Don’t forget the stake-out scene where Barbara is remodeling and Barney runs out in a towel to save the day . . .
How about a 19-year-old Adam Arkin in the episode Grand Hotel?
I’m starting to watch rewatch Barney Miller–I’d never seen the early episodes and I just watched the first one…holy God it’s bad…I know the later ones are fantastic but my GOD the first one is awful.
Too much crap with Barney’s wife (who’s annoying), too much with the kids (who are annoying) and frankly, I’m in favor of shooting the junkie kid (for his acting if nothing else)
Things improve by the second episode though–it’s starting to feel like “Barney Miller” but there’s some really weird cultural stuff. One of the big laffs is the gay purse snatcher who A) ok, is a little Paul Lynde-y but not a total flaming stereotype and B) wanted to be on the force and the big joke before the is “Ha-ha! Can you imagine a gay cop?! Bwahahaha!”…we’ve come a long way, baby. 
On the other hand, no wonder the '70s were so fucked up–it’s taken for granted that it’s no big deal to have a guy serially snatching purses. It’s just “no big deal”. Weird…the guy committed a ton of crimes including robbing an old lady…and it’s “no big deal”…he gets a “ticket”. I like a “three strikes” rule for stuff like this. I mean, it’s not played as funny that Barney/Liz live behind bars, they’ve got like 8 locks on the doors and they expect to be robbed all the time. It’s ‘just the way it is’.
The black guy in the second episode isn’t Harris (Wilson?)–he’s actually a much, MUCH better actor than Harris (and also better than the annoying Hispanic guy in the first episode…but I can’t imagine the show without Harris. On the other hand, in the later episodes Harris isn’t actually the same character as Harris in the first episode…in the first episode, he’s trying to be Jimmy “Dy-no-MITE!” Walker. I guess the character doesn’t develop in for a while.
Hee…episode three.
Yamata: “Oh my god! What happened?”
Fish: “The flasher committed suicide…but very…badly.”
THIS is what I remember Barney Miller being like.
Absolutely best unscripted scene ever: When Max Gail picks up the bazooka, gets an idea, puts it in position ans goes into Barney’s office “Boss…about that raise.” Hal Linden jumps a mile, spots the camera out of the corner of his eye and screams “WOJO.”
It worked perfectly.
Harris was not even a regular the first season. He is only in maybe half the episodes.
Agreed, though I mentioned it earlier. 
Wow! I haven’t seen any of the first episodes, but one of the big things that made Barney Miller a stand-out show from most of the dreck of the 70s was that Ron Glass, other than having an afro, totally played against type by being a smart, stylish, financially savvy & well-off, non-blackcent having character!
Also, in the one where they bring in the guy with all the weapons I remember after one of the detectives read a list of all the hardware he has Barney just looks at him and says, “Expecting trouble?”
Just saw Sgt Dietrich’s first episode. He comes in and Fish is forced to go on leave.
Dietrich) It’s nothing you’ve done, you’re just a symbol, like the black man after the Civil War.
Fish) Just how old do you think I am?
One thing a lot of people don’t realize is that while Abe Vigoda has always looked old, he was actually relatively young back when he was doing Barney Miller. He was 53 when the series began (and only 50 when he played Sal Tessio in The Godfather). Vigoda was four years younger than Jack Soo.
He becomes the Harris we all remember about 6 episodes in. Loses 99% of the blackcent, starts the slightly snobby, perfectly groomed, extremely smart (if cocksure) character we all know and love. The only thing that lingers by the start of season 2 is his tendency to say “bay-bee!” His snark isn’t there yet–I think he needs Deitrich for it to go into full effect. 
I like Levitt in the last season. You got to see much more about the character and he brought out different aspects of all the other characters.
I think it is interesting how the three smart guys are all different. Barney, Harris, and Dietrich all have a wide range of knowledge, and occasionally annoy each other with it. I really like the episode where Wojo talked about how Dietrich was not condescending as the others were at times.
While I always liked Harris, I agree with you that Harris and Deitrich together made a great comedic pair. The actors played well off each other
I also liked Levitt. I know he wasn’t the most popular among fans, but I think I liked him 'cause I recognized so many suck-ups like him, in jobs I’ve had in the past.
Yeah, I recently re-watched the very first episode too; it was horrible. But then, most shows early episodes are painful to watch.
Not just Harris, but Wojo annoyed me as well, chomping his gum like an imbecile, looking way too stupid.
The thing that helped me be more sympathetic to Levitt was the understanding of how hosed he was. Apparently there were regulations, in many places at least and I believe that is the case in the Barney Miller NYPD, that said while someone of his height could be a cop, they could not be a detective. Also it is very evident that during Barney Miller there is a change going on, so what has been the case may not be the case forever. So, while there are huge obstacles in his way to promotion, he can see that many who faced similar obstacles have seen theirs lifted. Women cops, black cops, and even gay cops all have had their prospects changed in his lifetime. The difference is that there is no one advocating for short cops as a group. So, he is trying as hard as he can to stand out, and sucking up is part of that. He also voluntarily works more than required and will take on unpleasant tasks with little or no prompting. He is keen. To me that makes him much more tolerable than many suck ups. So many I have encountered in real life suck up so they can be excused from unpleasant tasks and hard work.
Ha!
The reason (beyond the cast, of course) that Barney Miller is so fucking good?
One of the main writers seems to be a Reinhold Weege–isn’t he the guy who did/created Night Court?
Not only did Barney Miller have a “repertory company” of actors, some of whom appeared as different roles, some as repeat characters, but some later cop regulars were introduced (tested out?) as criminals first. Levitt and Detrich were in that category – Levitt (IIRC) as a guy who attached himself to a subway train with suction cups and Detrich as a fraudulent priest.
Scanlon: “Yee-mah-nah.”
Yemana: “Has a nice ring to it, don’t it?”
To show the versatility of Ron Glass…he once was in All in the Family playing a super-black, big-afro dude-punk who hated white people on sight and came to fix Archie’s refrigerator. Hilarity ensued.
“Dietrich, you know more facts than I do --”
“That’s a very good way to put it. It doesn’t mean that I am any smarter than you, or that my education is better than yours. It just means that I remember things differently than you do.”
I always liked that bit. My memory is not unlike Dietrich’s but there are many people around smarter than I am. The enormous pile of useless information in my head is entertaining, and occasionally useful, but for the most part no more significant than the fact that my feet are flat.
A couple of scenes with Yemana and a couple with Dietrich always stand out to me. I probably have some of the details wrong below, but the gist is right.
- Yemana is at his desk, with a container of Chinese take-out food. He’s got one chopstick, but he can’t find the other one. The phone rings, Yemana answers, and begins to repeat words back to the other person on the line. “Uh-huh … forced entry … signs of burglary … okay … hang on, let me get a pencil.”
He rummages in his drawer for a minute, finds a pencil, matches it with the single chopstick, and uses them to take a bite of his food. Then he picks up the phone and says “Okay, go ahead.”
While that was classic, the real payoff occurred a few minutes later. He’s still sitting at his desk, with other characters driving a scene, when the camera focuses on him. He’s staring at a pencil, and he says, “Oh my God, I ate the eraser.”
- Yemana is cooking something on a hot plate, and one of the others (Wojo, I think) says “What is that SMELL? It smells like garbage.”
Yemana is highly offended. He replies, “Garbage?! This is a Japanese delicacy. It’s a soup made from fish heads, cabbage leaves, cucumber peels … Come to think of it, it IS garbage.”
- Dietrich is taking a polygraph test in Barney’s office (I think all the detectives had to take one, for some reason). The technician asks him a question to calibrate the machine: “Where were you born?”
Dietrich says, “I was born a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”
Barney says, “Dietrich, quit horsing around.”
The technician turns to Barney and says “According to the machine he’s telling the truth.”
- Dietrich had gone to a woman’s apartment after she called the precinct to report a robbery. The woman claimed Dietrich had molested her, and Barney is asking Dietrich for his side of the story.
Dietrich said, “I walked in, and she’s wearing this negligee. Then she did something to the straps, and it just dropped to the floor. I figured … gravity.”
I think the outstanding part of Barney Miller is the actors are so perfectly matched and suited to their characters. None have to stretch to make it believeable.
Hal Linden is so handsome and sexy!!! He was in an episode of The Golden Girls and he and Dorothy kissed and I thought it was so sweet. It is my favorite episode of The Golden Girls because of Hal Linden.