That was a dramatization of a Joe Haldeman story: “I of Newton.” It was Glass’s t-shirts that sold it – one Boskone masquerade the participants showed up using all variations.
As for Barney Miller, I liked it a lot during its original run. Fish left far too early, but Dietrich was an excellent replacement. Jack Soo was also a master at delivering his lines perfectly.
My favorite line (and I don’t remember who had the exchange):
A: I’ve got tickets to the Jets playing the Buccaneers on Sunday.
B: Why?
One of my favorite coffee jokes was during the episode when NYC was suffering a water shortage. Wojo took the conservation efforts very much to heart, bringing a brick for the squadroom toilet and giving Barney suggestions on how to save water. He even made coffee that morning. Barney takes a sip.
I had to pop in here and mention that I was happily surprised at how the attitudes in the show seem quite progressive, especially being that the show is about 35 years old now.
I’m a little too young to have been interested in the show back when it first aired but I’m watching it weekly on Antenna TV, and they covered all sorts of race, gender and sexual identity issues. I just saw the one where the gay uniformed cop was accidentally outed by Wojo and everyone jumped to defend him… plus of course they went out of their way to portray a diverse work force - heck, they even had a lady detective for a while.
There was the arrestee who had stopped using his name and went only by a number. The only ID they could find on him was a library card with his number: “They were the only ones who understood!”
As a baker I loved the episode where there were protests against a local bakery that was making “obscene” pastries.
The cleverness of the setup was that the pastries were never shown, and never actually described. You’d see the box and witness people’s reactions to the stuff. Like “I never would have thought of putting poppyseeds there!”
I remember the episode where they arrested a guy who was painting a dirty crossword puzzle on the side of a building, and Yamana spends the episode trying to solve the missing words. He’s stumped by one.
Yamana: Only a sick, twisted mind could think of this one.
Barney Miller looks at it for a moment, and pencils something in.
That show holds a special place in my growing up because when it started I was in grade school, and when it finally ended I was finishing high school! Even so I was a smart kid and felt I always ‘got’ the low-key but high-brow humor.
Do NOT let the first few episodes throw you. Like most shows it took a little while to find its groove. The Wiki article gives a good description of its evolution. Eventually they figured out that the series worked best as essentially a short, three-act stage play. There was little reason to ever leave the squad room set. Something that shocked me was finding out that it only used a live audience for the first year or two. But because the director was such a perfectionist they were always doing retakes late into the night. So eventually they just used a laugh track. Watching it now I can tell, but they still did a much better job at making it sound like a real audience than all the other sitcoms of the time.
Something very ironic is that in early episodes Ron Glass (later of Firefly fame) plays Harris as a stereotypical jive-turkey-talking comic relief black guy (akin to something like Rerun on What’s Happening!). But then he quickly develops into completely the opposite: a cultured, refined, intelligent, class-snobbish, semi-wealthy gentleman. And this meshed absolutely perfectly for his constant pairing with Steve Landesberg’s super-intelligent but deadpan Dietrich.
And my favorite Jack Soo moment was the one where Barney gets suspended for refusing to name an informant, so Inspector Luger comes and reluctantly has to ask for Barney’s gun & badge. It’s a very dramatic moment, but then Luger asks, “Who’s next in chain of command, Barn?” and Barney thinks for a second then shouts, “Nick!” and Yemana’s jaw drops and he despondently says, “Oh my god!” because all he ever wanted to do was avoid responsibility!
The show is also notable in that its guest stars were literally a who’s who of stock TV actors. Sometimes playing the same character, often reappearing playing completely different ones (both Landesberg & Ron Carey (Levitt) guest starred as different characters before joining the cast!)
And as others have pointed out, except for the occasional reference to real events of the 70s, I don’t think the show is dated at all.
