We;;. we are devoted, here at the SDMB, to seeking out just the facts, ma’am. 
Wasn’t that an IV of WD-40?
My mother had a coronary episode a few years ago (turned out to not be a heart attack, but it led to a paramedic call and an emergency-room visit). When the paramedics gave her an IV with d5w, she said to herself, “say, I remember that, from that TV show with the paramedics that Mikey used to watch…”
Okay, here’s a few facts: Jack Webb (star and producer of Dragnet, and later of Emergency!) was the ex-husband of singer-actress Julie London. When she was playing Nurse Dixie McCall, on Emergency!, she was married to Bobby Troup, who played Dr. Joe Early on the same show.
Bobby Troup is famous as the songwriter who gave the world Route 66, which was also the name of a TV show featuring Martin Milner, who went on to play the role of officer Pete Malloy on Adam-12.
Jack Webb probably had some short-term memory problems that motivated him to have everything in his life as interrelated as he could make it. 
I’d actually known most of this, but when you lay it out like this, it’s pretty damned funny. Jack Webb: One Degree of Separation.
One more fact:
In one episode a call came in while the Station 51 gang were watching Adam-12 on TV. John spent the rest of the (Emergency!) episode obsessing about missing the end of the (Adam-12) episode. This thread stood out because I just watched that (Emergency!) episode on Netflix.
The Dragnet episode where Joe and Bill were working in IAD and investigated an officer brutality complaint, they interviewed Pete and Jim - they were the backup unit for the officer that had the complaint filed against him.
I’ve also seen Pete and Jim at Rampart in an episode of Adam-12 talking to Dr. Brackett.
Missy needs a life, doens’t she?
Another giant Whirlybirds here. Chuck and PT. Back then they had shows about real jobs. Truck drivers, skin divers, that kind of stuff.
Anyone remember that they also made a Saturday morning kid’s cartoon version of Emergency!? It was typical 70s Hanna-Barbera crap-a-mation, but it had the main two actors doing the voices. They also actually appeared in short live-action filmed segments at the beginning & end giving safety tips.
Awhile back I was watching an episode of Law & Order:SVU and there was an actor playing a perp who seemed very familiar but I couldn’t place him. When I played the beginning back (that’s where the guest star credits are) I suddenly recognized it was Gage and/or DeSoto (the blond, DeSoto I think) from Emergency! He was pretty good as a creepy perv!
TV’s Johnny Gage was my first crush when I was but a small t-shirt. I remember eating my fingernails off when the character was bitten by a rattlesnake and had to be rushed to the Emergency! room.
I was such a little dork.
You weren’t the only one.
I may have asked this one before, but here goes anyway.
On Emergency!, the Squad 51 guys would go rolling out on a medical call. Usually, there was a police officer already on the scene. Our boys would call in to Rampart and get instructions to treat the patient/victim. Finally, they would load the person onto a separate ambulance. That is my question: why didn’t the paramedics arrive on the scene in an ambulance and transport their patient themselves? Running two vehicles and four guys out seems like a waste of money. Do they still do that in California or Los Angeles County?
Also, watching as an adult, I have noticed that members of the public on both Adam-12 and Emergency! tended to be quite rude to our heroes. Did Webb have utter contempt for ordinary citizens? The cops or the firefighters were arriving to help these people. (I know, sometimes a person might not be thrilled to see the cops roll up…) Generally, when firefighters or paramedics arrive, I am as helpful as possible so they can put the fire out or resuscitate my loved-one. Why were the civilians in Webb’s series so ugly?
(I loved Adam-12 and Emergency! as a kid. I never was much of a fan of Dragnet, though.)
It threw me for years when Kevin Tighe started doing villain parts. But he’s GOOD at it. I spotted him in an episode of Law and Order Criminal Intent, did he do an SVU, also?
Ambulance companies are private. Paramedics, at least on the show, are fire department personnel. Different responsibilities, different employers. The Emergency! crew are first-responders. The ambulance people are basically transport.
Even today, if you get shot or otherwise maimed in the South Bay area, you might get to visit Rampart General yourself. It’s nowhere near the actual Rampart area though.
Did they ever clear up why Friday was a lieutenant at the end of the original Dragnet, and then demoted to sergeant in the revival?
Yes, according to this campaign site:
IIRC they traveled to visit another fire department that had ambulances (Seattle?) in one of the end-of-series TV movies.
In my town, when you call 911 for a medical emergency, you will usually get a hook-and-ladder truck first, and an ambulance later.
It’s difficult to see it any other way.
The radio & early TV incarnation of Dragnet was a great idea: combine the Noir-sh crime drama of the era with elements of the scientific and organizational innovations used by the LAPD. Like most American police forces, the LAPD had been corrupt, inefficient and brutal. Under Chief Parker, whose cheerleader Webb aspired to be, they would labor mightily to shed two of those three.
In the radio and B&W show, the general public was portrayed as decent people who just wanted to get on with their lives, but were victimized by really bad bastards. But when the show was revived in the late 1960’s, Web had cultural axes to grind, and seems to have become such a wanna-be cop that he internalized their worst attitudes.
There was a show where the Black community were angry at the cops, but were clearly worked up about nothing. Then there was the show where a cop roughed up a suspect, and Friday came down on him like a ton of bricks. But of course the suspect was pure evil and we still sided with the cop while acknowledging Friday’s higher ideals. And on almost every show, the general public were shown to be idiots because they thought themselves equal to the cops since they’d read true detective magazines. Or they thought the cops were bellhops they were entitled to call any time their lives were fucked up.
Dragnet took place in an alternate LAPD universe that lacked Dragnet, where people had no means of understanding how great their cops really were.
Oh yeah…
Birrrr barrrrr boooorr barrrrr bewwwww barrrr boooo barrr braaaackk! probably meant you were going to see the jaws of life, multiple IVs of D5W and Ringers, maybe even some early defibrillation and general mayhem.
Birrr barrr braakk Eh, probably just a cat in a tree.