Barney Miller

Five Favorite Couples

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I probably should have said “couples” because despite the Valentine’s Day proximity of this post, I’m not speaking strictly romantically. Couples come in all varieties, you know. BFFs, coworkers, even frenemies can make for a good couple.

These are just the first five faves that came to my mind and they are listed in no particular order. Please note: These are my personal faves, not the couples I think are objectively the best ever. Just in case you want to die on any hills in the comments. Make your own list.

Magnum and Higgins, Magnum PI–Obviously, I’m talking about the original 1980 series and not the 2018 reboot as the heteronormative inevitability of romantically pairing Magnum and Higgins is one of the main reasons as to why I stopped watching the latter. I’ve also discussed in depth the unconventional bromance of the the 1980 Magnum and Higgins that I find so fascinating, so I won’t rehash too much here. But it’s no secret that their elevated frenemy relationship brought something special to the series. More than just adversaries, but not hang out together friends, the way Magnum and Higgins cared for and about each other even while driving each other up ever available wall at Robin’s Nest brings a unique emotional aspect to the show that was allowed to develop over the course of the series. Maybe they wouldn’t win a traditional Best Couple contest, but they are definitely in a category of their own.

Morticia and Gomez Addams, The Addams Family–Could I have a favorite couple list without Morticia and Gomez? No. I could not. Because when it comes to romantic relationships, they are goals. Here are two people who love each other unabashedly, are passionate about and with each other, and foster a loving household on top of it all. As a couple, they’re unstoppable, above the petty squabbles and nagging of other “normal” couples. They’re a united front against the problems that face them and their family. And on the rare occasion that Morticia and Gomez do spat, their disagreement withers in the face of their love. You cannot tell me that bickering couples who barely tolerate each other are the ideal when Morticia and Gomez Addams exist.

Walter and Ryan, CSI: Miami–This show actually features several of my favorite couples (Delko and Speed, Ryan and Natalia, Calleigh and Delko in a purely platonic fashion, Horatio and Tripp), but Walter and Ryan were the first to pop into my head and for good reason. Walter has the ability to bring out the best in Ryan, which is great because Ryan has a tendency to be a prat. I love him, but sometimes I want to push him down in a mud puddle. He can be too serious, angsty, and stubborn. Walter lightens Ryan up considerably, usually by tormenting him (the floating hat is one of my faves). They’re a fun couple. But also a dedicated one. They have each other’s backs to such an extent that even a tornado couldn’t break them up. Okay, maybe physically, but the friendship emerged from the rubble stronger than ever.

Marty and Mr. Driscoll, Barney Miller–Given that these two gay characters existed in the ’70s/early 80s, it was never explicitly said if Marty and Mr. Driscoll were in a romantic relationship. It was kind of implied that they were, but Marty was also known to fall for other guys, so. Maybe they dated, but remained friends. Maybe they were friends with benefits. No matter the exact nature of their relationship, Marty and Mr. Driscoll go together like peanut butter and chocolate. A hilarious duo who can repel any of Wojo’s homophobia with a quick and witty barb, they added some rainbow charm to the 12th precinct when they stopped by. They did some heavy representation work back in the day and they did it in glorious fashion. Individually, they’re terrific (I’ve written about my love of Marty before), but as a couple, they’re dynamite.

Laverne and Shirley, Laverne and Shirley–It’s no secret that I love Lenny and Squiggy, but I wouldn’t have those two weirdos without Laverne and Shirley. Their friendship is amazing. They have two rather different personalities that both mesh and clash beautifully. These two are not above their squabbles, but they’re also each other’s biggest supporters. The hijinks can be wacky and the physical comedy hysterical, but what grounds the craziness is the emotional bond these two women share. They truly love and care about each other. Even at each other’s throats, there’s never a doubt that they’re going to kiss and make-up because the idea of one without the other doesn’t make sense. When it comes to best friends, this couple takes the cake. And probably throws it at Lenny and Squiggy.

These five favorite couples are a good start, but there are many more favorite couples to write about. And I will.

Pinky swear.

Rerun Junkie Guest Stars–Don Calfa and Oliver Clark on Barney Miller

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I could (and probably should) write guest star posts about both Don Calfa and Oliver Clark, and maybe one day I will, but since it’s their work on Barney Miller that thrills me so, I figure that deserves its own post.

Don Calfa appeared on the show seven times; Oliver Clark appeared six times. Funnily enough, their paths only crossed on the show once, but it was a glorious meeting.

Don Calfa’s first appearance in Season 4 sort of set the tone for all of his appearances. He tended to play guys who were operating on their own level and as a result ended up in the 12th precinct. In “Group Home”, Mr. Calfa portrays a man who blames the military conducting experiments in the subway for his various illnesses, so he threatens to blow up a recruiting station. He’s only in the end of the episode for a few memorable moments, but considering George Murdock (who I should also write about) has spent most of the episode building up to his appearance, he makes the most of it. As explained to the police sketch artist, James Cromwell (talk about an all-star guest cast), the most memorable thing about him is his cough. And while his cough was spectacularly disgusting, truly the most memorable thing about him was his obsession with those old military experiments, including blaming them for him getting VD six times.

Another memorable arrest involves Mr. Calfa playing a formerly brilliant thief reduced to a bumbling amateur thanks to a lobotomy. While there are plenty of laughs, there’s an underlying sadness to his situation. He was made so “harmless” that he can barely function. As funny as Mr. Calfa is -and he is because his timing and delivery are impeccable- he never loses that particular thread.

A criminal inspired by the TV Guide…a robber in witness protection up to his old tricks…a displaced resident…an inventor who believes a company is stealing his inventions…Don Calfa portrayed a wide-range of oddities.

Oliver Clark’s appearances were a little more varied. He played a man swindled out of a ticket on a space shuttle (arrested for causing a disturbance when they wouldn’t honor his ticket) and a pharmaceutical employee who isn’t thrilled that the company he works for won’t market his cure for a disease because not many people are affected by it, holding the distinction of being one of the last people to be arrested by the detectives of the 12th in the series finale.

He also played a couple of sex pests, including a groping dentist and a flasher. The latter is one of my favorites of his guest spots. Mr. Clark’s character is a member of a flasher support group and he falls off the indecent exposure wagon with newest 12th precinct addition, Detective Batista (June Gable). His lawyer ends up being a fellow flasher played by Ron Feinberg, reprising his role as Mr. Farber, the flasher who attempted to kill himself via men’s room electrocution in “Snow Day”. He goes from being embarrassed about his lack of willpower to increasingly excited as the episode progresses, even going for a ride on the cell door when Battista opens it to allow him to use the men’s room. He ends up declaring that he’s going to come out of the bathroom nude, but ultimately emerges fully clothed –well as clothed as an overcoat dressed flasher can be– much to everyone’s relief and his own satisfaction. After all, wasn’t it exciting just talking about it? He’s the only one who thinks so. But it’s fun watching his almost Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde progression during the episode.

His first appearance on the show in the Season 2 episode “The Layoff” is very different from his other appearances. Mr. Clark tends to bring an almost nervous quality to most of the characters he plays on the show, however his turn as a fur thief shows him as one cool customer with an answer for everything. He’s so confident that he even makes a love connection with a fellow 12th precinct detainee played by Candy Azzara.

The one episode in which Don Calfa and Oliver Clark cross paths brings in the oddity of Mr. Calfa’s characters and the nervousness of most of Mr. Clark’s characters.

In the Season 4 episode “Hostage”, Don Calfa plays Leo Bedell, an armed robber looking at life for being a habitual criminal. He makes his one phone call to his brother Vern, played by Oliver Clark, who chooses to throw away his own life away in order to help Leo break out of the 12th precinct. Vern enters the squad room under the pretense of being Leo’s lawyer and when Leo gives the word, Vern shakily pulls a gun out of his bag. The two brothers then proceed to take everyone in the squad room, including Barney, the detectives, Levitt, Inspector Luger, a ventriloquist and his dummy, and the woman the dummy insulted, hostage, eventually locking them all in the cell.

The Bedell brothers then spend the episode trying to figure out how to escape the mess they’ve made as there are 137 uniforms downstairs. Both men are jumpy as hell, but where Leo is committed to the plan, Vern’s dedication wanes (“If you’re going to lose your enthusiasm, give me the gun.”). Ultimately, Vern decides that it’s hopeless and gives the gun to Barney (“Wrong person!”). Oliver Clark and Don Calfa don’t look very much alike, but with their interactions and their chemistry, you totally buy that they are two brothers of the non-criminal mastermind variety. They play off of each other beautifully, working that chemistry to the very end. It’s really a shame that the two men weren’t in more episodes together.

But the combined twelve episodes Don Calfa and Oliver Clark appeared in on Barney Miller are pretty good compensation.

It’s Okay! They’re the Good Guys!

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It’s a common scene in a cop show.

The cops arrest someone and maybe it’s during the arrest, maybe during the interrogation, one of our guys loses his cool and gets a little rough with the suspect. And, you know what? We’re fine with that! Punk had it coming.

It’s yet another way that copaganda inures us to questionable police conduct.

We are firmly on our good guys’ side. We understand their frustration when a suspect won’t give up information or if they run and have to be chased down. These are bad guys after all. We’d lose our cool, too. Especially when some punk won’t talk and there’s a bomb about to go off or some kidnapped person’s minutes are ticking away. If our guys get a little aggressive in the pursuit of justice, it’s all good. After all…they’re the good guys. Sometimes a choke hold is necessary.

The shows are great at normalizing this. It makes sense that our cops would get a little rough while arresting a suspect, especially if they ran or were resisting. It makes sense that our cops might need to utilize a little physical persuasion during an interrogation. Lives are on the line. And besides, these are the BAD guys. Who cares if they get a little roughed up?

Except how often do we watch those arrests and those interrogations and the suspect in question turns out to NOT be the bad guy of the episode? Pretty often considering the first person arrested is seldom the culprit in an hour long police procedural. You can argue that it’s all in the pursuit of justice, but that argument doesn’t hold up against a person’s rights.

Ah, yes, those pesky rights that apply to everyone, not just the good guys. How our cops often lament how they’re forced to observe a suspect’s rights when they’d really rather smack them around.

And how often they ignore those rights and go right ahead.

We all know how much I love Horatio Caine, but the man crosses lines like he’s running a touchdown. Given that his line-crossing increases as the seasons progress, I could argue that his increasing disregard to the rights of suspects is a response to traumas he suffers over the years, but that’s a post for another day. The point is that Horatio has no problem threatening physical violence or getting outright physical with a suspect. In one episode, it’s insinuated that he beats the shit out of a pedophile for “resisting arrest”. Another insinuates he does the same to a guy who abused his girlfriend, but at that point, he was no longer even a suspect in her death. And in yet another episode, Horatio and Boa Vista get a guy in the backseat of one of the Hummers and it’s implied that they inflict some pain in order to extract information.

These three incidents are presented without any question to Horatio’s actions. Because we sympathize with him and in fact, identify with him. We’d beat the shit out of a grown man preying on teenage girls. We’d beat the shit out of a guy who was fond of DV. We’d do a little painful persuasion to get crucial information from someone already in custody.

However, we are not law enforcement. And there are very good reasons why law enforcement is not allowed to do such things.

But this is the standard for these shows. There’s no real attention brought to this sort of police violence other than mild warnings as a means of twisting the tension and providing a barrier to our good guys saving the day.

Unless they happen to be falsely accused of police brutality.

In a third season episode of CSI: Miami, Horatio is accused of police brutality and Calleigh has to clear him, which she does, of course, because in this instance Horatio hasn’t done the violence that he’s accused of.

It seems like every cop gets falsely accused at least once. Ponch and Jon. Starsky and Hutch. Reed and Malloy. It’s a rite of passage for a TV cop, like a police involved shooting. The focus of these episodes is always the same: the injustice and unfairness of our heroes being accused of brutality and how easy it is for people to make those claims. These people are only saying these things because they have an agenda. They hate the police. They’re petty. They’re either seeking retribution for getting caught committing their own illegal transgressions or trying to detract from them. Because only bad cops engage in brutality and our heroes are never bad cops.

Inevitably, like Horatio Caine, they’re cleared of any wrongdoing.

And then right back at manhandling the next week.

One cop show that didn’t really normalize police violence was Barney Miller. First of all, we didn’t see any of the arrests. We were told that the suspect had to be chased or that the suspect resisted, but it was understood that no violence ensued during these apprehensions. At least there was no apparent evidence or mention. Second of all, a preponderance of the criminals the 12th precinct dealt with where, well, harmless. There were some armed robbers and assaulters and the like, but this is a comedy. Most of the perps that the detectives arrested were of the nature of blind shoplifters and women throwing toilet seats out of the window because their husbands locked them in the bathroom and sugar addicts who fall off the wagon in hilarious fashion.

When the subject of police brutality came up in conversation, Wojo was usually the detective mentioned, particularly in the early seasons. He had a tendency to be aggressive in his arrests and it got him into trouble more than once. Inspector Luger was a great champion of police violence as that’s how things were done back in his heyday. He was painted as out of touch and his methods antiquated. The policing techniques of the 12th didn’t require rubber hoses or anyone “falling down” the stairs. Policing had evolved beyond that.

Which wasn’t an accurate reflection of reality, but it was a decent attempt at providing a counter thought to plant into people’s heads.

Police violence isn’t normal and we shouldn’t accept it as such.

Not even from our law enforcement faves.

Rerun Junkie Confession–Gimme That Found Family Vibe

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I’ve written before about how Gilligan’s Island was the first rerun that really made an impression on me, something that I totally fell in love with even though I was so young. It is most likely responsible for my love of reruns today.

It’s also one of the earliest indications that shows with a found family vibe were going to be in my wheelhouse.

Maybe it’s my own strong desire to belong somewhere, but those shows that feature a group of people coming together to form a family get me on a soul level.

Look at Gilligan’s Island. Seven people thrown together in an unlikely and extreme situation, forced to survive. Okay, that’s a dramatic explanation for a sitcom, but it’s not wrong. They have to come together as a family to survive. Sure, they bicker and quarrel and many times want to drown Gilligan after one of his fuck ups, but ultimately, they care about each other. This never would have happened if they hadn’t gotten shipwrecked. They’d have completed their 3 hour tour (with an unnecessary amount of luggage) and then gone their separate ways. Fate (and Sherwood Schwartz) threw them together and gave them a bond that even being rescued couldn’t break.

But it’s not just that extreme found family vibe I’m looking for. Chosen family is a kind of found family and that works for me, too.

Take for example another early love of mine, The Monkees. It’s a show about a band trying to make it. Obviously, these four guys came together to form a band, so they must have at least known and liked each other before they moved into a beach house together. It’s less fate and more struggling dream that has them scraping together rent and playing gigs. But they’re no different than four brothers, squabbling on occasion, but always having each other’s back. Just look at the episode “Success Story”. Davy’s grandfather is going to take him back to England and the fellas do everything they can to keep him in America. After all, they may not be blood, but they love each other like they were.

It’s this found family/chosen family vibe that could account for my love (at least in part) of cop shows. Be it partners, a team, or a whole squad room, you end up with people who come for the job and stay for the family.

Barney Miller is a great example of this. There’s a squad room of detectives who are paid to be there, but the nature of the job means that they have to have each other’s backs. It’s inevitable that this would eventually extend into their personal lives to an extent. When the final episode sees the precinct closed and everyone split up, you still get the sense that even if they aren’t working together, and maybe if they never see each other again, they all hold a very special place in each other’s lives. The way blood bonds family, they’re bonded by experience.

CSI: Miami not only has a similar vibe, but even has Ryan saying that they’re his family in the final episode.

Starsky & Hutch are akin to blood brothers given how many times one has been near death and the other has bailed him out. Adam-12 has a similar feel even though most of the series focused on the mundane aspects of the job. When you’re riding in a car with a guy for 8-12 hours a day, there’s only a couple of ways your relationship is going to go.

Emergency!, The A-Team, The Golden Girls, Stargate: Atlantis, F-Troop, Magnum PI…the one thing they have in common is that they all have a found family/chosen family vibe.

And I simply cannot get enough of it.

Rerun Junkie Character–Marty Morrison

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I’ve written a bit about Marty Morrison before when I wrote about Barney Miller and The Pride of the Ol’ 1-2, but I always knew I was going to dedicate an entire post to the man because as characters go, Marty Morrison is pretty brilliant.

Portrayed by the fantastic Jack DeLeon in eight episodes, Marty Morrison makes his grand entrance in the second episode of the series having been arrested by Wojo for stealing a purse. The entire scene of Wojo booking Marty in front of his victim is nothing but a showcase of Marty’s wit.

Wojo: Okay, Marty. This is the second purse you snatched in a week. Now you’re getting bad habits.
Marty: Kleptomania is a disease, not a crime. Besides, I’ve thrown away better purses than that.

Mrs. Florsheim: I want that man in jail. And I’m not afraid of reprisal.
Marty: Oh, who would want to reprise you?

Mrs. Florsheim: You’re just lucky the police got to you before my husband did.
Marty: Same to you.

Wojo: Mrs. Florsheim, what time was the crime committed?
Mrs. Florsheim: I beg your pardon?
Marty: What he wants to know is when did you buy the purse.

Wojo: Was there anything missing from the purse?
Marty: Good taste.

At a glance Marty is a stereotypical catty, somewhat effeminate gay man. That’s how that first scene with him plays out. A catty, gay thief.

But he makes some good points. He’s had all kinds of jobs, even tried to get on the police force. But at the time, they didn’t allow openly gay men on the force. As Marty points out, “Why can’t there be gay cops? There are gay robbers.”

Later in the episode, he makes a vaguely suggestive statement to a man he’s sharing the lone 12th cell with. Naturally the guy doesn’t take it well. And naturally, Marty responds with his scathing wit.

As funny as the character is, he also does an exquisite job of highlighting the other characters’ prejudices, particularly Wojo’s. In the earlier seasons, Wojo is extremely uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality. The ultra-masculine former Marine has a tendency to be hostile towards Marty, and Marty has a tendency to throw that hostility back at Wojo in the form of his own clever insults or suggestive comments. Of course, Wojo’s growth over the eight seasons of the show includes coming to some sort of acceptance of Marty. As a plot devices go, he’s pretty great.

But Marty is more than just a plot device for another character’s growth. He’s more than just a token queer character. Marty gets to be a person, which was definitely more than what a lot of queer characters got to be on TV during that time period. In a time in which homosexuality was still viewed as a deviant choice by most, Marty gets to rise above much of that stigma. Why? Because we like him. He’s not like the deranged murderers that show up on other cop shows at the time. He’s a petty thief that’s been known to smoke pot. No different than any of the straight crooks and pot smokers that made their way through the 12th. Marty is harmless.

And being harmless allows Marty to help highlight the injustices that queer people faced. We watch Marty flirt with a Russian pianist seeking refuge in the United States from the oppression of his home country in “Asylum”. He also stands up for the man and offers to help him get to immigration since, according to the State Dept., no one with any official status is allowed to help and by Marty’s own admission, he doesn’t have any status.

While the cruelties of Russia were easy for an audience to absorb back in the ’70s, bringing that cruelty closer to home was more effective. In the episode “Discovery”, Marty brings in his friend Darryl Driscoll to get some help from the fellas at the 12th, something that Mr. Driscoll is sure will be their undoing. Mr. Driscoll was accosted by a man claiming to be a 12th precinct detective and had to buy his way out of trouble for $50. It’s only understandable that he’d think he was walking into a lion’s den. But Marty, despite his own frequent law tangles, considers these men to be his friends, and of course, Barney and his men -even Wojo- step up to take Mr. Driscoll’s complaints seriously. Marty, who is accustomed to the insults spit at him by many of the uniformed officers, had no doubt that they’d be treated like human beings by the detectives.

He’s been in enough trouble to know the 12th precinct pretty well.

In addition to stealing handbags and possessing pot, he once shoplifted luggage. Walked right out of the store and right into the 12th’s holding cell. It turns out that Marty’s get-rich-minded scheme of marrying a much older woman couldn’t deter his sticky fingers. And in another episode, Marty asks Barney to put in a good word for him with his probation officer as he and Mr. Driscoll are hoping to move to the much more gay-friendly city of San Francisco. Lucky for all of us, though, the duo stayed put in NYC.

Marty mostly cleans up his act by the time the show hits the finale, which is also Marty’s last appearance. Fitting that the man who helped establish the quality of characters populating the mug books of the 12th precinct would stop by to say goodbye to his friends and the place he made a mark on.

In a time when gay characters were scarce and often vilified, Marty Morrison was a funny, charming, likeable character that helped ease the stigma surrounding gay men, at least a little. Even if the character isn’t a perfect representation, he helped pave the way for the depiction of authentic, messy, queer humans that are more frequently (yet not frequently enough) seen onscreen today.

Foiled by Miranda

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It is a guaranteed scene in a cop drama.

Our detectives are interviewing a suspect, trying to break them, and they say those fateful words…

“I want a lawyer.”

Thwarted, the detectives end their interrogation and look for another way to nail their suspect, which turns out to not be their culprit a big part of the time.

This oft-repeated scene is a brilliant piece of copaganda. The invocation of the Miranda rights is typically presented as a bad thing, a major hurdle to an investigation. Only criminals trying to get away with something would ask for a lawyer or invoke their right to remain silent. Or hell, even ask to end the questioning and leave because they’re not under arrest. But the truth is that these rights are guaranteed for everyone and not just criminals are entitled to use them.

If you’re unfamiliar, Miranda rights are the spiel that used to frequently be recited onscreen, usually when a person was placed under arrest, typically to the tune of: You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.

I don’t think you see it as often now as it’s just sort of understood that it happens. I could be wrong, of course. I watch several cop shows currently in production, but not all of them. Maybe some shows are saying it more than others. But it happened a lot on older cop shows. In fact, there’s a few Barney Miller episodes that make a point of ensuring the rights have been read.

Here’s the thing: if you’re under arrest or being detained, the cops do not need to read you your rights to have the rights available for you to invoke. This is especially important since the Supreme Court decided to take away any repercussions for law enforcement NOT informing people of their rights. The cops do not give you your Miranda rights; they’re already there.

Here’s the other thing: if you’re not under arrest or being detained, then the questioning is voluntary, which means that anything you say can be used against you, but you’re also free to end the questioning at any time. Cops will sometimes inform you of this, but often times they’ll word it in such a way that makes you feel like you can’t really end the questioning or leave. But you can.

When you watch these scenes play out on television, there’s an underlying, unspoken insinuation that an innocent person wouldn’t have to invoke their Miranda rights or stop an interview before law enforcement was finished. And it’s a trap that many innocent people fall into. “I haven’t done anything wrong, so I don’t need a lawyer/I’ll answer the questions” turns into marathon interrogations leading to false confessions. It’s not an uncommon thing.

Innocent people can, do, and should invoke their Miranda rights or leave a voluntary interview.

So should criminals. Those rights are available to everybody.

And even though it is a major source of frustration for our heroes -and hell, even me as a viewer out for fictional justice and firmly on the side of our mythical good guys- I can’t help but get a little thrill whenever I see someone invoke their rights onscreen. Hell yeah, honey. Shake what the Fifth Amendment gave ya.

It’s not like someone won’t be totally waiving their rights and spilling their guts in a full blown confession in the last five minutes anyway.

TV Bosses I’d Work For

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Have you ever watched a TV show and thought to yourself, “Man, I wish they were my boss”? Well, I have. So I put together a short list (in no particular order) of the TV bosses that I’d work for.

Barney Miller (Barney Miller)- I feel like this is probably an obvious choice for someone enamored with police shows. Not only did Barney have a more reasonable approach to lawbreakers, he also had an excessive amount of patience when it came to the people in his squad room. He’d finally get to his breaking point, but it took some persistent aggravation. Given that I can be aggravating, it’s good to know I’d probably never get to that point with him, thanks to Wojo and Levitt beating me to it.

Steve McGarrett (Hawaii Five-O)- A no-brainer if you know me, Steve McGarrett is in many ways the ideal. He’ll mentor you, correct you, joke with you, go to bat for you, but he won’t tolerate any bullshit. You gotta put in your effort. I love a boss who has your back, and Steve definitely has the backs of Five-O.

Horatio Caine (CSI:Miami)- Much like Steve McGarrett (as I’ve written about), I dare say that Horatio would go even further for you, particularly in the later seasons when he was decidedly less attached to the rules. He’d do everything possible to turn you into the best CSI he could, but he’d only help you if you were willing to accept it. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. Right, Ryan? I have no doubt Horatio would kill for you, though, and I really appreciate that kind of dedication.

Miss Kitty (Gunsmoke)- Leaving aside the not-explicity-said-but-definitely-understood nature of the work some of the Long Branch employees were doing, I have no doubt that Miss Kitty looked after all of them. From bartenders to saloon girls, she wasn’t a successful businesswoman because she let the clientele walk all over her and abuse her staff. She’s the fuck around and find out boss.

The Middleman (The Middleman)- All of the patience of Barney Miller, the mentoring of Steve McGarrett and Horatio Caine, and the protective nature of Miss Kitty, with a healthy dose of optimism and clean language. He makes ridding the world of comic book foes less of a chore and more of a good day at the office.

Sgt. Getraer (CHiPs)- As far as bosses with a sense of humor go, Gertaer is up there. Think about it. He had to deal with Ponch’s bullshit all the time. If he didn’t learn to laugh, his blood pressure would have been through the roof. He also has the ability to roll with the punches, which is a pretty good quality to have. Probably the only boss on this list that would go country-western dancing, roller skating, and participate in some questionable athletic shenanigans for charity.

Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Stargate: Atlantis)- If I’m in another galaxy with the prospect of never returning to Earth and our best chance of survival is making new friends, I’m going with Elizabeth. She kept things under control, put people in their place (I’m looking at you Shepherd), and didn’t take any shit from anybody -Wraith, Genii, or Replicator. She had things under control even when they were out of control and honestly, I wish she would have been in charge every Black Friday.

Colonel Sam Carter (Stargate: Atlantis)- Everything you got with Elizabeth, but with the added bonus of a military background, a different science expertise, and some “I have seen some shit” experience. She was also perfectly cool with blowing shit up and I need that in a boss.

Richard Woolsey (Stargate: Atlantis)- If you’ve seen the show, I know what you’re thinking, but let’s be real. Once he got broken in, Woolsey made for a pretty good boss. As a bureaucrat, he brought an element of sneakiness to his dealings with with others in the Pegasus Galaxy and was a pretty crafty negotiator. He also quickly figured out it was best to leave the science to the scientists and the defense to the military. A boss who knows when to let the workers do their thing and when to rein them in is valuable.

Is it cheating to have three bosses from the same show? Maybe. Did I exclude some excellent bosses from this list? Probably.

But this is my list.

Go make your own.

Rerun Junkie Confession–I Love a Series Finale

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Warning! I will be spoiling the hell out of how several reruns ended. Proceed with caution.

The only episode of The Big Bang Theory I’ve ever seen in its entirety was the series finale. Never really cared for the series, but I had to see how it ended.

I’ve got a thing for a series finale.

Many series don’t get a formal ending. They get cancelled. Which is a shame, especially when they end on a cliffhanger because they fully expected to get another season, but had the rug pulled out from under them. An official series finale wasn’t a common place thing with older series. Most of them just ended without any grand exit even if they weren’t cancelled.

But whether the episode was intended to be the end of a series or not, whether it’s a big send-off or a quiet goodbye, I’m fascinated by how shows end.

The Fugitive was the first series that had a real finale: the one-armed man was caught and Richard Kimble was finally proven to be innocent. It set the template for other shows to follow. Wrap up all of the plot lines and say goodbye.

Obviously, the biggest series finale was M*A*S*H. Though alive when it went off the air in 1983, I can’t say for certain that toddler me actually experienced the end of the show’s 11 year run. I didn’t get to watch it until about twelve or thirteen years later when I was in high school. I’d been watching the reruns since junior high (not counting falling asleep to the episodes they showed after the local news when I was a kid spending the night at my grandparents’ house), but the finale was never shown. And now I can’t remember if some station did a one-time replay or if someone loaned me a copy of it. Either way, I finally managed to see it.

Talk about a grand finale. I can see why so many people tuned in. It was more than just bringing a popular series to a close. It was an event.

Safe to say most shows don’t get that kind of treatment.

Barney Miller got a three-part finale that saw the 12th Precinct building sold, everyone getting split up, Barney and Levitt getting their long-sought after promotions, and Barney turning off the lights and closing the door as he left the squad room. A fitting, bittersweet end.

One of the most brutal series finales is courtesy of Quantum Leap. Dr. Sam Beckett is leaping from person to person in his timeline, trying to right the wrongs of the past while searching for a way home. Spoiler alert! The last episode features a title card announcing that Sam Beckett never made it home. How do you like your feelings? Crushed over ice? Because that’s the only way you were getting them with the way this show ended. It still makes my chest ache to think of it. And I didn’t even watch the show religiously.

Sometimes a show gets cancelled with enough warning that it’s able to tie up enough loose ends that the final episode feels like a satisfying enough conclusion. Stargate: Atlantis comes to mind. Atlantis ends up on Earth and our cast is hanging out on the balcony, taking in the Golden Gate Bridge sunset. It promises more adventure is possible, but it’s not a cliffhanger. Stargate: Universe wasn’t so lucky. The show ended with everyone but Eli in stasis pods, and Eli had only a couple of weeks to fix the broken one or he’d die when the life support ran out. Yeesh.

The A-Team ended up with a shortened final season when their retooling didn’t boost ratings like they’d hoped. What should have been the final episode perhaps wasn’t the strongest, but the final scene was a perfect sum up of the show. They’d get their freedom and keep working to get justice for the underdogs. However, months after that “final” episode aired, the network aired a partially finished episode (they used scenes from another episode to “finish” it) and that became the series finale. “Without Reservations” is good, but the ending doesn’t hit that finale feel like “The Grey Team”.

Steve McGarrett finally caught Wo Fat in the last episode of Hawaii Five-O, but the Marshall family never made it back from The Land of the Lost. Dorothy finally found the love of her life and got married in the last episode of The Golden Girls, but as far as we know Mork and Mindy are still stuck in the stone age.

Planned or not, happy or sad, I love to see how a show ends.

Battle of the Sexes

/ Kiki Writes / Leave a comment

When I watched the first season of Baa Baa Black Sheep, I dreaded getting to the episode titled “W*A*S*P*s”. Right there in the episode description it said that “a battle of the sexes lands on the frontline”.

I loathe a battle of the sexes.

I make no secret of the fact that much of the rerun content I watch (and some of the current content) is “male-oriented”. It’s action stuff. It’s police stuff. Classic cis het guy fare. So there isn’t a lot of quality women content or input. And yes, some of it can be eye rollingly bad. But nothing quite irritates me like the battle of the sexes.

The context is typically of women doing man’s work, whatever the hell that is. I wasn’t raised with gendered work. I was raised with work and somebody better do it and don’t make me tell you twice.

Think of “St. Gilligan and the Dragon”, which I talked about in this post. The women go off on their own because the men are being pricks The women are able to hack it and the men are useless. The implication, of course, is that the men don’t know how to do things like cook and do laundry because it’s something women do and is therefore beneath them. Starving and stinking for their mancards.

Naturally, it’s played for laughs because the battle of the sexes is a frequently used theme in sitcoms.

One such episode that has always stuck with me is The Brady Bunch episode “The Liberation of Marcia Brady”. Basically, Marcia goes on the record that she thinks women can do anything men do and then Greg ends up goading her until she decides to prove herself by joining The Frontier Scouts. For the final initiation, Marcia has to use her Frontier Scout skills to navigate through the woods following a trail that Greg has left.

The twist? Greg has purposely made the trail as hard as possible to follow without breaking the rules. And to everyone’s surprise, Marcia succeeds.

Marcia’s initiation is a perfect example of how the patriarchy works. In order to prove that women can do anything men can do, Marcia actually had to do better than what the guys had to do because the boys were so threatened by the idea of a girl joining their little scouting group they had to actively sabotage her.

Something similar happens in many episodes of Barney Miller whenever there’s a female detective. I can remember it happening with Wentworth, Batista, and with the two officers in “Hot Dogs”. All of the women were seen as overly enthusiastic and aggressive in doing their jobs because it went right over the heads of their male counterparts that they had to be. They had to do everything the men did, but they had to do it more and they had to do it better -and in heels!- lest they be considered failures and ruin it for every other woman on the force.

There’s a similar vibe in the Emergency! episode “The Indirect Method”. Roy and Johnny are charged with training a female paramedic who is described as hard-nosed. Is it any wonder? The pressure is intense. She’s doing man’s work, after all.

As for the Baa Baa Black Sheep episode, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I didn’t hate it. The women were not only good at their job, but also serious about it in a way that was less about being as good as the men, and more about showing their passion for flying. Yeah, the guys tried to treat the ladies like they would any pretty face in the vicinity, but it turns out the women were more like them than they realized. Translation: our fellas got hoodwinked by them.

This battle of the sexes was a little more evenly matched. And while it did have it’s hang-ups and of course, the guys had to save the ladies (though, they didn’t really do anything that fighter escorts wouldn’t do for transport planes other than be a little mushy), at least the respect cultivated between the two groups was genuine and not based on arbitrary standards of excellence.

As a result, the episode got my respect, too.

Police Involved Shooting

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In the world of cop shows, there are two kinds of very special episodes: a cop gets shot or a cop shoots somebody.

This post is about the latter.

Here’s how the episode usually goes: One of our cop heroes shoots somebody. There is then an investigation into the shooting in which there’s an underlying implication that this investigation isn’t fair because our good guys always have good shoots. There’s some drama. Then our shooter is once again declared a cop hero.

Obviously, there are variations and not every episode follows this format, but that’s basically it for many of the episodes I’ve seen.

The police involved shooting episodes of Dragnet and Adam-12 are probably the most technical I’ve ever seen due to Jack Webb’s dedication to the manual. While we do have that little bit of angst that comes from our hero being questioned, there’s still an objectivity about it. This is how the process is supposed to work. Jack Webb very much so believed that police officers were meant to be held to a higher standard which is why these episodes stand out. This treatment of our good guys isn’t exceptional -it’s routine.

Despite Jack Webb’s good intentions, this sort of intense scrutiny is an idealization of what we’d like to believe happens during these investigations, but we know doesn’t.

I pointed this out when I was covering the Hawaii Five-O first season episode “And They Painted Daisies on His Coffin” on Book ‘em, Danno that the investigation into Danny shooting the supposedly unarmed young man and him subsequently getting arrested for murder was idealized. It’s only in the most extreme circumstances that a police officer is arrested for this kind of shooting today. You can’t tell me that it happened more often when there wasn’t the prevalence of video.

A first season episode of Starsky and Hutch called “Pariah” dealt a little with the public fallout of a police involved shooting. Starsky ends up shooting an armed robber who turns out to be only sixteen. The kid’s mom is devastated and Starsky feels incredibly guilty over the death. The public isn’t exactly thrilled with the circumstances, particularly one guy with an agenda who says if Starsky is cleared, he’ll start killing cops. Starsky is cleared of any wrongdoing because of course and the killing spree begins and will continue until Starsky resigns. So this is an example of taking our very special episode and upping the ante by adding in public scorn and then throwing in a vendetta for good measure.

The police involved shooting episodes are always very special episodes because they’re the only episodes in which the violence our heroes inflict on the criminals is ever questioned. In any other episode, they’re offing the bad guys without even the slightest mention of the paperwork. Every other shooting is completely justified, no question.

One exception to this rule (at least that I know of because I haven’t seen every cop show–yet) is Barney Miller. Possibly because it’s a comedy that primarily deals with the mundane and oddball aspects of police work, the show had a unique take on the police involved shooting.

For one, perps weren’t getting shot every week. The members of the 12th precinct got shot at more than they shot and even those instances ended up funny and mild. So, they didn’t need a very special episode about a police involved shooting to separate it from all of the other police involved shootings that were never questioned.

Because in the entire run of the show, there were only three episodes in which a member of the 12th shot someone. In the first season “Hero”, Chano infiltrates a hostage situation in a bank and ends up killing the two would-be robbers. It’s quickly apparent that Chano isn’t handling it well at all despite the incident being considered a good shoot. By the end of the episode, he breaks down into sobs in his apartment.

Dietrich has a similar reaction to his shooting in the seventh season episode “Resignation”. After shooting a suspect in the backside, Dietrich decides that this part of the job goes against his morals and attempts to submit his resignation. Though Barney susses out the real root of Dietrich’s angst, which goes a little sideways from just his morals, it still illustrates the negative effect of a shooting on the firing officer.

In the eighth season episode “Inquiry”, Wojo faces an investigation after shooting a suspect, winging him in the arm. In this episode, there’s doubt that Wojo was justified in the shooting, particularly with his history of being rough with suspects. We’re also introduced to the then-current requirements for the investigation: Wojo is suspended, put on desk duty, has his sidearm confiscated, and advised of his rights before he’s questioned. What’s startling is that during the questioning, a clearly frustrated Wojo admits that he was trying to kill the suspect. Which is what the police are trained to do. Center mass. Shoot to kill.

Everything turns out in Wojo’s favor, of course, but he’s still rattled and to be honest, so are we. Our Wojo can be rough, but a killer? It’s hard to believe. It’s harder to acknowledge that our good guys were trained that way.

Which is probably why the police involved shooting episodes of Barney Miller are so much more impactful than the very special episodes from other cop shows. They aren’t shooting it out every episode. There’s barely any shooting during an entire season.

Which is more true to life than you might think.

But this is fiction.

And in fiction, tension comes from putting our heroes under the gun.

So to speak.