This is what Dan Ackroyd used as his character shtick both on SNL and in movies.
Yeah, Friday’s partner was always griping about the inlaws, or talking about some ache or pain, and the witnesses were talking about how old they felt (at 52!) and what the neighborhood was coming to.
When we were kids my brother coined the term DPO = “For display purposes only” to describe dialog explaining to the audience stuff that’d be obviously already known to the character(s) being explained to.
There’s a lot of it in lots of shows both then and now. But Dragnet and that ilk lived on it.
His term isn’t ideally descriptive, but once you have a name for it you’ll see it everywhere in TV and movies.
I’m not sure whether I’ve ever seen a TV episode, but I have listened to some of the radio episodes, and this description matches my memory of the dialogue, which I occasionally found rather amusing.
AKA “As you know, Bob”.
Okay, folks, bear with me. I will never get a better opening to share the following:
It was one of those funny greeting cards that really didn’t have a point. It might have been a birthday card – I don’t remember. (BTW, the card is totally g-rated and suitable for all ages so don’t think you know where it’s going when I tell you the guy is wearing a raincoat.)
On the front of the card is a drawing of a guy in a Dragnet-esque outfit, trench coat, fedora, grim expression. In the background is a city skyline at night. He says, “This is the city. Los Angeles California. Life in the city can be tough. It can be cold. It can be lonely. Sometimes loneliness drives a person to want to cuddle a small animal. That’s where I come in.”
Inside the card, the guy has his coat open and a striped furry animal is clinging to him.
The caption says, “My name is Friday. I carry a badger.”
I’ll be here all week.
@Dendarii_Dame gave me that card in the 80s when we were dating
The Dragnet I have been watching (and ranting about) is the newer version with Harry Morgan. I’ve just now been browsing some of the older episodes on YouTube and it looks like they weren’t as bad originally. Apparently the series Flandersized itself.
I remember this monologue! No one but Jack Webb could have delivered it.
I used to watch Dragnet religiously when it was on Nick at Nite. That was the revival series, from the late 1960s, with Harry Morgan as Friday’s partner Bill Gannon. It was very much of its time, with Friday often confronting hippies or other counterculture types, whom he regarded with stuffed-shirt contempt. One episode was basically nothing but a debate between Friday and a hippie leader who was an obvious stand-in for Timothy Leary.
Dragnet, as noted above, started on radio in 1949 and became a TV series in 1951. That earlier, black and white series was less campy, a bit more of a straight-edged crime drama. I have seen only a few episodes of it, but it didn’t have the anti-counterculture agenda of the revival.
Yeah, that’s one of the episodes that stands out in my mind (I’ve seen it twice in the last few months).
Thanks for telling me! It was a really cute card.
Another speech that I remember
What a great out-of-context quote:
“LSD is the bomb” - Sgt. Joe Friday
Everyone know, the cops have the best stuff.
In both of them, Joe stands there and nods. At least he gets some screen time.
IN the Big Departure, I’d be putting my head oin the table about halfway through if I were those kids.
In the science fiction world, this was called an “expository lump”.
Watch them trying to keep a straight face.
As a kid, I loved Dragnet. I later learned it was not an accurate portrayal of the racist LAPD, which was probably why they endorsed the show. I give Jack Webb credit for shedding light on those injustices.
And I still enjoy it, because (as noted upthread) it can be fun to believe in heroes.
One thing that still grates on me: “The story… is true”.
“Based on a true story” would be better.
I think it was on these boards somebody suggested that the episode about the pot smoking couple accidentally drowning their kid in the bathtub probably originated as a drunk going on a bender forgetting to feed his dog. Before the writers got hold of it.
The actor, Liam Sullivan, also played a similar guru in an Adam-12 episode.
He also played Parmen in Plato’s Stepchildren. But we’re talking about Dragnet, Mister!
I always liked how Joe’s idea of going undercover was nothing more than replacing his sport coat with a windbreaker.