TVFactFan
04-20-2007, 07:03 PM
We've had rich cops and poor cops, fat cops and thin cops, rookie cops and kookie cops, he-man cops and she-person cops, wise guys cops and disguise cops, We've even had hippie cops. Now we've got happy cops.
All this happiness happens at a friendly neighborhood station house in New York' Greenwich Village. Your hero is Capt. Barney Miller who is kind of a cross between happy and hippie. He's got a wife and two children at home, but down at the station house he's got the motliest assortment of cops since Keystone. Talk about Tokenism-Here they've got a token senior citizen , a veteran of 38 years on the force who still hasn't got a first name. He's just Fish. Then there's a kind of Puerto Rican Serpico named Chano, A pole named Wojehowicz, who is big on karate and little on Polish jokes, a cool black named Harris, who's bucking for Barney's job, and finally a Japenese Philosopher named Nick Yemana.
They all have crosses to bear. Yemana, for example complains the top cops upstairs don't like him because Orientals ruin the looks of the St. Patricks Day Parade. IF such lines aren't enough to keep you in stitches, there is also all manner of hilarity from streetwalkers and muggers, panhandlers and purse snatchers, all of whom go in and out of the station house as fast as actors in a French bedroom farce. There's even a homosexual purse snatcher who insists that he wants to be a cop. "What's wrong with a Gay Cop?" he asks. "There are gay robbers."
There is really an awful lot going on, and most of the lot is awful. but least it's better than awful little. For one thing, each episode has at least three plots, apparently on the theory that if you can't have one good one, you atleast have a choice. One episode gave us an exhibitionist in a snowstorm, $200,000 in cash to be kept overnight, and no heat in the station house. Another episode gave us the afromentioned purse snatcher and a mad bomber who left his bomb-you guessed it-right in the station house.
Plot Number 3 was about Fish getting too old. He goes to sleep even when Barney is giving him compliments. He also went to sleep at the end of the show-and by that time we were nodding too. Another episode we saw involved crooked cops. Policeman on the take would strike us as possibly the least likely subject for humor these days, but this show tried anyway. And you know what? We were right. Nonetheless, there are good things about this series. One is the Hal Linden and Barbara Barrie scenes at home. Another is Abe Vigoda's characterization of Fish. A third is the fact that the lines are generally good. Nancy Dussault, for example, had a really funny part as a street walker. The trouble is that the writers apparently build the scenes to get the lines in, they don't write solid scenes and then add good lines. Indeed, they often pick up on a joke from one scene and put it in the next. It's kind of like instant replay-but it isn't necessarily instant refun.
Cleveland Amory, April 12, 1975, TV guide
All this happiness happens at a friendly neighborhood station house in New York' Greenwich Village. Your hero is Capt. Barney Miller who is kind of a cross between happy and hippie. He's got a wife and two children at home, but down at the station house he's got the motliest assortment of cops since Keystone. Talk about Tokenism-Here they've got a token senior citizen , a veteran of 38 years on the force who still hasn't got a first name. He's just Fish. Then there's a kind of Puerto Rican Serpico named Chano, A pole named Wojehowicz, who is big on karate and little on Polish jokes, a cool black named Harris, who's bucking for Barney's job, and finally a Japenese Philosopher named Nick Yemana.
They all have crosses to bear. Yemana, for example complains the top cops upstairs don't like him because Orientals ruin the looks of the St. Patricks Day Parade. IF such lines aren't enough to keep you in stitches, there is also all manner of hilarity from streetwalkers and muggers, panhandlers and purse snatchers, all of whom go in and out of the station house as fast as actors in a French bedroom farce. There's even a homosexual purse snatcher who insists that he wants to be a cop. "What's wrong with a Gay Cop?" he asks. "There are gay robbers."
There is really an awful lot going on, and most of the lot is awful. but least it's better than awful little. For one thing, each episode has at least three plots, apparently on the theory that if you can't have one good one, you atleast have a choice. One episode gave us an exhibitionist in a snowstorm, $200,000 in cash to be kept overnight, and no heat in the station house. Another episode gave us the afromentioned purse snatcher and a mad bomber who left his bomb-you guessed it-right in the station house.
Plot Number 3 was about Fish getting too old. He goes to sleep even when Barney is giving him compliments. He also went to sleep at the end of the show-and by that time we were nodding too. Another episode we saw involved crooked cops. Policeman on the take would strike us as possibly the least likely subject for humor these days, but this show tried anyway. And you know what? We were right. Nonetheless, there are good things about this series. One is the Hal Linden and Barbara Barrie scenes at home. Another is Abe Vigoda's characterization of Fish. A third is the fact that the lines are generally good. Nancy Dussault, for example, had a really funny part as a street walker. The trouble is that the writers apparently build the scenes to get the lines in, they don't write solid scenes and then add good lines. Indeed, they often pick up on a joke from one scene and put it in the next. It's kind of like instant replay-but it isn't necessarily instant refun.
Cleveland Amory, April 12, 1975, TV guide