Episode 06: Dead Men Don't Laugh

A Lease Squad in Color starring Leslie Nielson, Alston starring Ellen North and Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln. The night's special guest star William Conrad to night's episode dead Men Don't Laugh. Welcome to from the files of Police Squad in Color. I'm your host. Mike Kwait joined me, of course, is mister Mark Begley.

I do not have a clever catch phrase this episode because there were no clever catch phrases this episode. Oh come on, married one child that didn't work out? Sorry, married a chrome woman as the best gag in this sentire episode. Yeah good, that was too long to you, so it's the only one I have written down. And of course joining us as well as mister Chris Dash.

You've caught me in the middle of my midnight routine, which includes applying Dick Clark's secret formula youth cream to my face. M Thanks Johnny. We are talking about the final episode of Police Squad, but don't worry, we'll be back. I'm saying that right now. We'll be back next week talking about Naked Gun.

But for now we're talking about Testimony of Evil, which was the last episode produced. The last episode aired all the way back in July of nineteen eighty two, July eighth to be exact, directed by poor Joe Dante, who was just given a big old shit sandwich by Tino and Sanna and Robert wool. I'm sorry, I'm telegraphing it right now. Not a fan of this episode as much as others. Yes, there's a couple of really good lines, a couple of good bits, but overall, this one left me the coldest every episode I did not like.

Dick Miller could not save this episode. Yes, Dick Miller, Oh my god, it was so great when he showed up. And I love Danny Dayton who plays the stand up comedian slash drug runner who gets killed, but he's barely in this episode. Yeah it's not funny. No, no it's not.

I mean they try, and they get some places of this whole thing of Frank being this ultimate comedian entertainer thing is pretty good, but yeah, is it. I was like, wait a second, I wrote this is a suck. Yeah, there was like twenty It felt like the entire episode took place in that nightclub with the camera on Leslie Nielson, the entire and that's that mugging. I don't like and I know what he's acting that way on purpose, but yeah, it wrinkled me kind of where we're going with all of this. By the time we get to the end of the third movie, I feel like we're on a roller coaster right now.

We're at the bottom here. We're gonna go back up for the first movie, gonna hit a little bit of a low for the second movie, and that's gonna be were plumbed, the tracks not even finished, and we're just plummeting into the oblivion with the third movie. This is as low as we're going to get until we get to the third movie. Just a pre prefacing all of this. So I said on our first episode where we talked about Police Squad, So the second episode of this series, I believe I talked about how William Conrad was supposed to be in that episode, that he's in the script.

Well, they finally got him, but they didn't rate a new gag for him. He's being thrown out of a moving car, which is the exact same thing that happened to Lauren Green in the first episode. It's like it was really funny that time. They could have used the John Belushi gag that they had to throw out because they filmed and couldn't use man for those are the listeners that don't know what is the John Belushi gag? The John Belushi gag.

He went to them and wanted to be I guess, one of the guest stars that gets killed during the opening credits. And his idea was the camera would pan over to a body on the ground with a needle in its arm, and they said, no, we're not going to do that, and so thank god, so it turned into like a mob hit where you see concrete blocks going down in the water and then the chains and then Belushi's body and apparently he choked for real during at and then when they brought him up, everybody was giving their O bits, you know, oh remember John Belushi for just this and that, his time in Sarah Live and Animal House. And he died of a drug overdose a couple of months after that, and but before that was aired they were able to pull it.

And I'm not sure which episode it was supposed to go with. Maybe with this it could have been it could have been yeah, yikes, dodged a bullet on that. Somebody's got that film somewhere I'm assuming maybe maybe they had the heart to destroy it back then. Who knows. Yeah, wow, that's something.

Well, it's like when they were doing all that Chris Farley stuff about him being an alcoholic on SNL. It's like, hey, guys, you're not helping, right, and not only are you not helping, you make you might be making this worse. Yeah, weird, weird. Yeah, So this one is like I said, there's a drug runner who works at a nightclub, basically this whole nightclub. Mister VS.

Is a front. I don't know why it wasn't that Flamingo club that would have been yeah, but no, instead it's uh, mister vs. Which doesn't make any sense because it's a woman that owns it. Whatever is it mysteries? Is that supposed to be mysteries or is supposed to be like mister vs.

A is it mister Vas? Yeah? I don't know that it's funny, but it wasn't funny at all. No one is lower bottom of the barrel humor, and one is like just a one tier above it. Right.

They kept showing the sign and it was always kind of a severe close up, and it wasn't designed very well either, because I'm like, what is that even supposed to be? It was stylized, but it was odd. I don't know, just maybe we missed the gag. Yeah, that's why I kept looking at it, like what am I missing here? That is this supposed to be funny somehow other than the owner being a woman, which is I mean hilarious you know, just to think about, right, ha ha ha, mister v himself or herself as Claudette Nevins, who I thought was pretty good.

There's this whole gag of her crushing walnuts that really never comes back for me. It's just you constantly see her doing it, but it doesn't come back. It doesn't pay off. I just and that's what this whole episode is is like a lot of setups without a lot of payoffs for me. But there's a point where there's a ventriloquist doll that Leslie Nielsen has to fight.

Isn't that funny? No? And the ventriloquist doll is the one that gets a cigarette. Yes I know, line yes, yes, which I can appreciate. That worked for me, Yeah, it worked that he was the one that said, yes, I know.

I think the walnuts gag is a reference to something I want to say, like either an old cop show or that was somebody's thing. I feel like she's just a ball breaker. Is that what it's supposed to be? That's the way I yeah, yeah, that's right. Oh I just read on the Source of all Knowledge Wikipedia that it was actually Florence Henderson was the replacement for John Belushi.

Yeah, Florence Henderson. Bid is still great, So it's not like they replaced it with a bad one, right, It's not like they replaced it with the same gag twice or anything exactly. Za Z would never let such a thing happen on their show, right. What is there to say about this one? This one is really tough to talk about.

A hard time talking about the last one. I was really worried halfway through the last episode of what this episode was going to look like, because this is worse than the last episode by a country mile and then some Yeah, I mean even the whole thing with mister Olson. Oh here, Tina, give me your crying doll, and I'll put in this trash compactor and then for some reason it will re arrange the molecules of the dolls, so the harm is sticking out of the head and his line is weird too. I don't get the line. Next week we'll learn why cows look forward to giving milk.

Is it a tit joke? I think so they like being jerk what's the jerk off joke? Which doesn't I assume it? But here's the thing. It's like, cows aren't coming from having I'm I know, guys are adults.

You know that that's not where the milk comes from. Yeah, well that's where the milk comes from. But you're not jerking a cow off. This is news to someone. Email us at cow milkers at Yahoo at weird dot com.

Are we supposed to assume that cows enjoy feeling milk grabbing the women enjoy their breastplate? I think if if a cow doesn't get milked regularly, it will start to hurt, the utters start to hurt. But I don't get it. I like you explaining it, Mike. Is you wondering why what the explanation is is funnier than the gag an the other?

Thank you? You're just going does that to cows? And that put too much milk? What do you do with all the milk? Yeah, there's sort of a repeat of the it's not the rear or the green screen in the back, but Joey's drive where he's seen all the stuff after being poisoned as sort of a play on that.

And I kind of enjoyed that the disembodied skull. And then I used to watch Battlestar Galactica when I was a kid, so I recognized the Cylon spaceships. Yeah, and then the roller coaster and then the three stooges at the end. I don't know, it was just a weird mishmash. Speaking of rear projection, is this the episode that has the elevator gag?

Or was that the last one? We both had elevator gags. Okay, that's what they were well, which is weird because, like we said in the last episode, these were shot out of order, so they would have had the or wait, no, by now, I guess the fifth and sixth episodes there we go had elevator gags. It's like now they're relying on it. And then when we talked about the seventh episode that had an alligator alligator elevator gag as well.

I think the Civil War gag is funny only because you have Ed Hawkins standing there when that arrow comes right by, real real close. Yeah, they very close to him. And and the end of the episode, Gag has a lot of similar things going on where it's like, I wouldn't want to be on set for that. It's just like I wouldn't want to be on set with the chimpanzee. I wouldn't want to be on the set when it's falling apart intentionally, I mean, this is a perfect place to end this.

Oh yeah, set falling apart around there exactly yet really smacked on the head. Yeah, he gets it. That's why he didn't want to do the movie. I bet he doesn't want to get fucking injured while making another naked gun thing. He's a skittish dude.

He's you know, he's the one that jumped during the shootout at the an abandoned key store. Yeah, what about my abandoned key star? Yea man, remember when the show was good, like two episodes ago. Well, and then Joe Dante reminds us about it because Mary is in the car I was driving home Mary the boxer's wife from the second episode. Is that the other one that he directed?

Yes, So I was like, wait a minute, what what why is the right eyes flipping around? Yeah, this episode doesn't have as much of that weird cartoony niche, which frankly all Honesty could have used it. Yeah, it could have used more. I mean, like I was hoping, like, so, we see Joey get poisoned and he starts to have all of these hallucinations before he crashes his car. Later on in the episode, I'm thinking that Frank gets poisoned, but then he starts to spit all the stuff out so much that we take a commercial break and come back and still spitting the stuff out, which I kind of like that.

But I was hoping like he would get poisoned at some point and then he would have hallucinations. And then that wasn't Frank Tribbin. That was Tony too wonderful. Yeah that's mister and ed Hawk and getting a signed photo that. So I really liked the original guy who was supposed to be the entertainment and had taped a game off of TV.

You know, well it was just me. I just watched myself, Okay, Yeah, I invited some friends over. Yeah, I charged them a couple of dollars and they have Alan North doing the whole bit from the thing you were watching a baseball game outside. It's like, God damn, I've never seen anybody do that joke before it lands here. It actually works.

Rather in a desert of jokes, this is the There are a few oasises. That is one of them that in the try Marrying. That GAG's pretty fucked up. That gag is great. The stuff with the corner doesn't really work so much for me.

Oh and please explain this one to me. Whose photo is that in the drawer? I think it's Alexander Haig. Oh wow, I think what a fucking what a stretch it. This is way before David Zucker went off the deep end with the right wing stuff.

Then wow, I think it's him. And I didn't bother even to read the Wikipedia page because they probably would have bear much. Okay, yes, they were so good with kind of laying out the jokes for most of the other episodes. Oh yeah, but my energy was drained so much that I didn't even bother with the commentary. I didn't look up the Wikipedia page, I didn't look at the IMDb page.

I just didn't care. I do believe that was Alexander Haig, which is a hell of a stretch for a joke. Yeah, I mean I guess at the time, right, yeah, I mean people used to wear shirts and said what was it? Oh no, it's a niece is a pig, But it didn't say Haigue. But people hated Alexander Haigue as well.

I remember I counted myself as one of them. It's a weird picture to use, though, because it's like a mid body shot. It's not like a yeah, I would wager a guess that it was supposed to be something else or there was something else, because again, the way it shot, it could be whatever. Yeah, right, literally could be them looking at a pile of rotting food. Right.

They don't even respond to it outside of just going They probably just said, just back, disgusted, We'll put something in there. It's honestly, it's the joke this episode deserves, because this is this episode really just like we you know, finished, you know, getting over the finish line. It's like no, no, this like not just limps over the finish line. It's like having somebody else dragged it across the finess, like someone attached your corpse to the back of a tow truck and the towing your body across the finish line. It's not even trying.

It's so bizarre to me how long we spend in a twenty five minute episode. We spend fifteen minutes in a nightclub, and thirteen of those fifteen minutes are not funny at all. It's just Leslie Nielsen goofing around and they just filmed it. It's like Paul Fieg stepped in for an hour and was like, let me let me show you guys a thing or two about improvly the lead up to that Alexander Haig gag, even with the toe tags. Yeah, so you go through the toe tags and they become you know, this little piggy went to whatever, and then that pile of bodies and there's just like a cheap hunk of cardboard with irregulars or something written right like, yeah, hurry, we need something to put on that pile of bodies to explain what this.

It was the three right like they had. The one gag was the two left feet, and then the next gag was all the piggies being labeled, and then I guess the third gag was the miscellaneous body part a bit it didn't you know, And they do that I mean, the laws of threes are all through this episode, because there's also the thing of gosh, what was it? Like, what dangerous is that? Frank says, it's um, it's dangerous is oh gosh? Because the third one, Oh, you take a chance getting up in the morning, you take a chance crossing the street or sticking your face in a fan.

So there's the third one with that one, or there's when Dick Miller says to him, I've seen the greatest Sinatra, Wayne Newton, Carl Yaster, Carl Yastrumski. Yeah, So it's like each time they're doing like and I think even with the hallucinations that Joey sees, but I think the hallucinations go on for too long. I think there's like four three or four more at least four, yeah, because there's a skeleton THEA for Galactica, right roller coaster and the three Stoller coaster. Yes, yeah, And it's like, come on, just you gotta cut it at three. You can't have that last one in there.

They'll self restraint never hurt anybody, especially when it comes to comedy, leave them wanting more. And you know that is the thing about this show when people talk about this show, because I've told some friends of mine that we're working on this show and they were like, oh my god, I didn't know there was a TV show, Or if they do know, but they've never seen it, they go, it's only six episodes, how is that possible? And my answer to both the people is effectively the same. It's because it doesn't really work. Even when it does work, it barely is working.

Like this show barely works even when it does work because it's funny. If when it's not funny, it doesn't work at all. And the problem with this show is it is such a fine line at what's funny and not funny, and the moment they just start hitting x's, it's like, you couldn't get a laugh out of me after you've failed so many times, I just can't laugh. I don't want to laugh. It's not funny.

No matter what you do, you can't salvage how bad this episode has been, how many just missed jokes and missed opportunities there's been because to your point mark about the Irregulars thing, then there's a gag of them doing the thing that they've done before. Similarly, in the first episode with the corpse going in and it's too Oh yeah, they have them sticking the corpses into the shopping doesn't work. It doesn't land at all. No, I can't tell if it's because they're too close to them behind them, if it's the coroner and Leslie Nielsen are blocking it too much. It's blocked really weirdly.

It's blocked out in a way where they're blocking the action. You're supposed to find funny, and the problem is it's not even funny. You've done it before, and you kind of already did it in the scene because the thing that they're stuffing in has like three arms. You know. It's that irregulars gag taken further.

It's not funny either way. Why are you going all in on this gag? That's not funny to begin with? I was talking about the law of the threes. Where are you from, sir?

Milwaukee? Oh my hometown? Where are you from? Seattle? Hey, that's my hometown.

Where are you from Chicago? Hey, that's your hometown? Was not funny? Was not funny? I left it that one doesn't another person though?

After that, even doesn't it go on for another one? It's implied to keep going on after the fact. Yeah, so maybe the your hometown one would have been the perfect spot to stop to cut that right exactly, because you've got the threes, plus you've also got well, he's changed it up a little bit if you're interested in, you know, keeping the flow of your episode moving and not bogging it down. But hey, Dick Clark is in this episode, so that's fun. I kind of like that.

And I like this whole thing of Johnny explaining SKA. I thought that was the explanation of sky. I've ever heard the backbeat. They think they changed the backbeat. It'll never catch on.

Oh gosh, from your mouth to God's ears, what a ship. Explain the Act two gag in this one for me, because this one I did not get o acto liber. Oh it's Act two liber Okay, yeah, I only know that from playing Wolfenstein. I mean, I get that it's German, but I'm right, Is that mean Act three in German or two seeing five or something? Most of those Act two gags have to be said out loud.

Oh yeah, that is what I appreciate about that. That is kind of the sharedness of the gag, is that they keep doing the same thing. Act two you know, Gazoon Tai Like, don't you know it's like the logical This episode just feels like the logical conclusions the way. There's no other way this show could end other than the way it ended, which was to just like fall apart. I'm the actors.

It feels like they knew even though they didn't. But it feels that way. Like I said, I think first episode, or maybe in the airplane episode, I can't imagine this going for twenty two episodes, like a normal season of TV back then was at least twenty something episodes, not as a live action show. I've essentially gone on the record I think in the second or third episode saying this is very similar to the Simpsons. A lot of the things that we see in this show would have worked better in an animated format.

This show would have killed as an animated show. Oh my god. There shows on like this now. You know. There are shows where the bumbling hero is, you know, doing weird things like Archer for Fox's sake, I mean, you know, yeah, I'm not saying Archer is like naked Gun, but it kind of is naked Gun.

The naked gun setup of the bumbling idiot that's your hero. That's what Archer is. It's kind of the same thing. So if you had a naked gun cartoon, that would have been something really exciting. But this show just, my god, what an insurmountable amount of work you have to do on every episode to get it right.

It's like writing a movie on every episode. The amount of fine tuning that this really takes is not for the faint of heart. And I'm really surprised that Zaz were up to this task, but I don't think they really were. I think they were up to it for the movies. Even then, it's diminishing returns in that regard for those and we'll see that when we get to the movies.

Because this doesn't feel like the same show that we started with. It really doesn't know. And that's what I remember from that first watch all the way through, just a couple of years ago, like boy, it went downhill rapidly by the time you hit that fifth and sixth episode. It's a boy. It's hard for me to remember how good the first and second episodes were.

Especially that first episode. I found myself quoting it, he's a lot less as they went along, and with this one, I wasn't quoting this at all. There was no time where I was just like, oh, he's going to say this and say it along with the screen kind of thing. No, yeah, not at all. I mean it could be the last two aired in July, a few months after the other ones.

They're basically buried, and so maybe I missed them the first time around and didn't watch them, you know and memorize them when I was a kid, But they just didn't hit. That's the term I would use if you're airing it. However, many months later they buried it. They might as well stuck it at Sunday night at six pm exactly. Give it a kiss a death way, you know, set it during any major sports sporting event like Thursday night, say at seven o'clock.

Do that and see how many people tunedly. But to be fair, if you're watching along with us, honestly, the show does a pretty good job of showing you why it only ran six episodes, Like if you get to the end of this episode, you want more were you're paying attention, Like I can't imagine as the studio exects at the time, watching this and going, yeah, I don't think we need to see any more of this. Guys like you guys want to do like long form. Sure, but this truncate format ain't working. Obviously.

The reason we get the movies is because this just doesn't work. It's not like the movies wait twenty years to come out. It's like six years eighty two to eighty eight, and then the movie comes out in eighty eight. Well, they do top secret in between, right, But then they come back to this. I mean again, this was a viable idea clearly to them, at least one worth remining.

I have to wonder what Zaz's response, because we don't have the commentary for this episode with them. It's with mister talks a lot. I can't imagine they watched this and went, oh, this is great. This isn't keeping in line with our original visions, right. Run That commentary from the fifth episode, though, sort of covers the whole thing.

Where like, it's too difficult to get everybody on the same page and have people that approach comedy differently. Nowadays you've got these writing rooms and you have the bible for the show and all this. You know, I'm just thinking of those Mike Flanagan Netflix shows that have a bunch of different directors and writers for episodes, but they all have the same I mean, there are going to be some touches that are specific to a director, but you don't go away think, you know, this person didn't understand what the point of this show was. Like here, it seems like the writers and maybe even partly Joe Dante didn't understand the zaz model. You kind of think you do because you might have a visual pun or you might have one of those literalisms, but it's just not quite right.

So I think they would have had to have either been more involved, or written all the episodes or directed all the episodes or something that's a lot of work for, you know, for people who, for one thing, weren't familiar with TV work. Up to that point, it doesn't feel like they had a strong showrunner. You know. I'm gonna say, look at something like David Lynch's third season a Twin Peaks. We're talking about Twin Peaks before you start recording, right, There's no fucking way I thought Lynch was going to be involved with every episode.

He was, But yet the show feels like a singular, cohesive idea that is in line with the first and oft maligned second season rightfully of the show. If you were making this now za Z would have to be involved completely. I would never sign off on this project with somebody else other than the three of them involved from A to B to C two D because this is what happens. This is exactly what happens. You have people who come in and go, why saw airplane?

Yeah, me too, But I'm not gonna go fucking write airplane if over the three of us tackling this, I think the way to tackle something like this is write a script for an episode a Felony Squad or m Squad, and then once you've done that, go back in and find the comedy in that, because that's what fucking police Squad is. That's what it has been so about playing it straight, but making it funny because of how ridiculous it is on its own. Not well, here's some dumb fucking gags that we came up with that don't fit here, that don't fit within the context of the story that's being told, and that, ultimately, in my mind, is why these last two episodes have really failed, as they don't even feel like this is the same show.

If you can't even place me in the show that I'm already in with some markers that I recognize you failed right out of the game. Well, it's very strange because Robert K. Weiss produced all of these, I would consider him probably the showrunner. Then he also had David Mish who's the executive story editor for all of these as well. And then it's so strange.

I know we'll talk about this in a little bit here, but the seventh episode that wasn't produced, wasn't ever made, was a David miss script, and I think he wrote it along with Wool and Sona again, and it is so not a police squad script. It doesn't follow the rules of police squads. So it's like, well, what are you doing if you can't even follow your own rules? And this episode is kind of like we are starting to veer way of course with this stuff. And I don't know if it's missus fault or Weiss's or who's, or just was nobody at the tiller with this stuff?

Where was Zaz looking at something else by this time already? But we're six episodes in. Come on, guys, you know you've really got to keep looking ahead and seeing where you can go with this thing because they're about too If the seventh episode ever got made, they were going to just veer right off of a cliff, just like Johnny or Joey. Sorry. I was reading a book that you sent me recently, Mike, that had your essay about Airplane two in it, and it may it kind of brought an interesting question into my mind.

Could an airplane TV show have worked? We've seen what they did with Airplane, we will be seeing where they go with Police Squad, But it begs the question does the Zaz style work as a TV show to begin with? That's why I asked could there have been an airplane TV show? I think the answer is an unequivocal note looking at how this show is, and I wonder why Zaz wanted to do a show to begin with, because I can't imagine the three of them sitting in a room together and going, we're setting somebody else up for success by having such a specific and unique style that is very hard to replicate. And then we're just we're not doing anything with the show other than created by how are you setting the show up for success by not being involved with it?

Your essay on Airplane two gets to the idea of why Airplane two in and of itself is a weird thing. It's somebody trying to copy Zaz, just like these last two episodes, and technically five of the six episodes are trying to copy their style to varying degrees of success. But I would contend nothing past the first episode of the show has really been that successful comparatively, not saying take the whole show and throw it out, baby with the bathwater, but just like one or two good episodes, and I think for the most part, everything else is just kind of the same thing over and over again. I mean, now you're looking for the jokes, You're just like, oh, I haven't had a joke in a while that I've laughed at, whereas the first couple episodes, Yeah, it's just like joke after joke after joke, and it's kind of like Airplane where you're almost gasping for breath because there's so much funny stuff.

Don't give me an opportunity as an audience member to stop laughing. Really, I did like the bit with the car. It's so French connection. Yes, that's what I was like, Okay, how are they going to riff on that? Because they have to put that whole car back together in the French connection in that quick time to get it back to those guys, and you know, you miss that whole part of it, of them pushing off.

The guys are trying to pick up their car at the impound and saying it's it's been misplaced. We don't know where it is or whatever they're doing to son that's in there. But I thought, okay, this is obviously what they're riffing on. The glove box joke comes back in a way with the coke was right here in the glove box. The car's all tone apart and they put it back together, but they have a few spare pieces and it's a totally different you know, instead of a sedan, it's a coop or something, a totally different make and model, and it's kind of nice.

Yeah, it's shrunk by quite a few feet because they really do make a great point of like look at this continental and then right and then it's a little sports car. There was one gag and I don't quite I mean, I get it, but I liked it just for its odd nature. When Drevn is talking to mister V they do the close up thing, but it's not a close up of her eyes. It's a close up of her nose. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, the quick jump cuts into a zoom.

For whatever reason, that one tickled me as well as Norberg getting stoned. Yeah, yeah, for no reason other than just because and not really doing what you do when you're high on a coke. He gets the munchees and that's not a coach right now, Yeah, the wrong one, bro. Yeah, that was really strange. And this is nineteen eighty two.

They know what cocaine is doing. He should have been like rubbing his teeth and all that stuff and super jittery. I mean you mentioned in the last episode they knew John Belushi, so they know. Yeah, they know about eight balls. There's no way they don't exactly the whole bit with the docks.

You don't have to get the docks. That was nice. That was nice. And then it comes back to where not only is that a throwaway gag, but the doctor is implicated in this whole drug thing, so they have to go back and arrest him those couple of things in the middle of surgery. In the middle of surgery, of course, in the patient flat lines, Yata that's about all I got out of this one.

So for me, one of my favorite lines was one of the last lines of the episode where he's like, well, Frank case is all wrapped up. Veronica Rivers confessed to killing Joey Couldest, and we've got her and Vic and the frenchman on the dope smuggling rap and from now on they'll be up there together in Statesville Prison, yep, right, along with Martin and Dutch and Lana Thames and Sally Decker. It's like, there you go. I love it. You know, that's what I was waiting for.

You know, it's just every episode, give me more and again they he fucks it up. In that script for the seventh episode, he actually says from now on they can pedal their corruption at Statesville Prison, along with Martin Dutch, Lana Thames, Sally Decker, and Veronica Rivers. And it's like, no, you always end yeah, for fuck's sake, don't you know your own fucking show. Well, this show was canceled too early. Okay, you don't understand this show was canceled too early by ABC.

Okay, and you know why they canceled it because the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it. That was their reasoning. No, the reasoning should have been this because the show wasn't very funny anymore. And if people have a problem with that being the reality, go watch the show. This is our opinion.

Sure, it's very apparent where the show was heading with the unproduced seventh script. I genuinely believe the show was going to get into weird parody territory, and it kind of got there where they were gonna have, Oh we're gonna have iron sides. Oh we're gonna have Perry Mason as character. Oh we're gonna have at fuck it. If the show it kept going, we'll have a Columbo character.

And I feel like this is where the show was headed. And that kind attracts because that's not fucking naked gun at all. That is scary movie. That is murder by death. Even watch it, but that's good.

I'm not well' very I'm not comparing quality because scary movie is a good movie too. Them doing this kind of thing in this show is not naked gun. It's something else. I'm assuming we're getting into that seventh script now, Yeah, let's talk about it. So I have a really big problem with, for one thing, introducing a chief that's never been mentioned previously.

So that's the first thing that threw me off. Like Mike said, no, your fucking show right, he's a riff on Iron Side. Did they mention maybe I missed it? Did they mention that he's in a wheelchair. I don't think they do.

I think it's just that they turn him into an iron Block. Yeah, and he's like smashing and hitting people right right. But it's add that literalism of his name being that and him getting turned into that right also doesn't work for me. They mentioned in a note. Throughout the scene, iron Block is viewed in close up or from behind.

So I wonder if, right in my mind, this is what I would have done, I would have had a different actor in the wheelchair than the actor that is portraying Iron Block and never showing his face. But I also wonder if that's supposed to be a blow felled gag, because they have shown that they're not above doing James Bond gags. Not that it's a bad thing or anything, but that's it made me wonder either they were going to have a different actor in the chair with close ups or they were going to have a blow felled thing where they never see his face because they mentioned it's in close ups or from behind, So maybe I don't know, it's fucking weird, just that that's like first page, my first page there is a runaway wheelchair gag though I just remember there was a runaway wheelchair gag and I assume that that's him in that.

I wonder if that's what they repurpose for the wheelchair gag going down the steps at the stadium in Oh yeah, whichever naked gun one. That's sad when I mean, like I honestly thought that this was a fake script, Like I had to go out to David Misha's website, I had to go to is Twitter. I had to look and make sure that this was like the real David Mish And yeah, he talks about how he produced the episodes and how he wrote this one and it's legit, which is just bizarre, absolutely bizarre. Like even the subtitle a Kitten for Amy, There is no Amy in this episode whatsoever. And I understand that, like the subtitles don't necessarily line up with the episodes.

That's kind of one of the jokes. But there's nothing in here. It's just it feels so throwaway all of the time. Those subtitles relate like dead men don't Laugh, Like that's like a noirrish right title. Usually the one that's on the screen is the one that meant, you know, like the butler did it right?

If the butler did it A bird in the hand doesn't make any sense really in that episode, but it's one of those. It's it's one of those common crime story titles, right, Or maybe I'm missing the kitten for anything. Yeah, I thought that the fake and title was funny, but I also find humor in the stupidest shit, So there is that I personally think that or I'm actually walked this back. I'm shocked that the act gag in the script wasn't actually used in the show, the Act two gag and the script is Act four one, I mean three. Sorry that I'm surprised that that didn't have a spot in the show.

But then you come off of that and there's just all these like it's a big fat zero. What's that it pulls out a giant zero, like right right, when you do something good, you just start hamming it up with literalism, and I can imagine them just hamming for the camera because that's where we are now at this, so we should say that that's iron Block gag is that the chief gets crushed in this car and that they then end up using that in top secret. And it's pretty funny, but it's basically like one joke, you know, it is Omar Shariff gets crushed in that car and then the next time you see him, the door opens and he comes stumbling in these little legs and this big metallic block that lands and they go over to him.

You know, you're okay all this stuff, you know, oh, it's in my left pocket. And then you hear the horn go and then at one point you see the antenna go up to indicate that he has an erection or something. You get all this kind of stuff. It's one gag. It's not twenty five episodes of a TV show.

Because this gets really tiresome really fast. They have like and then they break like they've got In Olsen's bit, he shows them a film strip about iron Block people. Yes, and then when he goes to Johnny, it's Johnny and iron Block, and iron Block starts telling Johnny like, I need that information, right, now and he's like, no, no, let me handle this, and they gives Johnny money. There's no second person that comes or a third in this case that comes to the shoe sign stand like you lost that joke too, even Olson beforehand. So I'm vascillating between both of them.

But Olson is like, oh, here, I'll show you how nuclear energy works. But yet it doesn't endanger the kid that much, and I'm like, no, no, everything is supposed to put these poor kids in danger, and it's supposed to be very inappropriate and all this, and it's not. That's why when you message that it seemed like a fake script. That's all I could think about it as because I was like halfway through reading it and had just gotten to the lab scene, and I'm like, this nuclear experiment thing doesn't make any sense so compared to previous episodes at all the film. I mean, they've looked at film before, but to take that literalism so far as to this squishing thing as a problem, and there are people around the world that live as iron blocks, or they continue it with the therapist with iron Block.

It's only like a page long, but it's a slog to get through what is the purpose of continuing this joke so far into the episode, instead of it being he's a block for one scene and then the next scene he's back to normal, right, which is what they would have done in a movie. You know, you there doesn't need to be continuity throughout, like with Leslie Nielsen's nose an airplane right excite, or then being on instruments for a second, where you take that chief and you just push him right out of the story. He comes back later and he has found true love and it's a woman who's an iron block and brought yes, yes, something like that. Well again, I think it just speaks to where the show is at this point, right, it's lost its way.

There's nobody who has the show's best intentions in mind is at the wheel here. If this is the script that they were going to produce, I'm really glad we don't have to watch it. Oh yeah, I'm glad that we're reading it. I'm glad that it exists in the world to read. But I am so thankful that it was not actually turned into an episode, because there would be there's very little to say about it as a script.

There would be even less to say about it as an episode, you get the running gag of the little newsboy who is narrating basically, and there's this whole thing of like he knows as much as we as the audience know, and he's like, you know, extra extra police baffle blah blah blah, and it's like, Okay, that's kind of funny. But that's the extent of the humor in this script. There was no place where I was just like, oh, that would have really worked. Like I said, the Block thing works in top secret when you have it for one scene, doesn't work as like a full police thing where you just completely lose the thread of what we've seen in the show before. If Colombo was in the show, it would be a guide dressed up like the country of Colombia, the entire for Columbus.

Y. Yeah, oh yeah, there it is, there you go. That would have been funny that the fact that the final credit role has the Iron Block character as part of it goes to show you that just like you don't understand what you're you don't understand what you're being asked to write. Here, you're being asked to write jokes that are different, that are funny, that can relate to each other. But don't have to.

You're not being asked to write a fucking through line through the entire episode. None of the other episodes have done that. None of Zaz's other stuff has done that. Even in something like Airplane, the running gag shows up three times, right, the guy in the taxi, the guy in the taxi again, and then the guy at the taxi at the end. It's not every two fucking seconds, we're gonna get check in with the guy in the taxi.

And that's what the iron block thing reminded me. It's like, you don't need to keep reminding me. And inserting him in Frank Drebin is the funniest part of the show. Don't try to have him share the space of somebody else, please exactly or it happened to Nordberg or something right, No, even the epilogue, the epilogue is three scenes. The epilogue is always one scene.

The epilogue is them wrapping it up and having the freeze frame, but instead it goes from police squad room to an auto junk yard back to the police squad room, and it's like, what are you doing? You cannot do that, I mean, you are breaking your show's rules left and right. That's what would have continued happen. It would have the show at the end of it head lasted. Even if it was a half season thirteen episodes, that thirteen twenty second episode whatever wouldn't have had hardly any connection with the first as far as the setup, Like you said, Chris, keep mining those old TV shows like they did with The m Squad.

They took that whole framework and just changed things like Bookie to an orthodonus that's the joke. Take those really dry, dull tropes from those shows. So I guess this is more like, Okay, well, you know the show Ironside, the guy's in a wheelchair, ha ha. So we're taking that and turn it into a literal iron block. And I don't know how many times they punched that line, like, oh, you're literally a twenty five hundred pound block of iron.

Oh that's ironic. I mean, I think they have Drebb and even saying that at some point, Oh, how ironic. Hardy har har. You don't point out the irony. You don't have a character pointing out the irony of your jokes in the show.

That's a different show, right, Yeah, that's what I mean. That's it would have ended as a totally different show. Yeah, well, I would contend it it has ended as a completely different show. It was definitely getting different. Yeah, I don't know how far you guys looked into other police crime things.

A recent one Rashida Jones in it that ran for four seasons. I had not heard of. It sounds interesting. And then there's one from twenty twelve with John Hannah in it, which is immensely interesting to me as someone who's a fan of the Mummy, The Mummy, I would be interested to see what their version of spoofing is of police procedurals, given that now the police procedural genre is so broad in what it encompasses. You know what a huge Paul Sheer fan I am, but he oh yes, recale me with tales of how much you love Paul Sheer, please, that's how I like to start off with almost every sentence.

But he was in a very funny police procedural called NTSF SD SUV, so it was really playing on NCIS and CSI SVU and yeah, all those things. That was an adult swim thing, right, It was an adult swim thing. And the episodes are nice and short and sweet. I can't remember how I think they're eleven minutes long, and there's thirty nine of them. They ran from two eleven to twenty thirteen.

And what's her name, Jane Way Kate mulgrew is in there. She's fucking fantastic everybody that's in there. And I've only watched maybe I probably watched ten episodes because they're so quick and they go down so easily, and they parody so much of what we see on all of these other shows and just really amp up the ridiculousness. I thought I was pretty well done what I saw, and that one, I would say, is as close to police Squad as we're going to get for a long time. But I am curious about this John Hannah show for sure, because I was like when he shows up and suck yeah, man, And it's got a great name.

A touch of cloth, which is not I don't think that's a term we Americans use, but touching cloth means like shit yourself. I believe right. Any of you international listeners correct me, but I believe touching cloth means like shit yourself. It sounded kind of pervy to me. The Angie t Rebecca show sounds interesting just by the amount of like random cameos Angie Tribecca.

I watched the first one, and I think it's it was awful. It was more like where this show was going. It was bad. Yeah, I didn't try to watch that too, and I'll watch just about anything she's in just to watch her. And I was like, yeah, I don't think I'm gonna continue with this.

Yeah, that was real bad. Huh, that's a shame. I mean I wanted that to be good as well. And yeah, I haven't seen it, but I have seen this and I know how bad this is, so yeah, it is a shame. But I think you know, now, if the show were to exist, it would be like ten minutes long, thirteen minutes tops.

It would be like a sketch show. Like, yeah, I think you should leave Tim Robinson Show on Netflix thirteen minutes long. I don't need any more than that. You've taken all your sketches and you've done all of them, and then you've taken the ones out of the best ones and you're giving me like five of them. Awesome.

Great. That whole thing of we're looking for the people that did this as he's dressed in the hot dog suit and it was the hot dog car that smashed. That's from the show. Yeah, yeah, and that's from the show. That's one of the gags in the show.

That's one of the thirteen fourteen minutes of the show. Is that, Like, that's all you need. The through line can be frank driven. The through line doesn't have to be fucking plot. There doesn't need to be a plot.

Yes, and Naked Gun the movie, we're going to get a plot, but the plot exists to be the car that takes us through the land of the jokes. We don't give a shit what the kind of car is. We just want to be enthralled by all the funny laugh laughs. And at the end of this there was not a whole lot There was no laughing at the end of this show, just a lot of groaning. That's script, man.

I think you're right, it's a you imagine if we had to watch that episode, Oh no, thank you says Can you imagine what the iron block effect with look like an eighty two on a TV show that's essentially on the way out that's going to be canceled, which can you imagine how fucking atrocious. The effect would be like, I mean, it would look very similar to what the mar Sharif effect is. But again, he walks for a few feet before he falls down. This has to be like a more well thought out thing that they can shoot for you know, twenty minutes or where the fuck it is? Yeah, you know again looking at all the stuff about the pre appraisal of the show, because that's what we're doing and reappraising the show.

Obviously, the real appraisals of the show are interesting. They're very positive. This show should never have been canceled. Why was it canceled? I can't believe it was canceled.

The top list of all the canceled to shoot soon shows, this isn't like the top ten, Like are you guys high on the cocaine that Nordberg was eating? It didn't have a chance to get bad. That it's saving grace. It was stopped before it did really tank, because I think it would have eventually tanked. It's like a ravenous dog.

You can't keep up this level of comedy without a strong showrunner saying okay, this is how can't have a storyline with a joke that's running throughout one of the characters. Can't be the joke for the whole episode that goes against these rules. That doesn't make any sense in this universe. Toss this script out, Go write another comedic show if that's what you want to do. It's not Naked Gun though.

That's the problem. Probably a lot of those people didn't see it when it aired. I don't even know if I saw the last two episodes. Yeah, as we know, it showed months later, and who knows if I even caught. Those people are seeing probably the best of what it could have possibly been, even then, only with six episodes, so six times twenty five minutes, you're only talking about whenever that I'm out, not very many minutes.

Six hours, right, no, closer to closer to three Yeah, yeah, no, I guess you're right. Yeah, so two movies worth essentially. Yeah, it didn't get a chance to get really bad. But even with that, with only less than three hours, the last half hour ain't that great? Yeah?

Oh yeah, the last forty five minutes ain't that great. It's sad, well it is. And what's gonna be even sadder is, like I said, we're gonna we're gonna get to the top of this peak again with the first movie, because the first movie has some pretty good moments, and I think overall, I think we're gonna three enjoy it, even though again, like you mentioned, Mike, it's like Doc Brown's fucking Delorian. They're recycling a lot at the first movie and the second movie in the third movie, but the lows in the third movie are going to be like the lows here. You gave up whatever, like you made the third movie.

You just had to go and make a third movie, didn't you. That's what this show feels like. It's like you just had to go and do more than the first episode. You could have just stopped at the first episode. I will say, if we're looking at this, I think what our suggestion would be, what watch the first four episodes?

Yeah, I would say do that in the right order. First, in the right order, so one, two, five, and four, because that's probably you go by the titles of how they are on our show. You talked about them in the correct order, and if you made it this far and watch those last two episodes, sorry Heaven help you. Yeah, we know your pain. At least, Yeah, not the worst fifty minutes of TV I've ever watched No, No, I saw the finale of Lost.

Yes, I'll say I watched the last episodes of Game of Thrones and Dexter, so yeah, we know pain and this is not nearly as bad as those, but it's they're still not good. And what hurts more is that those first few episodes were amazing episodes, fucking great. That first episode is as good as the first movie. This is twenty five minutes long. Yeah, good God in heaven, guys.

It's such a drastic fall. It's not like, oh, the first two seasons of Tales from the Crypt are good, and then the third and four seasons get dodgy, and then the fifth and sixth seasons are bad. It's like one is good, everything else kind of take it or leave it. Really like, even if you want to watch the first four episodes, go for it. But it really is like, the first episode of this show is good.

But that's also because the people who made everything else involved with this worked on that episode. They directed it and wrote it and everything else. They had their hands directly in it, so of course it was good. They're gonna do with that everything they've done with Airplane and all the other things they've worked on. They're gonna micromanage the shit out of it and make it as perfect as humanly possible.

And that is not what we get with all these other ones. These are like first drafts. They have to be at least that unfinished Script's got to be an unfinished draft, my God asks me, I'm gonna get go back and fix it, to follow the own your own rules. Yeah, well, that's just the most egregious of the ball is you not understanding the show that you're writing for right? What the actual fuck is going on here?

But yet somehow Leslie Nielsen still got nominated for an Emmy, So yeah, what do we know? Well, we will be back next week to talk about the first Naked Gun film, which I think that's called the Naked Gun from the files of Police Squad and boya boy is it ever, So we'll be talking about that. Who would remember though, who would remember all those that's from six years earlier where the freaks mark where the freaks that walked into the Naked Gun and said, oh, I've seen all these jokes before because I watched the show. We're in the minority, so you know, fuck us right? Well, and again I mean, most people that you say about this property too don't even know there's a tea the show.

So there you go, you know whatever, like awesome, you don't know there's a TV show, And frankly, you made your enjoyment of Naked Gun. The movies may be better off for it. We'll see, because I this is the closest I've watched the show to the movies ever, so we'll see if it negatively affects my enjoyment of Naked Gun. Because I will say this before we end this episode. I absolutely love Naked Gun.

It is one of my favorite comedic movies. It has some of the funniest lines I can think of, including assault with a concrete Deldo. Frank that is one of the best lines in a movie. And I hope that this show doesn't retroactively affect my enjoyment because that's gonna be It's gonna be a real bummer. I don't think I've seen it since it played theatrically, so I'm excited to see it again after all these years.

Hopefully I'll walk in and enjoy it more and see what good stuff they managed to call from these episodes. But until then, Chris why don't you tell people where everybody can be found here? In the next six months, the three of us will probably be indicted for something, So Sam Quentin is where you can find Yeah, Statesville Bellevue, I think of the Bellevue even gets a name drop in one of these episodes. Shout out to Barney Miller. But you can find the three of us at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, which is the podcast network that we all post our shows on.

Mark Begley's Wake Up Heavy, Mike White's The Projection Booth, and my The Culture Cast are all there, along with the whole boatload of other things that you should be listening to if you're not already. Hey, folks, this is Mark with a programming change to note we will not be back next week with the episode on the first Naked Gun film. Instead, please take a trip over to Mike's main podcast, The Projection Booth, where Mike, Chris and I will be discussing Top Secret, the film that came between Police Squad, the Show and the Naked Gun films. And in true Projection Booth fashion, there is a whole slate of interviews lined up, including co writers and directors Jim Abrams and David Sucker. So February twenty second, head on over to the projection booth and we will be back on March first with our episode on the first naked gun film Are you sure?

If you? And in next week for another exciting story from the files of police Squad