Yeah, I always chalked that up to changing tastes in the intervening years, hard boiled/noir style writing in film and on TV being at maybe it's lowest ebb then (though it was poised for a major comeback).

The former. And it's not a trivial thing, either. Given how pervasive smoking had been on TV before that report, I think it's interesting how fast and thoroughly it got banished from TV in the mid to late 60s (excepting ads, which were still airing at that point). Arguably, there's more smoking in shows from the 70s &…

Frank wasn't in the color episodes. Bill Gannon was his partner. And Gannon was depicted as being fairly milquetoast in terms of vices - his idea of a good time was doing things like clipping little factoids from the newspaper and collecting them in his wallet. But there is that one episode where Joe finally sucks it…

I just really don't recall seeing Friday or Gannon smoking that much (and you can tell from Webb's voice, and his early death from a heart attack, that the man was a chimney off camera). Suspects, civilians, even other cops maybe. But the two of them not so much. In fact, I'd be surprised if you could find a scene of…

Seriously, by that point you're just, like, "THANK YOU," because the preeny group leader has gone so way over the top with his ever shifting set of rules and conditions designed to exclude Friday from the group.

"Gunsmoke" is really the ultimate example of the radio version being better than the TV adaptation. Definitely the best written and acted show on radio at the time, maybe even of all time. Another great detective series on radio during that era that era was, "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar." For whatever reason it never…

By the time the color episodes aired ('67-'70) they weren't really doing that anymore, as the Surgeon General's report had come out (in '64) and networks were already sensitive about depicting role models and authority figures as smokers. You can see Friday smoking in a few very brief scenes in early episodes of…

It's been remarked on elsewhere, but it wouldn't be nearly so great without the heavy eastern seaboard accent she does it with too. For pure melodrama, it's really a tossup between that and the part at the beginning where one of the other characters asks, "By the way, where did you meet him, again?", and she bursts…

They could also deal with both ends of the radical spectrum. I remember an episode where he has some choice words for a weirdo who collects Nazi memorabilia. And Webb was a pretty strong supporter of civil rights, and the show usually depicted minority characters very positively. I recall an episode set at the LA…

Yeah, just think the whole Rat Pack crowd went from being the apex of cool to the epicenter of squaresville within the span of a couple of years. Some of their efforts to adapt are particularly hard to take, even all these years later:
https://www.youtube.com/wat…

There are definitely some good examples of dramatic writing when the show gets on a different topic than, "Young people taking drugs and destroying their lives." Of course for total, bizarre camp effect, the series finale, in which Friday takes part an after-work group to "talk about feelings," and subsequently gets…

I always wondered about that - I believe he was pretty tight with a lot of Jazz musicians. Then again, because narcotics use and abuse was notoriously rampant in the Jazz scene, and took the lives of a lot of promising jazz musicians prematurely, I always speculated he might have been over-sensitized to it.

It's really too bad "Dragnet" is now primarily remembered for the super-square '67-'70 incarnation. The radio show, and the black and white 50's version (which has fallen into public domain and is available for free in a few places) were enjoyably gritty and noirish. Friday still has plenty of opportunities to get on…

It had a locking bridge mechanism that allowed you to tune it there, making traditional tuning pegs superfluous.

For years I always assumed "The Leader of the Pack" was a Phil Spector production, because the values were just so epic. Of course it isn't, but you've still got to marvel at how much narrative, for lack of a better way of describing it, they packed into it while still keeping it pretty tuneful. Speaking of epic…

I see "Seasons in The Sun" as more generally maudlin. Besides being outside the era, as I recall the narrator already has a wife and a kid, so it's probably beyond teenage death and more "taken in his prime" territory. Though I suppose you could make a strong case for "Run Joey Run" as a late entry into the genre.

You can really hear it during the crash sequence, when she shouts, "Look at, look at, look at!"

You know, the irony in that is that probably the last thing hard core Trek fans actually want is "fan service."

What's "The Jetsons" about now, late stage capitalism?

This really feels like the ultimate logical extension of that game modern day comic book makers really love to play: "How do we take something as far away from its original concept as possible (towards a 'darker,' 'grittier,' and of course more cynical place), and still keep it just recognizable enough to sell?" Can't…