Another drug episode on "Dragnet," and this time there are some fairly big fish involved. After trying unsuccessfully to bust a local heroin dealer named Sal Romero (Daniel Nunez), Sergeant Joe Friday, toking on his drug of choice, a cigarette, and Officer Bill Gannon are reporting their efforts to Captain Al Trembly (Clark Howat) when he dispatches them to the Van Nuys crash site of a small plane with 150 pounds of marijuana aboard. When they get to the site, they learn that the pilot limped away, and inspecting the cargo inside the Cessna 140, they discover an envelope containing heroin packets worth an estimated $100,000.
Big contraband stakes in the San Fernando Valley as "The Big Shipment" finds Friday and Gannon setting out in the middle of the night to track down the pilot and to whom he was supposed to deliver the drugs. David Vowell's taut, (mostly) credible script steers the pair down the unenviable path of knocking on doors in the dead of night, with the urgency being, according to the (convenient) instructions on the heroin envelope that call for a 5 AM pickup but specify only "the same place as last time" as the pickup location, the opportunity to bust a big fish provided they can discern where that "same place as last time" is. (We also learn that Gannon can at least read Spanish since that is the language of the writing.)
As "Dragnet" is the epitome of the police procedural, we see Friday and Gannon, having talked to the owner of the rented Cessna (Stephen Dunne) and, after some sleuthing and deducing, the estranged wife (Lorraine Gary) of the man who rented it, bust in on Jerry Frank (Fred Vincent), a Vietnam vet who lost a leg in the war (thus the prosthetic leg and the limp) and who runs drugs for the thrill of it (along with the money, presumably)--and who now might receive the thrill of being killed by his connection for not delivering the very expensive goods. So, of course, he divulges where he was supposed to leave the drugs for the pickup.
What follows is the bust that snares the pair (Julian Burton, John Sebastian (the actor, not the musician)) making the pickup, which spirals into a serio-comic conclusion, capped by a hilarious line by Jack Webb, that tests the promise of a "true story" with its seeming absurdity, but truth can be stranger than fiction, and criminals are known to try the strangest things sometimes. You just might not look at the label on an LP record the same way again.
But what doesn't follow is this: Webb's biggest bugbear are illegal drugs. "The Big Shipment" has an entire planeload of drugs, enough to immobilize a few city blocks of crazed addicts at least--and where is Joe Friday's outrage? Where is the icy, caustic lecture about destroying the morals of the nation?
These guys are facilitating the corruption of impressionable youths on a grand scale, and not one scathing word from Friday, not one cutting remark, not even a reference to the gateway drug theory that "sooner or later, one of those kids high on reefer is going to get curious about that white powder, and the next thing you know, he's bought himself a hundred dollar a day horse habit--and, Mister, you're the one who helped him buy it and maybe even his overdose death," followed by that four-note musical curtain ringing down around the perp.
(Recite to the cadence of the "Dragnet" "gotcha" tune): "Where's the outrage? Where's the outrage, Joe?"
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