone. You don't know where this joke is going.

And then they cut to her and she it's just a completely different voice, but they don't make it. They make no light of it, nothing, they don't. They don't have her freaking out or anything. And it's stuff like that where it's like the people who were writing this show understand that you have an opportunity at every point to tell a joke. Sometimes you don't need to, but in a show like this, it's almost like they can't help themselves.

And I appreciate that. It's like they're gonna say a little hunch and oh my god, here comes a hunchback or sergeant take her away, and it's like that is his name. When it's this kind of show, that's what I expect. And they always, at least in this episode, in an Airplane and a lot in the original Naked Gun movie, they always have this innate ability to deliver well. And when he does that, it's the exact replica of the orthodonist's voice, right, so he sounds exactly like the Orthodonist, who is apparently eighty yard and the real the only person that's ad Yard in the show.

That's what they said in commentary. They're like, he's looped. No one else was in that scene. I like that his last name is the same as Leslie Nielsen's name, the doctor in Airplane. And I think that that name, what is it, zuf Tag or something that that Zubitski or Zubitsky, that that was one of their neighbors when they're growing up.

Okay, I thought it was from Airplane and I just didn't have the energy to look it up, and so it was his name. Okay, well that's even better. Having watched these two things back to back, I was like, oh, okay, yeah, stuff starts to fall into place. I ran in the trivia that that translates to toothman. I don't necessarily buy that, and so that wouldn't be too good providential.

I think, yeah, yeah, I don't know so much bullshit on IMDb. I don't know. IMDb is a great place to get all of your trivia and stuff that you definitely want to read out loud on a podcast and claim that it is the gospel truth that's true. I'm kind of surprised throughout this entire time that we've been talking about this first episode of the show, we have not mentioned one of the more I guess iconic gags reoccurring iconic gags, The one that I've seen out of context the most is the freeze frame gag at the edge, Yeah, which is just so fucking stupid. And then not only is it stupid in this episode, stupidly hilarious.

I mean not, oh my god, I roll, but it's stupid and it works, and then they up the anti in the next episode to the logical next degree. The freees frame gag at the end is great. You have Frank's Rebin and Ed sitting there laughing, and then they freeze and then all the North is the one who starts breaking first, and he starts just like looking around mouth. He can't hold it as long as Leslie Nielsen, and obviously I'm sure they were like, you guys need to start like getting sick of it the longer this goes on. But kudos to Leslie Nielsen for holding it so unbelievably long without ever blinking or anything.

And man, honestly, as much as I love some of the verbal gags. It might be my favorite visual gag in the entire run of this show because I like that they just go, well, nobody's really explained why anyone does this, so we're just gonna have them have no idea why this is happening, which I think is just a funny kind of like meta textual gag on top of everything else, because it is funny if you know what they're trying to make fun of. Otherwise, I mean, yeah, it's funny that they're frozen. You really do have to have some frame of reference for some of these TV specific gags, at least TV at the time. Oh god, Yeah, there was an amazing video that I saw years ago where it was every beat before and then freeze frame of the end of chips.

So just that like a little like ha ha, off to the next one, and it may just over and over and over again. In a show that we talk about weekly or monthly, they do it. They do it in Barney Miller every time. It's every episode of Barney Miller has it. Colombo's got all those stills at the end.

They don't do the freeze at the end. But yeah, there's definitely that we watch a lot of murder she wrote in this house, and they end every episode like that, and I every time they do what do I think of police squad? Every fucking time Seeing them do that has changed the way I see those scenes now, which, like you just mentioned, Mark, I have to give entire credit to that to za Z because I've seen people do it since, but never have I seen it done as well as I've seen it done in this first episode of this show and then definitely in the next episode. It is even funnier, which to end your show with a really standout gag. Got to give them credit for waiting until the last moment to do it, but then the fact that they nail it again in the next episode is a testament to the people writing this show and the expectations that they clearly had for not only themselves, but also the people that they're going to be bringing on to work on this show.

Because this is the only episode that they have writing credits on and directing to they direct any of the other episodes as well, yes, this one. Credit wise, they only wrote and directed Zaz this first episode. There's another site gag in here that I think maybe got riffed on your later on another comedy show, and it's one that I've never noticed before. But it's the military Millinary that he meets God Sally Decker in front of his army hats, and then it says military millinary. And it's the very hard to say.

And when I saw it and I tried to say it in my head, all I could think of was rural juror from Dirty Rock. I don't know if they they pulled it from that or not. That all night wicker store, yea, all the people coming out with their wicker furniture. That's the one gag I don't get at all, Like I don't understand why it's a wicker store and why it's a twenty four hour wicker store. It makes no sense that pere One Imports existed in nineteen seven.

Maybe that's that's why it was pure One Imports open all the time. I don't think so. Who would need wicker furniture and who would need it twenty four hours a day. It's like Spatulis City, you know, Saula, and who wouldn't a wicker TV right, good, there's so much that even y'all who have seen the show, however, many times watched him, and it came out still spotting psyche gags Like I can't think of a lot of comedies that even have come out in the last ten to fifteen years where I'm like, I would rewatch it and see something new or notice something else. But just forty years ago, this is a lost art.

It really is, like, and people really did try with like we mentioned epic movie and disaster movie and whatever fucking iterations of those there are. But even this television show, this twenty minute episode, is better than most of the parody movies that came out post Scary Movie three, you could even say post Scary Movie one. It's surprising how well this still holds up forty plus years later. So on our next episode, we're going to be talking about the episode of Police Squad called Ring of Fear. Until then, Chris, what is happening with you?

My friend Weirdingwaymedia dot Com is what's happening with me? That's where you can find this show, My shows, Mike show, Mark show, everybody shows, Weirdingway Media dot Com. What about you, Mark? I mean, do we need to say any more than that? I don't.

I don't think I think we're done, I think. Cut to Chris. He talks us out and work. All right, we'll see you next week. We should freeze frame ourselves.

This is an audio media, so we can't do that. It's just us breathing for thirty seconds. Yeah, that's not weird. Was like the fucking all of a sudden, It's like you're listening to a Zodiac phone. Call him to June in next week for another exciting story from the files of Police Squad