The Suicide Attempt

What a WASTE of time & energy to bother to film & to try to save the life of one of the most unfamous unknown uncredited potential suicide-victim-survivor celebrity Ralph Harmon whose prominent photo boldly proudly displays only once - only one single time!!! - at the very end of Dragnet's incarceration commentary before presenting showing all the casts' credits among which poor most unfamous unknown uncredited potential suicide-victim-survivor celebrity Ralph Harmon whose prominent photo boldly proudly displays only once - only one single time, mind you! - at the very end of Dragnet's ending incarceration commentary before presenting showing all the casts' actors' rushed-through credits among which poor Ralph Harmon's cast-actor credit NEVER APPEARS unfortunately!!! What a WASTE & DISRESPECT to poor suicide-victim-survivor celebrity cast-actor Ralph Harmon!!! ...No???

Friday and Gannon spring into action after the department receive a phone call from a panicked mother in New York. It seems that her son called her to say 'goodbye'---he was about to kill himself. Since he lives in L.A., it's up for the detectives to find the man--and QUICK! The detectives check out the man's address. It seems that he and his wife just split up and she directs them to her sister-in-law's house. When they find her, she can't believe that he'd kill himself but later, after he calls and tells her he is going to die, she, too, believes him and it's a race against time to find him. The police know he's taken a lethal overdose of sleeping pills but only have a general idea of where he is.

Overall, a very exciting episode and it's nice to see how police work is done. While far from the best show of the series, it's a solid effort and worth seeing.

A twenty-nine-year-old man's mother calls the LA police from New York. Her son has called to tell her goodbye, he's going to kill himself. Friday and Gannon begin a determined effort to find the man and save his life. His wife, estranged for six months, doesn't think he has the nerve to do it. His sister is also unconvinced, but when he calls her with Gannon and Friday in her apartment, she becomes desperate to help find her brother.

A trace from the phone company gives them their first real lead ... the call originated from a pay phone in a hotel lobby. The rest is an investigative sequence you'd hope police detectives are really capable of.

Interesting episode.

A New York woman calls the LA police department and says her grown son in LA has called her and told her he is committing suicide. Detectives Friday and Gannon investigate.

Since the man's name is known, for once they don't need the "who", but they most definitely need the "where" . They find the man's wife, find out he is recently divorced and living with his sister. At the sister's house they find that the sister's bottle of prescription sleeping pills is completely empty.

So now it is up to the phone company to trace any incoming call in case it is the brother. This part includes some unwanted callers who just want to yap and the sister of the potential suicide shooing them away so that her brother does not get a busy signal.

So all of this drama would not happen today. Cell phones make all of this suspense at the phone company unneeded. Also, the drug used for the suicide attempt was a barbiturate. Barbiturates can sometimes cause death even if you take a normal dose . It's one of the reasons that benzos were invented - it's very hard to kill yourself with an overdose of benzos alone. The Madoffs tried and failed. But I digress.

Friday and Gannon's interview technique needs some work here. They ask people questions and when they are less than forthcoming get huffy with them. Only after wasting a couple of minutes when they have no time to lose do they indicate that the person they are looking for is in danger not in trouble with the law. They might have gotten further faster if they had led their questions with - "A man is dying somewhere and we need to find him before it is too late!"