Dragnet 1967 (TV Series) The Big Departure (1968) User Reviews

They stole everything but soap....

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 21 November 2009]

This show begins with a robbery. A business is being burglarized after hours but when the business owner shows up, he's roughed up and a group of hippies escape with a lot of merchandise. The list of supplies is rather odd and why they stole these items is confusing. A short time later, this same group rob another store but some of them are caught. The arresting officers bring three dumb hippies to Friday and Gannon to question.

The WHY is interesting. These jerks want to start their own Utopia--living primitively on an island. They hope to live on love and see themselves as superior to the 'bankrupt society', though they don't seem to see that by stealing and assaulting people they are far from superior! And, to make things worse, they are dumber than a trees--as they seem to have no idea how to survive in the wilderness. In fact, dumb is too good a word--they somehow go beyond mere stupidity because of their senses of entitlement and moral superiority. To quote Eric Cartman "@#^*!@@# hippies!".

Overall, the episode does come off as a bit preachy and talky--like Joe Friday versus hippies. However, in this case, you can't help but agree with Joe about these kids in particular--they are total jerks.

Don't try to build a new country.. Make the old one work.

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 2 December 2011]

Overly sermonizing "Dragnet" episode with Sgt. Friday, Jack Webb, and to a lesser extent Officer Bill Gannon, Harry Morgan, acting as if their history and philosophy professors as they try to put straight a trio of self-centered youths Paul Seever Dennis J. Meldon & Charles L, Vail, Kevin Coughlin Lou Wagner & Roger Mobley, who by committing a string of robberies are planning to start a new utopia at the expense of those that they victimized.

Smug and self-righteous at first but by the time that both Friday & Gannon got through with them the trio of somewhat clueless juveniles got to see just how both stupid and ridicules they really are. This bunch of brainless social revolutionaries couldn't survive even a day in the world that they planned to create much less then be able to create it in the first place! Sgt. Friday who did most of the talking gave them a lesson in social justice and the fact about being the rugged individuals that they think that they are but in all reality are not. And by the time that he and his partner Officer Gannon got through with them they all realized that the utopia that they were planning was nothing but a drug induced pipe dream on their part.

Jack Webb had been accused by many of his critics as being insensitive to the youth, or hippies, of his day on the "Dragnet 1967 and 1968" police drama show that he both produced and directed. It's in this episode that Webb clarified his opinions on what he thought about the uncontrolled American youth of the 1960's and just how wrong they were in making complete jerks of themselves in their thinking that they and only they are the way or wave of the future. A future that they will shape in their own image that in the end would better all of mankind. It was the cold hard truth that Friday enlightened them with that put the trio of misguided youths back into the real world. A world that they rejected but in their half baked ideas of improving it would only end up destroy it along with themselves and those forced to live in it!

"Black or White, Long Hair or Short Hair An *ssh*le is still An *ssh*le!"............Thomas F. McKenna (A Great American & Best Friend!)

[redryan64 · 6/10 · 30 May 2008]

It is interesting to me that the Cable TV Listings now refer to this latter day DRAGNET as being a "docu-drama". Simply put, it is just what it sounds it to be, a Dramatization of Documentary (true) occurrences. This is an apt description and a term which most likely did not exist at the time of its production. Many have felt that these Jack Webb half hours of the 1950's and '60's could well serve as training material in our Police Training Facilities.

In the episode titled "The Big Departure", we join Sgt. Joe Friday (Mr. Jack Webb) and his partner, Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) as they work in the Juvenile Division. They are Youth Officers, Juvenile Investigators; or as they are affectionately called in Chicago, "the Diaper Dicks." They respond to a Burglary turned Armed Robbery of a small independent supermarket. Youthful offenders are implicated, though no arrests have been made.

Checking with their Burglary Section, they find a pattern of several burglaries with similar sets of circumstances or 'Modus Operandi'(Method of Operation) or M.O. for short. Three of the juvie offenders are found and arrested.

As it turns out, the young punks fancy rather fancy themselves to be revolutionaries bent on founding their own self-sufficient alternate world of Love & Flower Power; but devoid of any Law or overseeing Legal Authority to enforce same. In short, they have joined the endless line of foolish dreamers in seeking a Utopian Paradise on Earth.

Even though the fact remains true then and now, no one has ever established a successful Socialist colony anywhere on Earth. From the original collective farms of the Plymouth Colony to the Marxian concepts of a transformed world; the fact remains constant. SOCIALISM DOES NOT WORK! * And yet, each generation, believing that they know it all, gravitate toward at least a flirtation with it. At least this "old", "outdated" "DRAGNET 67" TV Episode, common sense prevails and acts as the balance in reminding us that a "Political Killer" is nothing more than a Killer and they run contrary to civilization.

NOTE: * Okay, we'll concede that the communal way of life does in fact works and does so quite well; but that is in very narrow circumstances. What situation? In a Religious Group or Community, such as those in Monastaries and Convents; but then only because of deep beliefs and the fact that membership in such is strictly VOLUNTARY.

POODLE SCHNITz!!

All talk

[VetteRanger · 4/10 · 25 January 2023]

From time to time Dragnet resorted to 30 minutes of "all talk" in an interrogation room or office. It's a money saving tactic which produced some very slow, boring, and preachy episodes, and this one is pretty bad.

A string of supermarket and hardware robberies ends with three teenagers being arrested. They want to start a "new world order", because they're smarter than anyone older than them and anyone older must be corrupt. Blah blah blah.

Friday and Gannon, but mostly Friday, try to lecture them about their misconceptions and the idea that it's okay to steal from anyone they don't agree with ... they think.

The episode is horribly dated at this time, but it wasn't very good even at the time written and filmed.