Favourite Dragnet Episode

One thing that always bugged me about that one was the epilogue, in which it was said there was no crime committed. Was it no crime to sign false statements declaring oneself to be someone else?

Mister Daniel Lumis.

Everything about that episode is amazing. This guy is in so many absurd situations such as:

1. Stealing all the furniture from his current wife's house, leaving her blind mother standing in the corner
2. Stealing his mother's funeral money when she died and running off.
3. Married a woman and ran off because he got her pregnant.
4. Moved in with a roommate and told him he was paying the rent but was really stealing his money, then stole a bunch of his other things.
5. Asks a woman to marry him and plans to run off with their honeymoon fund.

When Joe and Bill show up to arrest him, he insists that not only will they let him go, but they'll apologize for wasting his time. Then he admits to all of his crimes, but explains with even more ridiculous reasons for why he did each thing.

He stole the furniture from his most recent wife because he needed the money and the old woman was mean to him. He bragged about how efficient the movers were.

He stole his mother's funeral money because his mother wrote him out of the will, and therefore he was just getting the money he "deserved" and his brother got much more from the will so he has nothing to complain about.

He left his pregnant wife because it wasn't their plan to have children, and he couldn't afford to raise a child, so of course he had to leave.

He agreed to marry the latest woman, Doris, and planned to run away with her honeymoon money as compensation for spending time with her because she's ugly. He insists that she's better off as Doris Lumis, whose husband disappeared one day, than as a woman who was never asked to be married.


Most of all, he insists that he has a very good reason for all of these crimes. It's because he has a taste for the finer things in life and wasn't born with the skills to make the kind of money needed to maintain such a lifestyle, and he assures Joe and Bill that he ONLY spent his illegally obtained fortune on luxuries, never necessities.

Also, he has a tattoo of a heart on his arm, with "Mister Daniel Lumis" inside it, and he insists that everyone call him "Mister" as a sign of respect because he's better than everyone.

Aside from all of the Mister Daniel Lumis stuff, Doris' mother is such an awful person as well. When Joe and Bill show up to tell her about Lumis, she says she knew something was fishy because she doesn't know what Lumis could see in her daughter. She rattles off all of these negative things about her daughter (she's not pretty, fat, not smart, can't cook, can't dance) and how Lumis could do much better.

The one with Burt Mustin as Calvin Lampey, sticking his nose in everything Friday and Gannon are doing, becoming the prime suspect and then they find out he was a police captain "back in the day". Lampey was a cool character.

Any episode with Jack Sheldon was usually both funny and some how unusual. He had a great voice. So to that end I'd have to pick "Mr. Daniel Loomis" as my all time favorite and "Blue Boy" for getting the D-1967 going.

One of the best was "The Big Neighbor."

Joe and Bill can't enjoy a football game without interuptions.


I understand Jack Webb was a football fan so I wonder what he'd think about the NFL situation in L.A. today?

"The Big Prophet." It stands out in many ways, including having both sides score ideological points with the viewers and actually allowing the Gannon character to be more than "Lone Ranger" Friday's Tonto. And Liam Sullivan was one of the series' best guest stars ever.


My people skills are fine. It's my tolerance of morons that needs work.

Guess my favorite would be the football game/dinner at Bill's house :)

Boy, that's a tough one because there are so many great episodes.

Among the 'serious' ones that I think are tremendous are the one with Mr. Daniel Loomis and the one with Burt Mustin as the suspect who turns out to be a retired Police Captain. The one that ended with the young child drowning in the bathtub because the parents were high was shocking. The Grenade (the first episode of the second season) was the first one I ever saw and was also terrific. The very next episode was The Shooting Board, another classic. And let's not forget The Big Ad, with the guy hiring Friday to kill his wife.

In terms of the less serious episodes, any one that shows Bill and Joe constantly interrupted when trying to watch a football game, have dinner or play cards is always worth watching.

Out of all of the episodes, though, my very favorite may be the Christmas episode of the second season, a virtual word-for-word, shot-for-shot remake of the Christmas episode from the original Dragnet series.




Why couldn’t I be Governor of Idaho? Kill a few potatoes; who’d care?