Police Squad!

Years: 1982
Seasons: 1
Episodes: 6
Created by: Jim Abrahams, David & Jerry Zucker

Main Cast:

Leslie Nielsen as Detective Frank Drebin
Alan North as Captain Ed Hocken
Peter Lupus as Officer Norberg

A long time ago, spoof movies actually had jokes in them. What counts as “funny” changes all the time, of course, but this genre seems to have changed a lot in recent years. The way the genre has narrowed in focus happens all the time in different formats. For example: punk rock, in it’s inception, used to include such diverse bands as The Ramones, Patti Smith, X, The Clash, Wire, Blondie, The Dead Kennedys, and Television. Now, bands that are identified as “punk” all sound like bratty versions of The Ramones. It just happens. Spoof movies now seem to have narrowed into films that shoot rapid-fire pop culture references at the audience, punctuated by various “funny” acts of violence against certain popular figures and the inclusion of gross-out visuals. As you can tell, I don’t like this development, but I’m not going to hop on the bandwagon and say that people who love Friedberg and Seltzer films (or Family Guy, which is similar in approach) are all idiots. Humor changes, and I haven’t changed with it. Such is life.

So what does this have to do with Police Squad!, the short-lived show that later turned into the successful Naked Gun film series? Well, it reminded me of why I used to really love spoof movies: they had jokes. Recurring jokes that worked even through six episodes. Clever jokes that sometimes took a minute to fully process. Lots and lots of jokes, packed in as densely as those classic Simpsons episodes. It’s rare for me to laugh audibly while watching something alone, but that happened a lot more than I expected while watching this series, and for the life of me I can’t understand why this show wasn’t a hit.

The show follows the adventures of Detective Frank Drebin, who’s shockingly less idiotic here than he is in the Naked Gun films. Each episode follows him solving different cases, usually helped by his partners Ed and Norberg. He follows the typical procedures of interviewing suspects and gathering evidence, and everything is neatly tied up at the end of each episode. Less ambitious in scope than the Naked Gun films, the crimes dealt with usually involve murder and bribery, the topics typically covered in cop shows. What’s great about Police Squad! is that Frank Drebin is such a memorable character, and the recurring gags are so funny that the show gets a lot of milage out of this familiar genre, and not once in this short, six episode run does anything feel stale.

Some of the recurring gags include a celebrity guest star being murdered in the opening credits, Frank’s inside source/shoe shine guy being an expert on pretty much everything (provided you pay him), the scientist Ted demonstrating something disturbing or dangerous to a child before Drebin checks up on him, and the “freeze frame” during the final credits, which is usually just Frank and Ed standing perfectly still while a bunch of other crap goes on in the background. The problem with describing these gags, and with describing humor in general, is that you actually need to see the show in order to understand why it’s funny. The whole show is played deadpan, which is crucial to the humor in it. If everyone played each scene with a smirk on their face and a “I know this is funny” expression, it would destroy the humor and cause each joke to fall flat on it’s face. Granted, not every joke works in this show, but far more succeed than don’t.

What I loved about this show was the amount of talent involved. The creators of this show knew their shit, coming from such spoof hits as The Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane!, so this was one of those cases where you could be fairly certain that you’d be watching a high-quality show. Also, while watching the show I noticed that Joe Dante directed a couple of episodes. For those who don’t know, Joe Dante is a fantastic and sadly underrated director, responsible for the two Gremlins films and the brilliant Matinee (he also did Looney Tunes: Back in Action, which is strangely hated by a lot of people who probably never even watched the fucking thing). While this show would be different from something like Get Smart, there’s no reason why a genre spoof show shouldn’t have been a success, even if these kind of shows typically don’t last long.

I hate the expression “too good to last” because of the snobbishness that it implies, but that does seem to be the case with this show. Apparently the rapid-fire pace of the jokes just didn’t connect with the audience. One reason given for the show’s cancelation was that in order to enjoy the show, the viewer had to pay close attention to it. In a way, that’s true. This is not a show that you can watch while doing other things, since there’s always something going on in the background, or a visual gag that doesn’t have dialog specifically pointing at it. Even now, if you’re watching the show and surfing the web, it’s a guarantee that you’re going to miss half the jokes. This goes a long way toward explaining why a TV show that demands your attention may fail, but a movie version of the exact same thing can be a huge success, since you can’t multitask in a movie theater (unless you’re a douche on their cellphone). Therefore, Police Squad! was a failure that was yanked off the air after a mere four episodes, and the Naked Gun was a big hit that spawned two sequels and both brought on a revival of the spoof genre and made Leslie Nielsen a star. I may be wrong, but aside from Star Trek, I can’t think of another TV failure that went on to have such a huge impact when adapted into a film.

Recommended for: comedy fans, people who love spoof movies with jokes, Naked Gun fans, people who would have liked the Naked Gun movies if OJ wasn’t in them