Dragnet 1967 (TV Series) The Big Shipment (1967) User Reviews

Pretty good.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 19 November 2009]

While this episode of "Dragnet" doesn't have wonderful one-liners from Joe Friday nor does it have memorably goofy characters, I really like it because it shows how good police work can nab a whole gang of criminals--starting at the bottom of the chain and working your way up to the top man.

"The Big Shipment" begins at the end of Friday and Gannon's shift. After a long and unsuccessful stakeout, a break occurs when a small plane crashes. Oddly, the pilot runs off--leading the police to wonder if perhaps this was being flown by a drug courier. And, upon investigating they find it is filled with marijuana and heroin. So, the first order of business is tracking down the pilot. This consists of following a few dead leads and lots of knocking on doors...at 1:45am! Eventually, they catch the guy...who, in turn leads them to his contacts. Eventually, the detectives are able to catch these two crooks as well. Oddly, one pretends to be deaf--though Friday quickly sees through the ruse. And, when they break, the path leads right to Mr. Big.

This is just a great example of determined police work and what it often takes to crack a case. Nothing all that dramatic or amazing...just lots of legwork.

They'll kill me If I talk! They'll kill you if you don't!

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 4 February 2012]

(Spoilers) Sgt. Joe Friday,Jack Webb, and his partner Officer Bll Gannon, Harry Morgan, are put on the case of a crashed airplane that was loaded with 150 pounds of pot and an envelope filled with heroin worth as much as $250,000.00. The trick to catch those behind this haul from across the Mexican border is to keep it from the news in order to have the pick up men Peter Witner & Wallace Shankin, Jon Sabastian & Julian Burton, think that the plane and it's cargo landed safely.

While all this is going on Friday & Gannon track down the plane's pilot who happened to be the one legged Vietnam veteran Jerry Frank,Frank Vincent, who called in the crash to the newspapers.That's in order for him to cover his behind if his boss Mexican drug kingpin Sal Remaro suspects Frank in taking off with the drugs. It doesn't take long for Friday & Gannon to track down Frank and get him to talk. It's at the drop site in the Hollywood Hills that there's a stake out that leads to the pick-up mens Wltmer & Shanklin arrest.

***SPOILERS*** Funny scene in the police station with Wltmar claiming that his partner Shankin is a dummy,he can't talk or hear,in order to get him off by claiming he had no idea what he was doing. This all backfired on the two with Friday seeing through their act and getting Shanklin to open up and expose the whole crazy venture as well as the person behind it crime boss Sal Romaro.

Dragnet 1968: The Big Shipment

[Scarecrow-88 · 6/10 · 18 December 2011]

Routine, by-the-numbers drug bust episode of Dragnet 1968 where Sgt Friday and partner Bill Gannon (Jack Webb and Harry Morgan) are part of a narcotics sting operation, hoping to thwart major drug supplier Sal Moreno and his network, transporting/importing heroine into Los Angeles. A young Lorraine Gary of Jaws fame has a minor part as the wife of the one-legged ex-Nam pilot who could be the drug transporter. The case does show the tedious nature and frustrating hurdles that exist (long stakeouts, having to go door-to-door, constantly running into roadblocks), but also allows us to see how one break can topple dominoes leading to the Big Dog the police is specifically targeting. Nothing remarkable, but follows a case from its doldrums to the huge breakthrough that sets in motion the collapse of a major drug operation. The idea of two crooks to have one of them as a deaf-and-dumb mute was rather hilarious, not fooling Friday a bit.

He thought the deaf mute should have talked

[FlushingCaps · 7/10 · 9 March 2021]

This episode had a bit more action than most. At the end of a night shift, about midnight, Joe and Bill are called to the scene of a small airplane crash, one where the pilot was seen limping away from the plane. Inside was a boatload of marijuana and an envelope with a couple of packets of heroin, said to be worth over $100,000.

They want to try to find not just the pilot, but whoever he was working for. Before leaving the scene, Joe deals with a small group of reporters, who agree to give him 6 hours before printing anything about the plane crash. Friday's scheme is to make the guy who hired the pilot believe his man ran out on him. If the crash is known, the plan won't work.

Bill and Joe have to go around waking a few folks up, trying to track down the pilot. When they finally get to him they see that he has an artificial leg, his limp was not related to the crash, and he tells what he was to do with the drugs-hide them behind a rock with "some writing on it." On being asked what, he says, "Jesus saves." I thought it odd that he would say "some writing" as if he paid no attention and didn't remember what it said.

With two other teams, Friday and Gannon take the drugs and plant them behind that rock and wait. Presently two men pull up and load them into their vehicle and are busted. One of the two tells Friday he's wasting his time giving the rights to his partner-he's deaf and dumb. Back at the station, Friday interrogates the men and on searching the so called deaf-and-dumb man finds a receipt for two musical records in his wallet. He asks, sarcastically, "Now what do you do, Shanklin -sit there and watch the labels go around?"

This gets the man to fess up that he was only pretending he couldn't speak or hear. He tells who the big boss is. His partner inadvertently gets off the best line in the show, at least, the most humorous, telling Shanklin, "You just didn't think!...Why didn't you tell him you bought the records for a friend?"

The one thing that seemed dumb to me involved the packets of heroin. I understand the grass was in large packages, but the H was all in a small envelope. If I had been the pilot I wouldn't have left stuff worth over $100,000 behind when I walked away. Anyone could have come up and easily stolen it before I returned and the boss would then accuse me of stealing it for my own benefit.

I liked this episode because only a small portion was set in the station interrogating suspects. Our guys were going around to different addresses and then had a short stakeout. If it did nothing else, it taught us that the term "mule" for someone transporting drugs across the border was used as early as 1967. I give it a solid 7.

Where's the Lecture, Joe? Where's the Outrage?

[darryl-tahirali · 7/10 · 27 April 2023]

Another drug episode on "Dragnet," and this time there are some fairly big fish involved. After trying unsuccessfully to bust a local heroin dealer named Sal Romero (Daniel Nunez), Sergeant Joe Friday, toking on his drug of choice, a cigarette, and Officer Bill Gannon are reporting their efforts to Captain Al Trembly (Clark Howat) when he dispatches them to the Van Nuys crash site of a small plane with 150 pounds of marijuana aboard. When they get to the site, they learn that the pilot limped away, and inspecting the cargo inside the Cessna 140, they discover an envelope containing heroin packets worth an estimated $100,000.

Big contraband stakes in the San Fernando Valley as "The Big Shipment" finds Friday and Gannon setting out in the middle of the night to track down the pilot and to whom he was supposed to deliver the drugs. David Vowell's taut, (mostly) credible script steers the pair down the unenviable path of knocking on doors in the dead of night, with the urgency being, according to the (convenient) instructions on the heroin envelope that call for a 5 AM pickup but specify only "the same place as last time" as the pickup location, the opportunity to bust a big fish provided they can discern where that "same place as last time" is. (We also learn that Gannon can at least read Spanish since that is the language of the writing.)

As "Dragnet" is the epitome of the police procedural, we see Friday and Gannon, having talked to the owner of the rented Cessna (Stephen Dunne) and, after some sleuthing and deducing, the estranged wife (Lorraine Gary) of the man who rented it, bust in on Jerry Frank (Fred Vincent), a Vietnam vet who lost a leg in the war (thus the prosthetic leg and the limp) and who runs drugs for the thrill of it (along with the money, presumably)--and who now might receive the thrill of being killed by his connection for not delivering the very expensive goods. So, of course, he divulges where he was supposed to leave the drugs for the pickup.

What follows is the bust that snares the pair (Julian Burton, John Sebastian (the actor, not the musician)) making the pickup, which spirals into a serio-comic conclusion, capped by a hilarious line by Jack Webb, that tests the promise of a "true story" with its seeming absurdity, but truth can be stranger than fiction, and criminals are known to try the strangest things sometimes. You just might not look at the label on an LP record the same way again.

But what doesn't follow is this: Webb's biggest bugbear are illegal drugs. "The Big Shipment" has an entire planeload of drugs, enough to immobilize a few city blocks of crazed addicts at least--and where is Joe Friday's outrage? Where is the icy, caustic lecture about destroying the morals of the nation?

These guys are facilitating the corruption of impressionable youths on a grand scale, and not one scathing word from Friday, not one cutting remark, not even a reference to the gateway drug theory that "sooner or later, one of those kids high on reefer is going to get curious about that white powder, and the next thing you know, he's bought himself a hundred dollar a day horse habit--and, Mister, you're the one who helped him buy it and maybe even his overdose death," followed by that four-note musical curtain ringing down around the perp.

(Recite to the cadence of the "Dragnet" "gotcha" tune): "Where's the outrage? Where's the outrage, Joe?"

REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?

If God Had Meant Man To Fly . . .

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 7 April 2012]

An enjoyable trifle. A small plane has crash landed in the hills, and the police find the pilot has fled, leaving behind his cargo of tens of thousands of dollars worth of grass and heroin.

The newspaper boys are all over it and Friday begs them to hold the story for several hours. The reasoning is that the pilot can still be found. He was seen limping away from the crash and can't have gone far. But he's in danger from the organization that hired him. Right now, the mob is waiting to hear from him. When they don't, they'll figure the pilot ran off with the cargo on his own -- unless the media reveal that the cargo was lost. So if the reporters hold the story, the pilot still has a few hours to cooperate with the cops in order to save his life. It's a question of who will reach the pilot first -- the cops or the mob.

What adds interest is the time pressure. Friday and Gannon have only twelve hours to locate an unknown person and talk him into spilling the beans. The clock ticks during wasteful stakeouts and helpful leads.

Nothing makes this episode stand out. It's typical for the series -- engaging, not boring, not talky, and reassuring in its adherence to standards of conduct now thought of as dated. It's like watching "Alice in Wonderland." You want a realistic picture of life on the LAPD at this time? See "L.A. Confidential."