[00:00:00] Matthew: My name is Matthew Porter. I'm a presenter with Podcast Squad, a special unit of the Inter Millennium Media Project. A cracked publicity detail had been arranged for the red carpet premiere of the latest film in a blockbuster Hollywood franchise. I, however, was assigned to show my co-host a six episode comedy TV series from the 1980s.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Inter Millennium Media Project. My name is indeed Matthew Porter. 

[00:00:44] Ian: I'm Ian Porter. 

[00:00:46] Matthew: I am his dad. He is my son, and we've gone back to the eighties for television. Yeah, 

[00:00:52] Ian: absolutely. When you arrived, I was already here 

[00:00:56] Matthew: and we continue with our, celebration of Leslie Nielsen.

[00:01:02] Ian: Yes. Continuing the thing he's almost more known for to my generation, I take it. 

[00:01:08] Matthew: Ah, 

[00:01:08] Ian: but that's slipping away to some extent. Yeah, but not entirely. Leslie Nielsen in like the naked gun films is much more what people know. And here's Police Squad, the origin of that film series. 

[00:01:24] Matthew: So even, Airplane, which we talked about in the last episode, that was still kind of something he had done in the past and he's known more for Police Squad.

[00:01:33] Ian: That's one of the weird things I feel like Airplane, the Naked Gun Police squad overall got. It had a distinct second resurgence, at least I knew of around the time I was in high school because certain new streaming things were coming out. And in the early days of streaming, like Netflix and Hulu, and Hulu is where I know these were, having that backlog you can put on to fill up your otherwise small streaming service was important.

And that meant that a lot of internet savvy people read high schoolers were suddenly watching these old comedy shows in order to have the fun thing to watch. That was free available. And yet that affected the humor and comedy that they were then creating elsewhere. So I knew of the naked gun, I'd seen it.

I'd seen clips of it online, but I'd never seen a full episode. I'd heard of Police Squad, I'd seen clips of it. I'd never seen a full episode. 

[00:02:42] Matthew: So were you more familiar with the Naked gun movies than the Police squad TV show? 

[00:02:47] Ian: Yes. Okay. Much more so, but because a movie was easier to pull up. 

[00:02:54] Matthew: Mm-hmm. 

[00:02:54] Ian: But it was always from the files of Police squad.

So I knew Police Squad existed and clips of Police Squad still showed up every once in a while, but they were mixed in and tossed around like a salad. That's why I keep on mixing up the names here already, and I've just watched the whole series. They are one entity because that's how they were repackaged and submitted to my generation during that second revival.

[00:03:20] Matthew: Looking for this series to show it to you for the podcast, the best way to find it was in a Blu-ray or, or in a DVD set that contained. The three naked gun movies as well as the six episodes of Police Squad from, uh, the 1980s. 

[00:03:35] Ian: Yeah. So we're watching Police Squad here, but it's extremely tied together.

[00:03:41] Matthew: And I think we'll have to talk about how this works in television versus movies to some extent. 

[00:03:47] Ian: Absolutely.

But overall, the comedy stylings are similar because they're the same producers, the same creators, the same actors in certain roles. At very least Leslie Nielsen is consistent across them. 

[00:03:59] Matthew: Yes. 

[00:04:00] Ian: I don't know if everyone else is, 

[00:04:02] Matthew: I don't know. There might be some, uh, some of the cast in, uh, in Police Squad who had small bits in Airplane, but Leslie Nielsen mm-hmm.

Really, they took him from this major supporting role in Airplane. Made him the center of police squad with the same exact kind of comedy as you mentioned, it's still Zucker Abrams , and Zucker, , creating this, although not writing every episode, but they created this and they were producing it and it was an attempt to take that same kind of absurd over literal humor from Airplane especially, which was mostly what the, the Leslie Nielsen character in Airplane was about, and bring it into a TV series. 

[00:04:44] Ian: They're playing with very different formats there overall, but that humor is still the same setup and punch kind of style, and they have so much fun with the background and the words and the fact that those are disconnected sometimes. 

[00:05:01] Matthew: Yeah. 

[00:05:02] Ian: If you like one, you're gonna like the other.

The packaging of the, the setups. It's quite different, I think. 

[00:05:10] Matthew: Yeah, I think that's generally true. I think there are some, there are some key differences in translating this to television, but I think you're right. We're also translating it to a different genre. And I am so glad that previously on the podcast I have shown you things like Colombo and like the streets of San Francisco 

[00:05:29] Ian: Yes.

[00:05:29] Matthew: And all of these things. And, 

[00:05:31] Ian: and we watched Fillmore 

[00:05:33] Matthew: We did, which was another kind of Yeah. Parody of the streets of San Francisco and that kind of Quin 

[00:05:38] Ian: Martin. Exactly. 

[00:05:39] Matthew: Crime drama, because this is, it is a, a parody of police shows from about a generation earlier than this was made. So this looks back to sixties and early seventies.

A few hints, maybe even back into late fifties, police TV shows, cop dramas. And it's the kind of thing that the people who made this had probably seen mainly in reruns when reruns were thing. Mm-hmm. But they were part of the ubiquitous media environment. 

[00:06:19] Ian: Th this is sailing its comedy on a sea of pre-established notions.

[00:06:25] Matthew: And a lot of that is with the structure. That is what provides the structure to this show so they can do all the weird stuff within that structure. The show itself, it's police squad with an exclamation point, but it's always presented as police squad in color. Not a big deal. In 1980, 1982, a very big deal when some of these original cop drama TV shows were coming out.

[00:06:51] Ian: Exactly. And to say something about the humor of this, it is very dedicated to that format and that form to begin with. But it's using that same format for different purposes. 

[00:07:09] Matthew: And that's key I think, to the Zucker Abrams and Zucker, style in that , they stay as close as they can to the original in the way that Airplane was a, a beat for beat remake of a drama from the 1950s.

They kept that structure so strong in order to be able to do all those weirdness. And you're right, they do the same thing here, sticking to that TV structure. 

[00:07:31] Ian: Detective shows in general are supposed to be able to give the audience a feeling of cleverness by being part of the investigation.

So. Let's say this was a normal cop show. 

[00:07:46] Matthew: This was a normal 

[00:07:47] Ian: cop show. This was a normal cop show. You'd immediately have the detective figure things out just a little after the audience does. But in this show, just like we did with you, the audience right now, the comedy is the thing that makes you feel clever.

They make the setup, they pause the same way, and they let you know what's gonna happen for the joke. And then when that comes through, you get the same, oh, I feel clever. Oh, this is fun of a police show. But thanks to humor, not actually detective work, 

[00:08:27] Matthew: that is really interesting. I had never made the, the link between the formal structure here and the the comedy, because the comedy seems so anarchic.

But you're right. Following along with the comedy is part of what it's replacing in what you usually do following along in a mystery. I mean, this genre of detective story, in mystery writing that's called a police procedural. It's a different case, but, and there are, there's different evidence, but there is a specific procedure.

We get to follow the characters as they go through this procedure, and eventually the procedure leads them to solving the crime. Here it's as if there's a, a comedy procedure 

[00:09:11] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:09:11] Matthew: That is fixed and that it's, the jokes might be different. The setups and the punchlines might be different, but the comedy procedure is the same.

It's a comedy procedural. 

[00:09:21] Ian: There was a moment where this clicked for me because there's, an accident and you go, oh well. Now here comes the tow truck and the characters start walking off and start saying the next piece of the story. And I just said, it's gonna be a car shaped like a giant tow.

And then in comes that car to push the accident away. And I'm like, oh, yay. I know exactly what's happening. 

[00:09:47] Matthew: And, and I found that it was roughly 50 50 in, they telegraph the jokes. I brace myself to groan and then I groan as I enjoy the joke when it plays out. Yeah. And then that's 50% of the time. And the other 50 was, they genuinely surprised me with Oh, it was obvious after the fact, but oh, I can't believe they went there.

[00:10:06] Ian: Yes. Uh,

[00:10:10] Matthew: another part of the, the playing with the form that I liked is that, and this goes to the structure you were talking about as well, that act structure. Of this, it's only a a half hour format, but still they broke it up into these acts. We have a, a serious announcer giving us the title at the beginning, although the title that the announcer gives is never the same as the title that shows up on screen.

[00:10:32] Ian: Yes. It's a bird in the hand and the title page just says The Butler did it. 

[00:10:39] Matthew: Yes. 

[00:10:40] Ian: It's like, wait a minute.

Watching this show on mute is a completely different show.

[00:10:46] Matthew: I also think that kind of like Airplane, there's , something about this that it struck me in the way it did partly because I had grown up so far on things like Monty Python and that may be the case. Mm-hmm. For the people who created this as well. 

[00:11:01] Ian: Oh, yes, and I'd say that's part of why this.

These creators had an impact on my generation because they, the Monty Python and everything else was the same style of humor that was being popular at the time and, and latched onto.

[00:11:18] Matthew: So what we have in this show, we've got Leslie Nielsen as, Lieutenant Detective Frank Drebben of Police Squad. Yes. But we also have, he's part of a team in this. 

[00:11:31] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:11:32] Matthew: Like most police procedurals, it's not one person all on his own. So here we've got Alan North, who is playing his boss 

and we also have, Peter Lupus who is playing, kind of the junior detective who's working with them. And. In some ways, he is the kind of the, the dumb guy part of the comedy trio. 

[00:11:57] Ian: Yes. 

[00:11:58] Matthew: There's the 

[00:11:59] Ian: absolutely 

[00:12:00] Matthew: the serious boss in Alan North. There's the dumb guy who's still learning and when they need a really broad joke, but not always, we've got Peter Lupus, and then we've got Leslie Nielsen as the center who's the, the real detective who's doing the detective work and the man of action when things call for that.

But he's also the person who's playing absolutely everything straight. 

[00:12:22] Ian: Alan North pins the world down, if things are around the place looking wacky Alan North as the captain will keep things centered and make it seem like this is normal life. Leslie Nielsen will bring the audience with him through whatever the chaos is.

And Peter Lupus Norberg will take the hit when the comedy weirdness does not make sense and would have problems. 

[00:12:55] Matthew: And it's, it's a weird dichotomy within that character of nordberg in that when you have a joke that requires someone to not understand something simple, he's the guy who is a part of that joke.

But at the same time, he is sometimes the character who recognizes how bizarre this world is. 

[00:13:16] Ian: Ah, 

[00:13:16] Matthew: and he sort of notices how weird his bosses are behaving and try is then to match that because he figures, oh, I'm supposed to be learning from these guys. And that's where it becomes, it's a little bit, it's the closest they come to a true fourth wall break is nordberg looking around and realizing, is it me or is this all very weird?

[00:13:36] Ian: Yeah, every once in a while the perception filter cracks on him and he starts like having the tiny existential crisis that should be occurring. 

[00:13:45] Matthew: Yes.

So this was just a, a six episode TV series. It did not last long. I don't know, I don't think it did very well on tv. I watched most of it when it broadcast because I was a big fan of Airplane. and I don't know if it was originally planned just for a brief run,

but it was six episodes and we actually watched all six of them. 'cause that's around what we would usually watch for a big TV series. 

[00:14:12] Ian: Yeah. Was it was just smooth, easy enough to do. Um, I still, I'm still not sure of the cancellation either, apparently. . ABC just announced the cancellation after only four of its episodes, and in an interview, Nielsen said that they canceled it because the viewer had to watch too closely to appreciate it.

[00:14:36] Matthew: Hmm. 

[00:14:37] Ian: Which is why the comedy worked better on a movie screen than a TV screen in the home. 

[00:14:41] Matthew: That's weird that, that is such an interesting, uh, perspective on TV and the role that TV plays because now so much of our TV is on streaming services or on demand, and so much TV is designed for really close viewing and, and I guess maybe multiple viewing, and we've got online discussions dissecting every scene of every TV show that anybody watches.

Then it was much more background, I guess, and that's one of the, especially if they were getting people watching this show because they said, oh, it's a police procedural. Or even if they said, oh. It's a, it's a po and they would use the term police procedural, but, oh, it's a police show. It's a detective show.

It's a, it's a police show. With some comedy, they would still going in expecting a certain formula, which kind of means you can check out for a few minutes in the middle and within 30 seconds of paying attention again, you, you're caught up to where you were, you know what clues they've got. And you can continue with the story.

Not so here. You've gotta pay attention. No. Because of those rapid fire jokes. 

[00:15:42] Ian: It's, it's a standup procedural. It's not gonna land. It's not gonna work the same. 

[00:15:46] Matthew: Yeah. 

[00:15:47] Ian: But that makes some sense. And yet at the same time, it's kind of a weird reason to cancel it after four of six. It is. It's not a lot to go on.

I never expected police squad to be a fine example of the difference of TV media, , pre and post the series LOST. 

[00:16:08] Matthew: Oh. 

[00:16:09] Ian: How it kind of like that, that's a weird, a weird connection line, but it does make sense. The modern TV show, as you were describing, is supposed to be more closely observed.

Police Squad would do better nowadays for that reason in Silliest Way. 

[00:16:26] Matthew: I wonder if the, the pace of producing television was part of that as well, because 

[00:16:32] Ian: yeah, 

[00:16:34] Matthew: they weren't able to take a whole lot of time to write each one of these scripts, and I would expect that for a movie like Airplane or like the Naked Gun movies or even Top Secret, their spy movie, it probably took a lot of effort and a lot of time to come up with and then fit together all of those jokes in a way that still allowed you to make a movie with some structure.

And you don't necessarily have the luxury of all that time in television. You've gotta get these scripts out and done, and you've gotta get things filmed very quickly, and that may have made this more difficult, and it might be a style that is just hard to execute in what's really a different medium.

But the individual episodes that we got, they did tend, in addition to just being vehicles for all these jokes, they did tend to select and fit very common and familiar sorts of stories In this detective environment, it opens with someone shooting her boss and an innocent customer so that she can then steal money.

And and say that they killed each other in an attempted robbery and that was interesting because it started in kind of a Columbo way where we saw the crime. 

[00:17:45] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:17:46] Matthew: We saw her, commit this murder and arrange the misleading evidence.

[00:17:55] Ian: I can admit something about this though. 

[00:17:57] Matthew: Yeah. 

[00:17:57] Ian: The opening messed with me for that first episode because I honestly expected the special guest star. They announced to show up and then I realized, wait a minute, the special guest star dies in the opening every time and never shows up again. 

[00:18:13] Matthew: Yes, there is a special guest star every single episode.

[00:18:16] Ian: Yes. 

[00:18:17] Matthew: And it's usually somebody pretty well known at the time, like Robert Goulet or William Shatner or, I think it was Florence Henderson in one of them, but they're always murdered as they're being introduced as tonight's special guest star. They're being murdered

[00:18:32] Ian: every single time. But yeah, the first one is definitely more Colombo like in that sense. But it gives a great opportunity to introduce everybody. And yet I'll also say it's the first episode, but these are completely unrelated to each other. You could watch any episode out of order. 

[00:18:50] Matthew: Yes. And that is true I think, for two reasons.

One is that's the way the things that its parodying were done and even in the early 1980s. We've talked about this before about tv. . You could not assume that people had seen any of the other episodes. We didn't have on demand. Not everybody had VCRs. So anybody had to be able to pick up from that episode with no continuity required from the previous one.

And that's definitely true of this. You can dip into any episode and follow it. 

[00:19:20] Ian: So, we've got, six episodes, a person shoots their boss for money. A, uh, fight rigging episode where there's a boxer taking falls. We've got a group of mobsters, blackmailing stores, which involves them going undercover.

We've got the bombing of a courthouse. We've got a comedian found dead in a car crash, and we've got the kidnapping of the daughter of a wealthy businessman.

Those are, those are six story setups. 

[00:19:51] Matthew: Yeah. Because the, uh, 

[00:19:51] Ian: all across them, 

[00:19:52] Matthew: the, the dead comedian one, that's their, drug trafficking story because of the story. Yes. Turns out it, it involves, drugs being trafficked through this nightclub where the comedian worked.

So yeah, it's another classic detective story trope from this era,

and every one of them is, is they have this outline that follows. You could take the, the outline of these stories and make a serious police tv show episode of it, but they use it as a place to hang all of these jokes. Many of them have nothing to do with the story, it's just there's an opportunity to throw in a joke.

They need to go interview somebody. About the, the shooting that happened at the, the check cashing store. Uh, turns out he lives in Little Italy, so they drive around and all the rear projection behind them are shots from Rome, Italy. 

[00:20:41] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:20:41] Matthew: While they're in the apartment interviewing the, the widow, the Tower of Pisa is, uh, just outside the window.

[00:20:48] Ian: Exactly. 

[00:20:49] Matthew: Nothing to do with the story. Just a visual joke. 

[00:20:51] Ian: Oh yeah. No, I went back to the office and you see him drive backwards and the rear projection is played in reverse. , you've gotta get information from someone in a poker game and there's this nice fade cut, but the amount of stuff and the types of items put in the center of this, the table in this little poker game is getting so ridiculous.

Oh, okay. Oh, if we're wanting to talk about, give information though, I've gotta mention my favorite character in the whole series. 

[00:21:19] Matthew: Who's that? 

[00:21:19] Ian: William Duell as Johnny the snitch, the shoe shiner. 

[00:21:23] Matthew: That is the best running joke through the entire thing. And it's a true running joke Yeah. Compared to some of the other things they do.

Absolutely. But Johnny, the snitch, he's great. 

[00:21:33] Ian: He, he shows up and acts as an informant in like five outta the six cases I think. And every time it's, you know, Drebin goes to get his shoe shines, slips the shoe. Shiner a 20, gets very precise and important information, and then leaves.

But we stay there as someone else comes over and repeats the exact same setup, but with a completely different topic. 

[00:21:59] Matthew: Yes. 

[00:21:59] Ian: We'll be like, yeah. 

[00:22:01] Matthew: It's great, 

[00:22:03] Ian: Do you know where that guy went? Uh, maybe I do hands 20. Oh yeah. He went over here. He's got this on his person. He's wearing a discolored shirt.

Thanks. Johnny leaves. Lady walks over, sits down, just don't know, you know, what's going on with my hair. Slips a 20, you need to do two rounds of conditioner, not just one for your type of hairstyle. Also don't color on the third day like he'll, like have information about anything. 

[00:22:32] Matthew: After drebin, a priest comes up and sits down and yeah.

Starts asking about the nature of God and he's like, are you talking about generalized existential force or are you talking about a specific being and this Exactly this, this is another area where they have celebrities come in and I don't know if you noticed recognized any of these people. 

[00:22:50] Ian: I didn't 

[00:22:51] Matthew: actually, but they have Tommy Lasorda

come in and ask how he's, how he should manage his pitching rotation. And he slips, the snitch at 20 and gets specific instructions on how to manage and rest his pitching rotation. You do need one more person on the bench and here's somebody you might be able to trade for. And, uh, 

[00:23:11] Ian: all of this could have been avoided if you hadn't traded away.

This guy, 

[00:23:15] Matthew: we have, , Dr. Joyce Brothers come in and sit down to get her shoes shined. And she was a, a real, a popular in one of the first kind of pop psychologist celebrities. 

[00:23:29] Ian: Oh, okay. 

[00:23:29] Matthew: And she's asked, 

[00:23:30] Ian: so those ones went straight over my 

[00:23:31] Matthew: head. I'll say, yeah, if, if you hadn't watched a lot of TV in the seventies, there's no reason, uh, you would recognize her.

And then she's asking about, I've got a lot of, a lot of women writing into express concern with a, I don't know what they saw, like a Peter Pan syndrome, in their husbands. And she slips him a 20 and he starts to give a very clear psychological breakdown and advice that that she can give , the people who write into her newspaper column.

It's great. 

[00:23:58] Ian: It's amazing. You ex you honestly, you think like he, it seems like the entire city runs off of Johnny's ine at that point. 

[00:24:08] Matthew: Clearly the most knowledgeable person in the entire city. 

[00:24:11] Ian: Exactly. 

[00:24:12] Matthew: And they never do identify a specific city. 

[00:24:17] Ian: No. 

[00:24:17] Matthew: They, they reference other cities, things happening nearby, and they talk about places like Chicago and maybe St.

Louis or Kansas City. You get the, the impression it's a, a Midwestern city of some kind, but they, yeah, they're very wisely. They, there's no reason to identify it. It's just the city as generic as their police department is. 

But yeah, Johnny the Snitch is great. And that's an example of a running joke. They keep coming back to it. Yes. But it's different every time. There are some things they do that I don't think qualify as running jokes. They're just repetition and that's not the same thing. 

[00:24:57] Ian: Oh yeah. Okay. So here's a question.

Do you think that Al is a running joke? The tall officer that's always doing something out, out of frame that's wrong with his uniform? 

[00:25:10] Matthew: Yeah. He's so tall that the frame always cuts him off at his shoulders. And I think Al is borderline, but probably he is the basis of a running joke because what they have to talk about is always different.

[00:25:24] Ian: that makes sense. 

[00:25:25] Matthew: They ask, , how'd you get that cut on your forehead? , only regulation headgear allowed Al you're out of uniform. So he, puts down on their desk the sombrero that apparently he had been wearing. 

[00:25:36] Ian: Exactly. 

[00:25:37] Matthew: So that, that I would say is, uh, is a running joke. 

[00:25:43] Ian: Okay.

[00:25:43] Matthew: On the other end, there's a a bit where Drebin and his boss are at a desk in headquarters and they're talking about something and they need a piece of information, and one of them leans forward towards the desk in the clear posture of, I'm speaking into an intercom on the telephone to, to ask somebody for something.

And, and then they, they cut to the reverse shot and you see that it is a little person in a police uniform that they're actually talking to. And he's just, they're leaning over because he's little and they're standing, he's standing next to the desk. 

[00:26:20] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:26:20] Matthew: And they do that same thing two or three times that I'd say mere repetition.

[00:26:26] Ian: There's absolutely other bits where. They'll do the repetition of form and even if the object changes and such, the, the call and response of it becomes, becomes the joke in the repetition coffee.

[00:26:40] Matthew: Yes, I know. 

[00:26:41] Ian: Exactly. 

[00:26:43] Matthew: And, and yet that they repeat Exactly. With cigarettes. At least twice 

[00:26:48] Ian: Exactly. 

[00:26:49] Matthew: And I wonder how much of that It's interesting because we had different writers across a lot of these episodes and different directors too. It's interesting to see. Who directed some of these. Some of these were directed by, Joe Dante, who went on to direct movies. It was one of these shows where some interesting directors got to experiment with this form, but I have to think that the Zuckers or others were behind the scenes, providing this, barrel of jokes for people to dip into as they wrote these.

And there are a few, we talk about running jokes. There are a few that just don't land very well, especially these days. There's

[00:27:25] Ian: oh yeah, 

[00:27:25] Matthew: The crime lab guy who Drebin always has to go and talk to, and , some things about that is a, even if it's just repetition, it's always funny where he walks from the lab over into the guy's office.

The scientist always goes through the door, and Drebin always goes around the edge of the set to get into the same office. Mm-hmm. But every time Drebin is going to see him, we see the crime lab examiner. He's in the lab talking to a little kid about very inappropriate things. 

[00:27:55] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:27:56] Matthew: We saw, we talked about that when we discussed Airplane.

It's, um, it was creepy at the time, but it seemed funnier. Now it just seems creepy. 

[00:28:05] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:28:07] Matthew: But it's another example of how they have to plug that in because it's part of the process, part of the procedure and the form that they're trying to stick to. 

[00:28:14] Ian: That format is simultaneously, we're, we're talking about how it helps them so much by giving them this, this structure to hang their comedy on.

And yet sometimes the structure of both the crime procedural and the comedy of the time are both weights bringing them down. 

The types of jokes they feel the need to always put in the, the repetition of certain types of scenarios that happen can even in six episodes become glaring.

[00:28:52] Matthew: And yet something about doing this in an episodic television form versus a movie like Airplane or naked Gun, each story is different enough. It gives some variety and it's, it's fun to see Leslie Nielsen just throw himself into these different kinds of stories. In one he is, the hostage negotiator type and all the jokes come from that.

In another, there's a gunfight in another, there's a knockdown drag out fist fight with some mobsters, and he gets to be the action guy. And of course, they throw in tons of visual jokes about that. And the one with the drug trafficking through the nightclub, he has to go undercover as a, an entertainer.

So he's the the comedy song and dance man 

[00:29:34] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:29:34] Matthew: On stage. And he just gets so into it. You almost get the feeling that, oh, this is what Frank Drebbin would like to be doing if he weren't a police officer. 

[00:29:43] Ian: Yes. 

[00:29:43] Matthew: And yet it's always clear at the end. No, I was just doing what the case required because it's my job to put these criminals away. 

[00:29:50] Ian: Every single time the reset to the end is exactly there. But you see so much delight in these characters. 

They don't just give that to Leslie Nielsen's, Frank Drebbin. There's other moments where the other characters get too invested. 

I'm thinking about how, , Norberg gets a little too into running the key making shop. 

[00:30:09] Matthew: Yes. Yeah. They go under, oh, 

[00:30:12] Ian: after undercover, 

[00:30:13] Matthew: they go undercover.

Opening a little locksmith shop, in the neighborhood that's been subject to a protection racket. Trying to flush out the mobsters. And Nordberg just gets so, like you say, he gets so into it. He wants to serve customers. He's figuring out how to gr specials. He's leaving the office because he's gotta deliver this new order.

We're in the black this week. It's great. 

[00:30:33] Ian: Exactly. It's like, wait a minute. This man has like, completely loved finding this new job.

[00:30:39] Matthew: And the guests, I, I wanna say guest stars, not the special guest stars who never make it past the credits, but the, the guest actors, they found actors who could kind of, for the most part, fit into this very well. And were able to play it straight with all the jokes. And they give a lot of the visual humor to, to some of them as well. 

They need to go talk to this ex-cons girlfriend who works at a gentleman's nightclub somewhere in the seedy part of town. But she's in her dressing room and she says, well, do you mind if I change?

She goes back behind a screen comes out. The only thing that's changed is her hair color. 

[00:31:18] Ian: Yes. 

[00:31:21] Matthew: And no one comments on it. It's just for us, the audience

[00:31:25] Ian: there. There's a lot of these wonderful little moments like that. I'm thinking in the same one. The person comes in five minutes, no, we're not performers, we're police. Okay, reaches over, grabs two uniforms, five minutes and is holding two police uniforms, implying that they have to go on stage now.

That sort of stuff. It's like everyone rolls with it. The world is just that weird for them, 

[00:31:49] Matthew: right? And every character you get the impression they're in their own world. It's a weird world. They have their own jobs to do.

And we could just, as with the Airplane, we could talk for a long time just about all the jokes that are thrown in here, but I think we're actually coming towards, Our final questions as we, we talk about what works and what does not work here. 

[00:32:11] Ian: I think we are, I mean, there's, there's an entire opening character that we've never talked about, anything that he does in the show, but 

[00:32:17] Matthew: Oh, 

[00:32:18] Ian: every single time.

I'm excited when we see him. 

[00:32:20] Matthew: Who's that 

[00:32:21] Ian: of the best member of Police Squad? Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln. 

[00:32:26] Matthew: Yeah. Yes. He's in the credits every single, every single episode because we have this, the credits are this montage of Frank Drebin getting to a crime scene and being shot at and shooting back, , his boss in police headquarters getting shot at and shooting back.

[00:32:47] Ian: Yep. And then, and then every single time it's, it's apparently professional Abraham Lincoln impersonator Rex Hamilton, in the theater. Getting his hat shot off, standing up and shooting back every time. And he's never in any episode. No, but he gets that intro every time and it's lovely. 

[00:33:10] Matthew: Yep. Even, uh, even the, the attempted Lincoln assassination is a gunfight in police squad.

[00:33:18] Ian: Oh goodness. That implies a weird alternate history. 

[00:33:21] Matthew: Oh, that's interesting, huh. Maybe that's where police squad takes place. An alternate history where 

[00:33:29] Ian: where Abraham Lincoln came to the theater strapped, 

[00:33:32] Matthew: he turns around and takes out Booth. 

[00:33:35] Ian: Exactly.

Ooh, 

[00:33:39] Matthew: Sic Semper criminal scum. 

[00:33:44] Ian: Yeah, I think we're coming to our final things. 

[00:33:47] Matthew: Yep. But first, if you're enjoying the Inter Millennium Media Project, first of all, thank you for listening. But if you'd like more of the IMMP, go to IMMProject.com, and that's where you will find links to all of our back episodes, more than seven years worth.

And also where you will find, , our Patreon, which is a great way both to support the podcast and to get bonus audio content. And you'll also, be able to support us on our store, if you like t-shirts and coffee mugs and things related to the podcast, and also related to some of the movies and TV shows that we've talked about.

And also at IMMProject.com, that's where you will find ways to contact us and we would love to hear from you, be it on our discord, , by email or our contact page. And you can also find us as, , IMMProject on Blue Sky and on Mastodon. Ian, where can people find you? 

[00:34:41] Ian: I can be found as ItemCrafting most places be that the currently under repair ItemCrafting.com or as ItemCraftingLive on Twitch.

I stream every Thursday playing games, building props. We're having a fine time and , we're coming up on being able to do our, big subscribers special where we're gonna hopefully soon being able to open up subscriptions on my Twitch, which means I'll be doing, some more interactive with the chat games.

[00:35:12] Matthew: I've enjoyed your last few streams. You've had, uh, a very interesting approach to Elder Scrolls Oblivion. 

[00:35:18] Ian: Ah, yes, the, I've been running around as a, honestly, it seems like something straight out of police squad. I'm playing oblivion, but with my character is an old lady named Delphina Felina and I am only using Melee.

[00:35:32] Matthew: Yeah, that does seem like a police squad character. 

[00:35:35] Ian: Old lady punches her way through all of oblivion. Yeah.

Uh, how about you, dad? 

[00:35:43] Matthew: Well, you can find me at ByMatthewPorter.com and that's where you'll find links to whatever else I'm doing, like the Drafthouse Diary video series on YouTube where I review every one of my visits to an Alamo Drafthouse movie.

And also, you will find information about the book that I've got coming out. Questions for the Dead. A, a psychic mystery. Uh, detective story appropriate for this episode, you'll find more information about the book on ByMatthewPorter.com. And also you can subscribe to my newsletter, which is one of the best ways to keep track of what I've got going on. Any new things coming out about the book. And pre-orders for that book should open soon so you'll find all of that information on ByMatthewPorter.com 

so we've watched all six episodes of Police Squad, we binged this and it is a TV series.

So our first question is, binge or no binge.

[00:36:43] Ian: I'm actually gonna say start with a single episode if you like it. Binge. It's fine if you don't, because this is, as a comedy thing, comedy is much more subjective. The, the role, the, the role of a comedian is not to make everything funny. It's to find to the point where what a lot of different people find funny overlap the most.

And this is really good at that for certain pieces. But if it's not, if it doesn't land for you, it's never gonna land for you. And that's why I am like, I want to say binge, but I have to preface the fact that it's never gonna be everyone's cup of tea or coffee. 

[00:37:31] Matthew: I am gonna say, I'm gonna say special binge.

[00:37:38] Ian: Oh, 

[00:37:39] Matthew: I am gonna say binge. And of course if you watch one and it's not your thing, of course stop there. But I am going to suggest binge. Not a real binge, because I think you should watch every episode of this one per year, more or less. 

[00:37:56] Ian: Oh wow. 

[00:37:57] Matthew: Pick a day, you know, Thanksgiving, boxing Day in New Year's, or yeah, every six months, whatever.

But pick something and watch an episode with a big gap in between, because you're gonna appreciate them more. I think one of the problems here was not just the repetition that you could, that became obvious if you were watching this on TV week after week, but also just the style of humor, getting back into it, spending just 20 minutes there and then getting back out, and then having to come back the week after.

There was a certain fatigue there and you had the, yeah, the effort of getting into it without the surprise, because you had just seen the same thing last week. If you watched this once a year. I think the surprise of the style of humor is going to be more fun. The repetition of some of the jokes is gonna be less obvious and you can enjoy them all over again.

So I'm gonna say, you pick a police squad holiday and once a year watch an episode of this, and in six years you'll have seen the whole thing and you can decide if that's enough or you wanna move on to the movies, or you wanna start again because you forgot what you watched seven years ago. 

[00:39:09] Ian: That's a very great way to watch this.

I like it. And yeah, you know that, that gives you this interesting time where I'm a little worried a years too long, but I'm absolutely with you that having this, as that treat you can go to every once in a while would be really good. 

[00:39:26] Matthew: Yeah. Make this a, an Equinox celebration. 

[00:39:30] Ian: When the day and the night are the equal size, you can watch something where the comedy and the detective are the equal sizing. 

[00:39:35] Matthew: That's right. 

[00:39:36] Ian: So that leads to our next question though, which is revive, reboot, or rest in peace. Now we've acknowledged the fact that this six episode canceled TV series did turn into three, acclaimed movies or at least, you know, two and a third. Uh, but

that evolution, I don't know how one, how does one really calculate that? Because this show isn't linear, it's not a narrative in the same way. So those three movies are really just like. Extra long episodes. 

[00:40:20] Matthew: It's interesting that this experimental, not terribly successful TV show turned into a movie franchise.

There were three movies starring Leslie Nielsen, and then the franchise got a reboot just last year. 

[00:40:35] Ian: Yes. Which actually you can see are a review of, from the two of us on the draft test diary on, my dad's amazing YouTube channel. 

[00:40:43] Matthew: Yeah. I'll put a link to that in show notes. . 

You're dealing with such a different form with feature film versus, television. 'cause in television there was a specific kind of TV that they were referencing and they were replicating in this shortened comedy format and movies. There weren't quite the same. There were, there were of course detective movies.

But they weren't quite the same form. And it's, it's without delving into those movies too much, I wonder if one of the reasons it worked better as a movie was the difference in form. You pointed out the difference in attention that audiences have in a movie, but yes, it was more focused in the same way that Airplane was focused on a particular genre, a particular style, and a particular, uh, structure of a movie.

[00:41:31] Ian: Yeah.

I, I'm leaning towards saying revive because the 2025 movie revival showed that the comedy stylings are still popular enough to maybe get interest, but honestly the format wasn't as great. And I look at Police Squad and say Police Squad could do better. I think you do this as a short bursts special show on a streaming platform or something nowadays, and you could do really well.

Don't make full seasons, do four episodes. Give us one of those every, every other year even. And it's a fine, fine thing, not enough that you get overdo, you get overwhelmed with it, but enough to let actors have fun with it. 

[00:42:32] Matthew: That's 

[00:42:32] Ian: interesting. I think you've got something there. And I will say, I know the format is still popular enough.

'cause I see comedy like this online plenty. 

[00:42:41] Matthew: Hmm. 

[00:42:41] Ian: And so part of me says that if I, if, if the answer is rest in peace, it's out there again. There is an episode of, a YouTube comedy show from the, production group Loading Ready Run. It's called The Missing Card. It's part of their Friday Nights series, which is them doing a, a little sitcom about playing magic gathering.

They did an entire episode, which is just a love letter to police squad. And it is exactly formatted like this, and that tells me the audience is still there, but the, the comedy is still there. People are still making this. But if you wanna make an actual police squad with a backing of a studio level of power behind it, I think there's something possible here 

[00:43:27] Matthew: that is interesting to see how this and the other Zucker Abrams Zucker comedy influenced comedians doing different things with it a generation or two later.

But sometimes, as you say, coming back to kind of pay homage to it in something like that Friday Nights episode. And I kind of, I want to say revive because I know there are things you can do with this, and yet making more of them as throwbacks to sixties and seventies cop shows doesn't necessarily make sense.

It's not a relevant reference anymore. And that's something that the 2025 movie did that was interesting in that even the, the Naked Gun movies, they were still of , the stalwart good guy detective kind of genre and the kind of role that Leslie Nielsen was so good at playing Straight and Parodying the 2025 Police Squad was much more a parody of the Dirty Harry kind of cop movie.

[00:44:28] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:44:29] Matthew: Where he's a cop who has to break the rules to bring in the bad guys. 

[00:44:35] Ian: Okay, so can you gonna have to turn the show into a verb here? Can you police squad NCIS? 

[00:44:45] Matthew: Maybe you can. That's a great, because I was going to ask you, is there another kind of. Police TV show that you could use this style on Other than the mm-hmm.

The seventies cop shows and the gritty seventies Dirty Harry movies. Maybe that's the answer. Some kind of a high tech Yeah. Police investigation. Police, police procedural. Yeah. Using computer hacking and using crime scene investigation techniques and all of that. Mm-hmm. 

[00:45:15] Ian: Yeah. CSI, NCIS is the format and the framework.

You could even do a little bit of fun with, criminal minds and that kind of styling. 

[00:45:26] Matthew: Oh, the, uh, the, the psychological profiler. 

[00:45:30] Ian: Yeah. 

And I could see them having fun with, modern setups and changes where, someone has to go undercover into an eSports tournament because there's some sort of a financial fraud happening and you wind up just having, and I'm trying to also figure, I, I, I think I described who I keep on imagining as our modern version of Leslie Nielsen in our Airplane episode.

But I'm gonna go back to it again.

I keep thinking Chris Evans could do this for some reason, but I'm just imagining Chris Evans playing our, our Frank Drebin kind of style character, aiming that little bit younger to, you know, actor wise to be able to have the, you know, I'm a. I'm a detective on the force kind of attitude, but watching Chris Evans like, I'm gonna have to go undercover into this group and putting on like the pink cat ear gamer headset, grabbing a controller to try to figure out what's going on in this fraud ring could, that's the sort of visual setup my mind jumps to as the comedy that's still workable.

[00:46:33] Matthew: Yeah. Having seen some of his range, including things like, uh, a Deadpool and Wolverine. Yes. And even in, uh, knives Out, I could see that working with Chris Evans. Yeah. I think, I think that Liam Neeson was a good choice for last year's Naked Gun movie, and he mm-hmm. He, he was able to play that kind of thing straight and dark in a way that worked for the comedy.

But I think one movie's about all I need of that. I think Chris Evans as another, uh, police squad detective could be a lot of fun. 

[00:47:08] Ian: Yeah. And that's the thing. He, uh, you know, Liam Neeson was very much playing. Playing off of the older Leslie Nielsen in the naked gun films. 

[00:47:18] Matthew: Yes, 

[00:47:19] Ian: we need someone who is, who has had that action range, who has had that leading man style and is willing to be funny and solid about it, and let them, have, four episodes every 18 months of silly formulaic in the right kinda way.

Let them run jokes, let you have cameos of celebrities if you want. Put in bits, play with the modern stuff. It's a, it's a chance to acknowledge the popular culture you're a part of and make fun of it without being rude. 

[00:48:04] Matthew: I like that idea of essentially using some center like Chris Evans. But then you draw upon that generation of franchise movie actors to parody what they've been doing. 

[00:48:19] Ian: You wanna play off the fact that it's hard to keep, uh, the entire cast there.

The first episode, every single one of these four episode seasons is him showing up at a department. The last of the four, every seasons is his, him getting transferred to a new de, to a new precinct. And you have the idea of like. There is 72 precincts in here and he is going between every single one because he keeps on solving cases and moving around.

[00:48:50] Matthew: Another option could be that you Darren him and he's got a sidekick, and the sidekick is played by somebody completely different every single episode, and nobody acknowledges that 

[00:49:02] Ian: you could. That would be good. I think there is one other show I've gotta acknowledge while we're looking at Police squad because there is something of a, of a similarity here that I can't avoid, which is there's something, police squad to, Brooklyn Nine Nine, but Brooklyn Nine Nine went in a very different direction.

It's like a branching Pokemon evolution almost, where it's like comedy police, police procedural that cares about still solving the crime at the end of the episode. And then branch from there. One is standup comedy, one is sitcom comedy. 

[00:49:44] Matthew: Yeah. 

[00:49:45] Ian: But they both come from that same seed and core. The problem arrives if you ever land in the middle and don't lean fully in one direction or the other.

I think 

[00:49:56] Matthew: that's right. There's something about Brooklyn Nine Nine where even when it got really weird, it was still able to make this real to the characters. They have this absurd treasure hunt every Halloween and it's, it's ridiculous and yet it's real to the characters and they play it straight. Not in a deadpan humor, but in a, this is what we do, uh, kind of way.

So you're right, you've gotta pick one side of that or the other. But we wouldn't, I don't know that we would have things like Brooklyn Nine Nine if we hadn't had police squad before. '

[00:50:29] Ian: cause police squad and some earlier comedy stuff definitely broke the. The shell of respect and protection around that procedural style and made it a playground where comedy can play.

So yeah, there's, there's definitely a, some kind of relation in here. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that there were people on the Brooklyn Nine Nine writing team that were fans of Police Squad. 

[00:50:58] Matthew: I would bet. Yeah. 

And it was fun showing you this because I really hadn't seen, I've seen the movies, or at least two of them, but I hadn't seen any of the TV show maybe since I watched it when it was broadcast and I was in, in your take. But I really didn't know how it was gonna hold up for me. And it was, it was an interesting mixed bag in that I really enjoyed.

Yeah. Some pieces of it. By the fourth or fifth episode, I was thinking, you're telling this joke again. It's, you know, but then I was watching them over the course of two nights, which is more compressed even than it was when it was broadcast. 

[00:51:32] Ian: I split it up over the course of an entire week where it was, I come home, I am going to chop some veggies to make some dinner, pop it in the oven, and I'll sit back and I'll watch this while keeping an eye on the oven is kind of how I did this each time.

And it fit very well as that, you know, evening viewing, but one, maybe two a night is all I did. And that worked pretty well. It definitely needs some space, right? You need to decant your police squad and let it air out a little or else. You're not going to get all of the, the tannins, I guess. Um, so yeah, it, it, not everything lands, but this kind of comedy is always, if you didn't like the joke.

Two more have happened before by the time you're done. 

[00:52:20] Matthew: Yes. 

[00:52:22] Ian: Although this was a little bit slower, I'll say it wasn't quite as rapid fire. 

[00:52:27] Matthew: You're right. In that it somehow, even within these 22 minute episodes, it was able to convey some of the pacing of a sixties or early seventies TV show, which was not a very fast pace.

And that mm-hmm. Tempered how fast, how quickly the jokes came compared to some of the movies compared to Airplane. And yet, you're right. Even with that, if you didn't like this joke, there's another one by that, by the time you realize it. 

[00:52:54] Ian: Exactly.

[00:52:58] Matthew: And speaking of the movies, um, technically the Naked Gun movies are out of bounds for the podcast because they came out much later in the eighties. 

[00:53:10] Ian: Ah, 

[00:53:10] Matthew: but I think that we might find a way to talk about these. This might become a, uh, a bonus episode on Patreon sometime in the future. So we may wind up talking about more police squad at some point.

[00:53:22] Ian: Aha. So if, especially if you're on the Patreon, keep a ear out for that 

[00:53:29] Matthew: and you can go over there. You can join the Patreon for free just to keep track of what we're doing. you can join at, uh, $3 a month to start getting bonus audio content, or you can join at the movie club level and get a mystery DVD in the mail every few months.

[00:53:43] Ian: Physical media, people, physical media? But, 

[00:53:48] Matthew: uh, this is going to be the end of our special tribute to Leslie Nielsen, who would have turned 100 this month. 

[00:53:57] Ian: Oh my goodness. 

[00:53:57] Matthew: If you're listening to this in February of 2026. 

[00:54:01] Ian: Yeah. 

[00:54:02] Matthew: And he was a fun person to watch, be it in serious things like. Forbidden Planet or some of the police detective movies and things that he made, or in the comedy that he's known for by, uh, by another generation like Airplane and Police Squad.

[00:54:19] Ian: An impact regardless of when.

[00:54:21] Matthew: But the podcast continues and we've got another special episode coming up in a couple of weeks. Looking forward to sharing that with you. Quite a special 

[00:54:28] Ian: one. Absolutely. 

[00:54:30] Matthew: So we hope you'll join us for that, when that comes around. 

[00:54:35] Ian: In the meantime, go find something new to watch.