The Shooting

"The Shooting" is a very unusual case, as it takes Officers Friday and Gannon nine months to catch the scum-bags!

The story begins with an officer being shotgunned at close range by a couple of armed robbers. Miraculously, the officer (Don Marshall) is NOT dead and actually pulls through. However, his memory of the incident is gone...and that's not unusual with such traumas. Because the case drags on for months...and more robberies with the same m.o. occur. Finally, Friday gets a break when an informant lets him know who the shooters might be. But what about the injured cop? Can he possibly identify the perpetrators??

This is a solid episode....well written and with a nice quip by Friday (see the summary). Well worth seeing.

The thieves, rapists and murders outnumber the cops by 7-1, according to Jack Webb's opening narrative, which always talks about the city of Los Angeles and its population.

This story has a more serious tone to it than most because a fellow cop is shot. It seems he just innocently went up to a car to check out something that looked suspicious when one of the two guys standing next to the car turned around, produced a shotgun, and blasted him. The cop survived but has no memory. A doctor in this episode mentions that often happens to people who suffer a traumatic experience. It's so bad their conscious does everything it can to suppress the bad memory. The cop in here said he doesn't know if he can tell anyone who the President is, his memory is so wiped out.

That turns out to be the major problem of this story because Friday and Gannon can't find witnesses to the shooting. They finally get enough information to arrest the two guys, but how to they close the case?

The two thugs, by the way, had some good, wise-guy film noir-type lines.