Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "The Big Press" 6/15/50

Women are getting mugged and beaten by the same two guys. Friday is tasked with catching them.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "The Big Mailman" 5/24/51

Someone is stealing checks out of people's mailboxes.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "The Big Dog" 11/16/54

My dog "Sherlock" when I discovered that 

Spongebob Squarepants is his natural prey

Sgt. Friday responds to a report of a man with a shotgun waiting to shoot someone. What follows is the stand-off with that man, mixed together with a study of why men and dogs love each other.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "The Big Streetcar" 4/3/52

A woman shoots her husband and then goes on the lam. The sound of a streetcar bell over the phone might be the clue needed to find her.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "Big Pill" 10/19/52

A couple of Marines on leave are slipped a rather deadly mickey. Friday and Smith work to find out who did the slipping.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "The Big Speech" 4/19/51

Friday and his partner are assigned to catch a young and violent thief who is stealing narcortics from doctor offices.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "The Big In-Laws" 8/3/51

Friday and Romero are assigned to catch a gang of truck hijackers. A nagging mother-in-law turns out to be the key to the case. 

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "The Big Mailman" 5/24/51

Friday and Ramirez are working on the forgery squad, trying to run down a guy who is stealing checks out of mailboxes.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet "Myra the Readhead" 9/1/49

Several hundred cars in L.A. have been broken into recently. The leader of the gang responsible for this is soon tentatively identified, but she proves very hard to find.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Dragnet: "Big Crazy" 8/30/51

A woman disappears and her husband hints that he murdered her while bragging about having been an abusive husband. But his neighbors all agree that he had been a hen-pecked milquetoast. So the detectives have a mentally unstable suspect for a murder that might not have been committed.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "Jade Thumb Rings" 12/8/1949

The only witness to a brutal mugging is a six-year-old with an over-active imagination.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "The Big Quack" 10/12/50

Friday goes after a "doctor" who splits his time between offering fake degrees in psychology and simply robbing his students.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: The Big Sorrow  12/27/51

This is the episode broadcast after Barton Yarborough, who had played Friday's partner Ben Romero, died suddenly. The character died with the actor--in the episode, Friday must deal with his partner's unexpected death from a heart attack while tracking down a pair of dangerous crooks.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "The Big Cast" 2/8/51

A missing man has likely been murdered. Friday and Romero arrest their prime subject. The bulk of this fascinating and intense episode is the two cops interviewing the suspect and gradually getting a confession out of him.

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About a year later, the same episode was remade for the TV version. By that time, Barton Yarborough (who played Romero) had died, so Friday's partner in this version is Ed Jacobs (played by Barney Phillips).  The script, with very minor differences, is pretty much the same. What makes the already excellent episode stand out is Lee Marvin playing the suspect.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "The Big Escape" 1/5/50

An old friend of Joe Friday is doing time for armed robbery. Convinced the friend has earned another chance, Friday helps line up a job on a low-security prison farm. Only time will tell if this is a good idea.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "The Helen Corday Murder" 7/7/49

A young lady is murdered. The crime scene yields a few weak clues. A lot of leg work and an intense third-degree with a suspect is needed to nail the killer.


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Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "Big Actor" 8/10/15

Someone steals narcotics from a Catholic hospital. A scene involving the interrogation of an addict who has no idea what city he lives in is particularly good. So is the part in which Friday & Romero question a subject on a movie set--a brief scene of a cop movie is being shot and the cops have to pause every few seconds while another take is filmed.

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The link for today's episode should take you directly to Archive.org, where downloading it should be much easier than the file-sharing service I've been using. Someone please let me know via a comment if it works okay.

Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "Big Shot" 9/21/52

A business is robbed and the manager is killed. Circumstances indicate it might have been an inside job, so Friday and Smith begin tracking down former employees.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "Eric Kelby" 9/3/49

A man reports his wife is missing, but the evidence soon begins to point towards murder.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Dragnet: "The Big Trio" 7/3/52

Friday and Smith investigate a trio of traffic accidents during the busy July 4 weekend. This episode is a great example of how effectively Jack Webb's matter-of-fact storytelling style could generate real emotion--and how this style could let the show sometimes get preachy while still being sincere and effective.


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