Is there a reason that link goes to Vegas Vacation?
I think Embry does a great job. I’m FLOORED, because I never liked him as an actor.
“Nick Pappagiorgio” was the name on the fake ID of Ethan Embry’s character in that movie.
I thought last night’s episode was pretty boring. I couldn’t believe they picked that for the third (?) episode if they’re serious about trying to build viewership. “I can’t believe I watched the whole thing!”
Johnny Angel’s Review of the new Dragnet
Based on having seen only the first episode, I must say that I really liked the show. I thought it was an excellent example of what a cop drama could be, which came as no suprise from a Dick Wolf production. I liked Ed O’Neil as a cop in a serious dramatic role. I was suitably moved to nostalgia by the addition of quintessential Dragnet tropes to Wolf’s already strongly Dragnet-inspired style.
But – and this is an important `but’ – O’Neil was not playing Joe Friday. Even the Joe Friday of Dan Ackroyd’s Dragnet spoof was truer to the core of the character. It is not enough that Friday be a good cop, a dedicated cop who cares deeply. Joe Friday is a believer in the system.
Dragnet isn’t just a cop show, it’s an apologism for the police department. It began in 1949 as a radio series that dramatized police procedures and explained police philosophies. “I suppose,” Friday says, “you’ve heard a lot of stories about what the force thinks of cop killers. Sure, we don’t like to lose our friends and partners any better than anybody else would. Why not figure it this way; if these two would gun a couple of armed police officers, do you think they’d hesitate to shoot you, the unarmed citizen?” The Friday of the 50’s wore a fedora, smoked a lot and was quick with his fists, but he was still an idealist.
When the show was revived in the late 1960’s it had become an apologism for The American Way of Life. Joe was older. The hardboiled cool he had in the fifties had faded. He didn’t fight, and he walked around like he was trying to hold a dollar’s change in the crack of his ass. He gave corny speeches to hippies. This is the Friday most people remember.
Ed O’Neil’s performance brings back the noir, but the idealism that has always defined Friday is gone. Somebody will probably say that this makes him a Joe Friday for our modern times, but what bothers me is that this makes him pretty much indistinguishable from a slew of other TV and movie cops.
Again, I like the new Dragnet, but I don’t think Jack Web would have. They’ve left out what to him was the most important thing about the program and the character.
I liked it. But then, I love Law and Order. Ed O’Neil is definitely channeling a little bit of Jerry Orbach’s Lenny Briscoe in some of his droll bon mots. It definitely could have been called “Law And Order: L.A.”…Timmy
I am intimately familiar with the original radio series, but I haven’t seen the TV show for around twenty years.
I liked the new show – mostly due to the way it departed from the original. There was a bit of suspense, which is essential. So many of the radio shows were just a series of interviews which eventually lead Friday to the location where the perp is holed up, where the arrest takes place without incident.
A litany of “Crime Does Not Pay”, and “Criminals Get Caught”, which was the style at the time, but the original Dragnet didn’t really add anything to the story to keep you interested for a half hour. (I like the .22 For Christmas episode though.)
When compared to The Practice and CSI, all other cop shows look predictable.