Friday and Gannon are assigned to Narcotics. An elderly businessman, concerned about the welfare of his grandchild, informs them that his daughter and son-in-law are using marijuana regularl... Read allFriday and Gannon are assigned to Narcotics. An elderly businessman, concerned about the welfare of his grandchild, informs them that his daughter and son-in-law are using marijuana regularly. They make no apologies for their lifestyle and the officers' hands are legally tied, bu... Read allFriday and Gannon are assigned to Narcotics. An elderly businessman, concerned about the welfare of his grandchild, informs them that his daughter and son-in-law are using marijuana regularly. They make no apologies for their lifestyle and the officers' hands are legally tied, but the couple's refusal to listen leads to a terrible conclusion.
- Paul Shipley
- (as Timothy Donnelly)
- Main Title Announcer
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
- Narrator
- (voice)
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- David H. Vowell
- Jack Webb(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaTim Donnelly's first Dragnet appearance, later to be seen as the "Crimson Crusader" in another episode, finally graduating to firefighter Chet Kelly in "Emergency." Also, Kent McCord as a police officer, later to become Adam-12's officer Jim Reed.
- GoofsJean Shipley (Brenda Scott) quotes the New Testament of the Bible (Ephesians 6:4) to justify the behavior of herself, her husband and their generation: "Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. The old ways are not their ways. Your dusk is their dawn. The future is theirs." Unfortunately for Jean (and the script writers), only the first sentence of her quotation actually appears anywhere in the Bible.
- Quotes
Officer Bill Gannon: Have you been smoking marijuana?
Paul Shipley: Marijuana's illegal, I know that.
Sergeant Joe Friday: That's right.
Paul Shipley: For now. In a couple of years, things may change, when all the kids grow up and start wearing ties, and going to the polls, marijuana's gonna be like liquor, packaged and taxed and sold right off the shelf.
Officer Bill Gannon: I doubt it, Mr Shipley.
[Marijuana was eventually legalized in California]
- Crazy creditsOn Adam-12 (1968), Kent McCord's character, Reed, is partnered with Malloy. In this episode, McCord is credited as "2nd Officer," and the actor who played his partner is named Jeff Malloy.
- ConnectionsReferences The French Chef (1962)
Don't blame David Vowell, whose agile script displays his usual attention to detail and fashions some stirring speeches for the guest characters even if the smug or overwrought ones sound like sophistry. As always, the culprit must be Jack Webb, the driving force behind "Dragnet" whose jaw is never clenched tighter, whose tone is never more acidic, whose eyes are never narrowed more by self-righteous contempt and disgust than when he's railing about illegal drugs.
After the comedic opening with Officer Bill Gannon regaling Sergeant Joe Friday about his secret special barbecue sauce, they are called into listen to Charles Porter's (Ed Prentiss) lament: Distraught over the welfare of his toddler granddaughter because his daughter Jean (Brenda Scott) and her husband Paul Shipley (Tim Donnelly) smoke marijuana, he is now threatening a custody lawsuit citing child endangerment to protect--cue the hankie--what may turn out to be his only grandchild ever. Oh, and here's the kicker: Apart from asking directions, Porter has never spoken to a policeman until now.
Well, when you're an old, white, presumably comfortably well-off man (money for lawsuits doesn't grow on trees), you get to speak with Captain Trembly (Robert Knapp) about your complaint, with Trembly dispatching Friday and Gannon, merely on your say-so (Aren't there any corroborating witnesses? Was he even asked about that?), out to Sherman Oaks to investigate.
Off they go to a "quiet street in a well-to-do neighborhood" to speak first with Jean, Phi Beta Kappa at college, where she graduated magna cum laude in English literature and proves it by quoting Coleridge and Bible scripture in her smug, self-serving rationale, then with Paul, pugnacious and declamatory, a computer programmer and military veteran home from a tough day at the office (had he poured himself a martini instead of wanting to light up a joint, would that have been acceptable behavior?) whose superior tone about the future legality of marijuana is like waving a red cape before a bull named Friday, who lashes out at both parents of Robin, sitting quietly in her crib as the symbol of the upstanding American family, with his patented gateway drug theory that sees only illegal drugs as the stepping stones to the harder stuff.
Let's not forget that two of LA's finest approached the Shipley home with the presumption of guilt, insisted on entering the premises without a warrant, and tried to search the premises without one as well. Call that foreshadowing because, just as Lyn Murray's incidental music shrieks to punctuate Webb's testy ripostes to the glib liberalism of the Shipleys, it will positively scream at the completely contrived, over-the-top melodramatic climax.
That begins when, two months later, a drug addict (James Oliver) who just happened to be at a pot party at the Shipleys is brought into the detectives' room where Friday and Gannon just happen to be. The addict coughs up the requisite information, sending the Dragnamic Duo high-tailing it back to Sherman Oaks to bust the high-flying, highfalutin, privileged suburbanites and reveal a tragedy so horrific that Gannon has to run outside to throw up as Friday crushes a baggie of marijuana--"pot, grass, weed, reefer, Mary Jane, whatever you want to call it, Mister, it's all the gateway to hell"--in his enraged fists.
No, Friday didn't say any of that. He didn't need to. It's already baked into this "Reefer Madness" redux, a melodrama so lugubrious that you literally don't know whether to laugh or cry.
One bright spot is Merry Anders as Policewoman Dorothy Miller, working out of Juvenile, who, when asked by Friday and Gannon if she could look into the Shipley case for possible child endangerment, gets an effective spotlight with her stump speech about another family in danger, this one a working-class family with child abuse from a violent father and mother who will accede to it because she feels trapped. Anders's convincing delivery elicits more empathy than the ultimately ham-fisted morality play that forms the core of "The Big High."
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
- darryl-tahirali
- Apr 15, 2023
Details
- Runtime30 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1