222: The Police Squad Episode

[00:00:25] Hello everybody, welcome to Anime Sickos, it's the podcast for geniuses and the only podcast where we take a look at the four pillars of modern misery, anime, gaming, posting, and a jobs. I'm Tom and Anime Sicko. I'm Joe and Anime Sicko. We have two patrons and then we're gonna talk about fucking Police Squad, the show that's funny. Top line review of Police Squad is this shit's got jokes.

[00:00:55] It's the show? That's funny. Our first new patron has given us euros, so this is gonna absolutely like balloon in relative value. We need these. Does this euro person have friends that also have euros? Perhaps. They didn't mention it. If the answer was yes, what would your next move be? Give us those. I don't know if you saw the news about the dollar. We need to start making friends. We need a basket of currencies.

[00:01:26] We do. One thing that rules about living in the Imperial Core is that you become used to the luxuries. You become a soft man who needs them. Anyway, this euro giver is Vesper 13. Thank you. Thank you, Vesper. Remember? That's James Bond's friend. I guess that's a... That's putting it, I guess, lightly. James Bond's friend.

[00:01:54] If you know James Bond, he's rich. He's got heroes. Wait, no, he's... He's got heroes in every tux, man. He's British. He's Brexited. He's in the same fucking boat as us. Well, never mind. We're doomed then. I thought we had our way out with James Bond. Yeah, James Bond can't leave the UK now because of Brexit. That's how it happened. No more adventures. Nigel Farage is like, no more...

[00:02:20] Like, you can't go stop Bullfeld's doomsday device, Bond. You have to make sure that the fucking immigrants don't come in. And you can't bang a babe, either. Yeah, because of woke. Our other patron is Ian S. Thank you, Ian. Thank you, Ian. We appreciate your delicious donation. That's just normal U.S. dollars, because that's going to be absolutely worthless come a month from now. Those are bottle caps. Yeah. Bottle caps is fun.

[00:02:49] I like how the Red Star Sarsaparilla bottle caps is special, and then a strange man walks up to you and asks you about them. That's the funniest part of any Fallout game, is when a strange man shows up inexplicably. If you don't take the strange... What's the perk that's like weird guy follows you and sometimes blows away? I'm pretty sure it's Mysterious Stranger. It's really funny when you're fighting like a crab,

[00:03:18] and he shows up. It's like, ah, finally, chance to blow away a crab. Mysterious Stranger, yep. It's so funny, because you can see from a sort of gameplay perspective why it is fun in an RPG to have a bonus that's like every once in a while totally random at a very low percentage. You'll just do insane fucking damage and go nutty on a just out-of-the-blue moonshot move.

[00:03:47] And yes, from a mechanical perspective, yeah, it's a great perk. A lot of people are going to want to take that, because it's free. You don't need to worry about anything every once in a while. You're just like, oh shit, I win, I guess. But it takes a real big brain to have that manifest as a weird... A guy shows up. There's just a second dude who's like, hello, blammo. Oh, doesn't it make like the proto-man sound or something? There's like a mysterious guy's here sound. Oh, maybe. Been too long.

[00:04:16] It's probably a harmonica. If it's not, it should be. Anyway, we're here to talk about the show that's funny, Police Squad. Here's the thing about Police Squad. You might have known about these movies called The Naked Gun, starring Leslie Nielsen, where he plays a goofy cop and a bunch of silly stuff happens. These movies were very successful. I loved them as a child, and I thought that they were just movies. I thought they were invented for movies.

[00:04:47] No. No, there's like fate zero for this. So Police Squad is actually something I've told Tom to watch for a while. I was like, you should really watch it. And you're like, I don't know. I've seen the Naked Gun movies. And that's fair. But there's, even though the Naked Gun movies came after this, which on paper means that they're just more informed as far as like, they're funnier. You've made more stuff. You know how to make stuff better.

[00:05:16] Like you have a sort of sense. You know how to hang jokes and everything. The thing is, Police Squad was the first thing, and it was fucking perfect. It was only six episodes. These are just heaters. There's six heaters. It doesn't stop. It is at 30 rock pace. And I mean that sincerely because like, I think the thing that makes it feel contemporary is not so much the references because it's not, although you get them. At least we do because kind of.

[00:05:44] I mean, there hardly are any references. It's all puns and visual gaze, which we'll get to. But like that, in that way, it is very timeless. There are very few references to contemporary culture in Police Squad. But just in the first episode, I will provide a counter example, which is when they are trying to alleviate the sadness of the widow, and they're trying to come up. What are we going to tell the kids? You know how their dad has gone.

[00:06:11] And the suggestion is tell them he was traded to the Cubs for Reggie Jackson. Well, okay. Yes, I guess that's technically a reference. But they also say, and they continue offering options for what to tell the kids, even after the conversation has moved on. One of the options is tell him a big monster took him to daddy heaven, which I was just saying to myself. Anyway, no, Police Squad. This is a TV show.

[00:06:40] This was where The Naked Gun came from. The Naked Gun was basically just a movie-length episode of Police Squad. And Joe mentioned it's only six episodes, which makes you think, was this on the BBC? No, this was an American show. The issue was we live in like a hell world. They didn't tell anyone about it, right? Well, I wasn't there to see the marketing campaign. But what I did see in my brief research was apparently a big reason

[00:07:08] why it didn't catch on was it's too good at the joke, which is to say people turned it on, saw like five seconds of it, said this is just a normal police procedural. I've seen so many of those. I'm going to watch something more original. And it sucks because the way the joke works is that everyone plays it so normal.

[00:07:36] Everything is structured exactly like a normal police procedural. Leslie Nielsen, I mean, if you've seen any of his spoof movies, you know that his deal is that he plays it like a pro-veteran character actor who's just doing a genre, like, cop role. He's not making it silly. He's not doing a funny face. He's never told the joke. 100%. Yes. On the level. Ah, God.

[00:08:04] The thing that truly kills me is that apparently it was canceled after only four of the episodes had aired. They eventually all did. But just, like, imagine having seen the first four episodes of Police Squad and be like, we don't need any more of this. It's unthinkable and a real crime. How many more are there? Two. Canon. I think it came out in the right order, at least. Like, unlike the Clerks cartoon, which I think only had six episodes,

[00:08:32] came out in the wrong order, which hurt reception. This, because it's a genre spoof, it doesn't really matter what order you watch these episodes in. Although I feel like watching them in order lets you enjoy the iteration and escalation of all these, like, continuous running gags. They're just, it's just wonderful stuff. So this is a great point. And I think, so, the key thing was, you know,

[00:09:02] as Joe said, I had hesitated in watching Police Squad. And you might think, like, listeners be like, Tom is this cruel denier who's constantly saying no to the show Joe's watched. You only know that because I'm the only one who ever eventually watches the shows and allows episodes to be made. The number of times this happens in reverse and Joe never watches the show is more numerous than the grains of sand on the beach. This speaks to the quality of severance.

[00:09:31] Continue, Tom. So I hesitated because I'm like, I saw the Naked Gun movies. I thought they were really funny. It's just gonna be more of that. Like, it's gonna be the same. And, like, it's gonna be good, but, like, I know, I get what, I know what I'm gonna get. I was wrong. As good as the Naked Gun movies are, and they are, they're very funny and they were rightly hits, Police Squad, it should be a 22-minute show because, one, there are two reasons, two main reasons.

[00:10:00] One, this kind of humor is so relentless that it can be exhausting. And if it's just, you just get a 22-minute bit of it, it does not get exhausting. It's much easier to handle in these small doses. Two, because it is a series, as Joe said, there can be running gags that just every single episode, we get the same joke again, but the punchline's different.

[00:10:29] And you might think, oh, is that lazy? No, bitch, laziness does not exist. Haven't you read Devin Price's hit book? Also, the proof is in the fucking pudding. It's not lazy if it works, and boy does it ever. And also, if you've done any comedy in your life, even a little bit of amateur comedy writing, you know that this type of thing is irresistible. If you have a truly delicious runner

[00:10:56] that could take endless alternates, imagine going into work, and it's just like, all right, today we're gonna think up ways that we can riff on the freeze frame and gag. Would that not be the best day of your life? I would do very well at such a job. My performance review would be insane. I would just, I would exceed expectations every time.

[00:11:26] Yes, yes. Folks, you have not seen the behind-the-scenes sort of sicko writing process. You've seen the results. But that is Joe's sort of like signature move. Like when he hits his ultimate, it's like come up with variations on a theme. He would absolutely blow the roof off. So let's talk about some of these runners. Obviously, I mentioned the freeze frame end card gag. Obviously, in these old shows, they would catch the perp, they'd be back in the station,

[00:11:55] and they'd say a pithy one-liner. Let's see how much you like doing that at Statesville Prison. Ha ha ha. And then they would freeze frame, and then the credits would roll over that freeze frame. Well, the nut of the gag is that it is not actually a freeze frame. They have just stood still and are standing still for like a full minute while the credits roll. And there's always some sort of twist. Like, and someone's not. Someone is not frozen. Usually it's like the perp, and he's like, oh, I can just leave? Okay.

[00:12:24] And then it's just him like pantomiming around all these frozen people. At one point, there's a chimp in a suit that's just wrecking a desk. The best one, I think, is from the last episode where their partner, Nordberg, who was later recast as O.J. Simpson for the movies, another reason this show is better than the movies, is nailing something to a pillar. And it freeze frames right after he hits the nail. And so everyone is standing perfectly still.

[00:12:53] But the pillar that he just nailed into falls over. And as a result, it destabilizes the entire police building. And the set starts fucking falling apart behind them. And huge like construction material stuff is falling from the ceiling. And everything's rumbling and falling down. And there's dust getting everywhere. And they're just standing perfectly still the whole time with the same look on their face from the beginning. It's great. It's great.

[00:13:22] To speak of the density and quality of runners, I think this is a nice little example. The intro sequence has two runners. One runner is always the same. It does not iterate. And the other runner iterates every time. And oh boy. So the first one is that, you know how in TV shows they tell you like the big name cast people to be like so-and-so and it shows them. Yeah, Leslie Nielsen as Frank Trebin. Yeah. So the thing that's in every intro is

[00:13:51] and Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln. And it's just Abraham Lincoln like getting shot and then he returns fire after getting shot. Like he's immediately like shooting back. And that happens every time. Obviously, Rex Hamilton isn't in the show, dude. That fucking sequence is just there every time because they love it. And then the other runner that iterates is these shows have celebrity appearances, right? Yeah, guest stars.

[00:14:21] So the fucking gag in every intro is that they introduce the celebrity guest star in the opening credits and then they also die in that same sequence. Yeah. My favorite one is just like with special guest Robert Goulet and he's tied to a post and he's being offered a blindfold because he's about to be executed. He shakes his head no and then he is killed. My favorite is William Shatner.

[00:14:51] He's at a restaurant and he's just like talking to the person he's with and there's a bunch of gunshots and he's like survives and like takes out a gun and fires back and presumably kills his attacker and it's like, whew, that was close. And then he takes a sip of his drink but it's poison! He falls over dead. And of course being Shatner he really hams up the my throat, no! death scene. It's so fucking tough because like it's really them. They really did get

[00:15:21] these celebrity guest stars to be in Police Squad. Robert Goulet really says I don't want the blindfold. I want to see myself die. I want to look death right in the face and let him know I'm not afraid. To me, death and life are the same. Oh my god. Another great runner and we've talked about this and the reason is because it's so fucking good is the shoeshine boy. So every one of these episodes has an actual plot which is the same as any cop show.

[00:15:50] You know, they're solving the case blah blah blah blah Who did the murder? Who is doing fraud? That sort of thing. They write it completely standard again because that's what makes it funny. You don't let on that this is a goof at all except for the fact that there's a joke every 15 seconds. And whenever they hit a part of their investigation where they can't move forward they go see Johnny the shoeshine boy who looks to be 100 years old The oldest boy!

[00:16:19] He always is like Johnny, do you know anything about me? How should I know? Why would I know? I don't know How should I know? They give him a crumpled wad of bills Looking left to right always Always fucking funny He knows everything It's so simple but every single time Holy shit And then they juice the concept without like having it overstay It's welcome every time because when Frank leaves the shoeshine station

[00:16:49] another person stops by and you see the start of like them asking the guy for help and it's like a surgeon asking how to do a quadruple bypass It's Dick Clark asking what ska? The kids are really into ska That fucking sequence I hope when I die and you see everything like we spend a lot of time on that part because I fucking love it It'll never be truly popular because although they've made the backbeat more accessible

[00:17:19] it's still too exotic for general audiences This was this was set in 82 I think right? Yeah It's wonderful Yeah It seems like such a simple joke that like what if the shoeshine boys tips were just hyper encyclopedic knowledge dumps that knew every single thing there was no supposition he just knows every fact in the universe There's one time where like a firefighter goes to him and it's like there's a fire Johnny

[00:17:48] what do we do and he like explains firefighting to him But you see how like that runner it's yes it's the same joke but it's not repetitive in the sense that it's the same thing it's like a rich soil for you to iterate constantly on like I don't get sick of it because like within this runner there's two basically because like obviously he has to go the act of going to the shoeshine guy is a plot runner and then as we said the specialist needing insight

[00:18:17] from the guy right after is also part of the runner There's also another double runner character is the boy the doctor at the lab the boys at the lab they always need to go to the boys at the lab to get some crime lab stuff done and the doctor is always the scene begins the doctor is in the lab Frank Trebin has not arrived yet and he's talking to a child giving them some sort of science education generally one of two things is happening

[00:18:47] either he is explaining some science concept to the child and the experiment that is about to take place is going to put another police scientist in grievous bodily harm as the test subject or the doctor is explaining the scientific process to the child and the example he's giving them is some way in which their mother is sexually irresistible to him like the dew on your mother's skin when she gets

[00:19:17] out of the shower like just shit like that yeah that's like surface tension did airplane come before this or after this this is very much the pilot in airplane who's just like hey have you ever been in a Turkish prison kid just like you're just not talking to kids correctly and the yes airplane came before two years before wow I guess that must be how they got a show because airplane is fucking funny it is exactly the same thing and in the exact same way it is delivered

[00:19:46] totally straight there he is acting like any tv police scientist would why don't you run along he always right before he does the experiment it's gonna cause grievous bodily harm to the test subject Frank Drebin walks in he tells the child to run along and then the second runner in the scene is that he always asks Frank to come to the come into the lab with me and he walks through the door to go into the other room and Frank

[00:20:16] always just walks past the set because it's a set like the wall with the door in it you can just you don't have to go through it it's fucking stupid it's just a set and every single time it's never not funny oh my fucking god and like it's not like oh we did this and it's funny wink wink it's like they are having a funny dialogue as they do this do you understand it's it's it's we are there are layers happening it's not slow it's a shotgun it's why it's so

[00:20:46] good but I see especially with old TVs why this would not be appreciated how it should be because yeah if you look at this and you think this is just a normal cop show I'm sick of these which you would because they really try very hard to make it exactly like a normal cop show except for the jokes plus like if you're watching in 1982 you got like a tube TV that's like 12 inches and has terrible picture quality you probably have

[00:21:15] like bunny ear antennas so it's probably like fuzzy so like you might not even like fully like you might see him go around the set and not sort of clock what happened because you're watching it on like an old dinosaur TV yeah it's a living I could actually revisit the the intro sequence because I forgot another runner there's another runner in there and it's when they say the title of the episode what is said in the voiceover and what appears on the screen is just different like the guy

[00:21:45] is not saying the right thing they do it every time I know this is not a misreading either it's completely different this is basically just the Rocky and Bullwinkle joke I understand but god damn it man this is just the smartest shit on earth these these you you fill your episodes with like half the run time is just these modular runner bits that you can just slot in like Legos he's gotta go

[00:22:14] to the shoe shine he's gotta go to the lab he's gotta yeah they gotta do a freeze frame he's gotta take his car and uh stop it somewhere and every time he does he runs into something because he can't drive right they always have to have the scene of him doing voiceover about what he was doing when he first uh heard about the case and it's always some ridiculous shit yeah the first episode is like uh i got a call there was a

[00:22:44] incident of hot naked supermodels passing out in laundromats i was doing my laundry yes yes uh another one is like i was getting my car washed when i got the call and he's like driving and there's like guys inside of his car spritzing all the windows and rubbing it as he's driving and it's so good and as someone who has done amateur comedy stuff you see this and again it's just like this is like

[00:23:13] heaven this is like what all comedy writers want to do it looks effortless it's not but they make it seem like it's just yeah just do it it's not effortless but it's it sets you up for success the way i put it was it is much much harder to go from no jokes to one joke than it is to go from one joke to six variations of that joke because once you have one joke

[00:23:43] that works you understand okay i see what this is doing and yes this is dynamite then it's like all right now the doors to the playground are open go in and have fun you don't have to think of you don't have to build a new playground can i use another analogy uh one joke gets you on the sphere grid and that's where you iterate yes yes yes yes the first sphere fuck the first joke is you learn magic and then now i can grind

[00:24:13] more effectively i cannot believe that in dragon quest 7 it's like fully 25 hours until you unlock classes i know that's neither here nor there but that i mean it's a crime it's always it's always good to acknowledge attacks on humanity they released that game they like were like it's done it's ready to go that's the mosaic one right i i i yeah yeah i played that on ps1 for like 20 hours dude and i didn't even i did not get to

[00:24:42] classes and then my memory card fucking died so i was like i am not doing that shit again it's unthinkable uh anyway the the other thing i want to really talk about here and it's not like a lost art because it still happens but it's always refreshing when someone like leans into it completely when hundreds of beavers did this obviously this show does this which is visual gags oh boy if you if you like visual gags then you should just watch this show you should watch the show with the sound off i bet you would actually

[00:25:12] be surprised at how much this shit hits uh with no audio but the words are very clear to be to be clear it's very funny and that helps a lot with the sort of tone where again they play it totally straight because a visual gag no one has to say it in a funny voice no one has to like look at the screen and the punchline for example this is probably one of the best jokes that has ever been done uh anytime anyone talks about police squad they

[00:25:41] rightly cite this as one of the best jokes at one point a character says to another come join me in the japanese garden so that you know they can have a private conversation and they go outside to like a veranda which is where the japanese garden conversation totally serious there's just like japanese people growing out of pots uh like you got a businessman japanese kid like a

[00:26:11] mom you got this is the thing this is what i can't believe because this is something that a dumber reactionary would be like you can't say this today because it woke except it is woke they like show the it's not like stereotypes it's yeah it's not sushi chefs and and samurais it's like uh the breadth of society all who happen to be japanese yeah yeah uh it's so fucking funny i i told tom about that

[00:26:41] i was like this is gonna happen i'm gonna ruin it for you but i need to tell you about the the japanese garden joke we uh this past weekend went to see the cherry blossoms bloom at jackson park which is by uh chicago's museum of science and industry and additionally there's like a like a japanese garden like a peace garden that i think was like a gift from japan in the 30s it's very nice but dude all i could think about was the scene

[00:27:11] it's just them just that's ah man join me in the japanese they're just standing there they don't react they're just busy growing holy fucking shit and there's something that happens when you watch police squad that other shows don't do and if they do it's not at the level and uh sustained pitch that police squad achieves which is

[00:27:40] you are just constantly in this like state of like i don't want to say anger because that's negative coded but it's sort of like a tense anger how do i explain this let me give you an example there is one point where they've caught the perp and they have a tight shot of frank dreven his boss and the perp and uh he says like we now let's get the black and white to take him away black and white of course is a term

[00:28:10] for a police car let's get the black and white to take him away that's when you notice in this order one black and white while it is a term that i understand is a linguistically vague phrase that could mean any number of things you then realize this is a very tight shot they're gonna zoom out and something will enter the frame you then realize the third thing oh that thing's not gonna be a fucking police car is it it's gonna be some other fucking thing

[00:28:39] four oh my god what is it gonna be this is that tense anger which is like just fucking tell me and then it zooms out and uh well what you see is a zebra with a little police siren on its back it's gonna take the pert back that's the black and white get it and you go you're constantly in this state they still will sneak up on you uh i think the the one that like still sneaks up

[00:29:09] on me is first episode uh he the the shot is like you're looking at you're as if you're on the desk looking up at frank and he's like pushing the button on the uh desk intercom to talk to you know the administration uh and then uh he's like can you whatever do do whatever he just gives instructions and then the shot turns and he's not pressing intercom he's looking down at a tiny tiny man who's a cop and says sure thing and he walks away yeah and that especially

[00:29:39] because he was just talking to the the running gag comedy tall policeman who's always so tall that his face is out of frame so he just finished looking up and talking to that yeah there's one point where he just like a half-eaten banana falls off the top of the screen because he's like chewing up there right yes yes it's so fucking good there was another way you describe the the tense fury feeling of just like oh my god like i'm in that sort of limbo where like

[00:30:08] something fuck is gonna happen what is it gonna be how did you describe that it's when you identify you are hooked into a joke but like you don't know what it's gonna be yet police squad style it's it's the thing i compare it to is like when you're playing with like a kid and you like pretend to drop them and you're like oh i got you oh i got you if the drop is what the fuck is the black and white yes yes that's when joe said that to me uh initially i could not believe how apropos it is because again you feel

[00:30:38] especially with how often it happens like that feeling of like free fall even though you know you're safe because daddy won't drop you you know you're safe but like for each like 22 minute episode you spend like 15 minutes of that in that free fall state so at the end you like feel like you've been fucking through it because it's just like oh my god oh my god another one uh monster took him to daddy heaven what

[00:31:08] the fuck yeah if a movie is very funny like i'm just laughing the whole time especially if i see in the theater like when i'm leaving i actually don't like remember anything it's just like i remember laughing uh and that's kind of it i don't really have any specifics that are coming to mind it's just i was fucking laughing the whole time i get that with police squad where it's 22 minutes of an episode and yeah i have favorite gags but dude i will not remember everything

[00:31:37] it's it's too much like the pace is relentless here are some ones that i remember one this is straight from airplane and all of these guys spoof movies and rightly so because it's fucking good as hell every time a character is offered something the way that that is done is the thing that is being offered is held in front of their face and the the name of what that thing is is said as a full sentence with a question mark at the end

[00:32:07] cigarette coffee every single time the person being offered them says yes it is yeah just like you were holding cigarettes up to someone so they could identify them yeah cigarette yeah you got it i love this shit so good there was a quote that i saw from the great mark twain a while ago that i had to run down the full source of because it is so relevant

[00:32:36] to police squad and uh and it digs at british people right like it makes fun of yes it talks shit on british comedy which is very good and it just it's it's so true and so i have the exact actual text in front of me now this is from a essay called how to tell a story by mark twain i'm gonna give you sort of a cut down version only the more relevant parts there are several types of stories but only one difficult kind

[00:33:06] the humorous i will talk mainly about that one the humorous story is american the comic story is english the humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling the comic story upon the matter the humorous story may be spun out to great length and may wander around as much as it pleases and arrive nowhere in particular but the comic story must be brief and end with a point the humorous story bubbles gently along the others burst the humorous story is told gravely the teller does his best to conceal

[00:33:35] the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it but the teller of the comic story again the british story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has ever heard then tells it with eager delight and is the first person to laugh when he gets through and sometimes if he has had good success he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the nub of it and glance around from face to face collecting applause and then repeat it again it is a pathetic

[00:34:05] thing to see very often of course the rambling or disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub point snapper or whatever you like to call it then the listener must be alert for in many cases the teller will divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way with the pretense that he does not know it is a nub the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub you love that absolutely not okay he does not

[00:34:35] slur the nub when he prints it he italicizes it putting in some whooping exclamation points after it and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis all of which is very depressing and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life he's talking about police squad renounce joking yeah yes there is no nub repeating in police squad in terms of just like pure execution the thing about the visual gag element and we said this I think with

[00:35:04] 100 beavers is the way it lets you layer things by which I mean you could have a joke that is visual when they're walking through say actually a new example I was going to use the lab and the scientists but here's another one they often have to talk to each other in an elevator right they have to speak to each other in an elevator Frank and his like his his lieutenant I don't know his other guy yeah he calls him his boss but he kind of stands next to Frank

[00:35:34] and repeats stuff to act to him correct and you know like a cop show yeah and the elevator scenes specifically are like we are now going to say the like the nitty gritty bullet points of like the the case of course that's not a very funny thing typically so there's just at the same time you're getting the basic plot which although it's not hard to understand it still needs to be like fed to you it

[00:36:03] the elevator scene is like crazy it'll be like them talking yeah this is the case blah blah blah and then a woman in a bathing suit gets on the elevator it goes down two floors and it is at the edge of a diving board and she jumps off and water splashes into the elevator and they continue talking they of course do not respond to it I think the best no sell is one of the stops is like the end of an opera and the singer is getting all these roses thrown at her

[00:36:33] and the his boss gets hit with like a hundred roses and he just continues like just just being him it's wonderful there's one where the guy who gets on the elevator with them is like a cowboy and when he gets to his floor his floor is a in progress cowboys versus Indians battle on horseback and a flaming arrow comes into the elevator and hits the side of it like

[00:37:03] inches from Frank's boss's head and it's just it's stuck in the fucking wall still on fire and again he does not blink he does not flinch he continues delivering this absolutely dry not funny at all fucking cop show dialogue as though he was on the normalist show in the world now people might read into that Mark Twain quote be like didn't you just say there are runners and then they repeat the nub yeah they repeat the nub

[00:37:33] in the next episode doesn't count that's a different kind of repeating the nub this the fact remains when the nub comes up it is always sort of in the background there it is never the thing that the characters and the plot focuses on the characters and the plot and the dialogue are always telling you like this is a normal police investigation even when there's a by the books term like I think there's either the first or second episode there's

[00:38:02] a shootout and Frank's boss is like cover me and he just puts his coat over him and he's just like you know you're covered in coat and he's just like walking around bumping into stuff as there's a firefight happening and then I think what happens is when the bad guy goes to make their escape they just like trip on the coat man yes but it's

[00:38:31] how do I say this this is the most sincere falling down I've ever seen it's so wonderful it is exactly how someone who is totally covered with the coat would move which is to say there's no indication that he knows where he's going it's very realistic he's just like I'm like all right I'm covered now time to go and he fucking trips and falls instantly it's so good and like no one he doesn't

[00:39:01] say oh gee if you tripped and fell because you couldn't see how ridiculous frank is like still shooting his gun there's another shootout where he and the uh fucking uh criminal who is shooting back uh we you know get shot reverse shot shot reverse shot they're doing the gears of war uh cover shooting yes and then we do the wide shot and of course they're on opposite sides of the same tiny little thing they're like one foot away from each other incredible so

[00:39:31] fucking good and then we're already off to the next thing and even when like from a contemporary sort of perspective like a joke a joke is not super innovative chances are it still goes a little further and I'm impressed case in point uh the scene tom just said there's this gears of war shootout between the perp and frank and they're

[00:40:07] and then she starts throwing tons of guns dude she's got so many guns then it's just like a snowball fight oh this one also this is not

[00:40:37] ex-girlfriend and she works as like a cabaret girl and she's in the dressing room like in her costume after having done her act and there's another fucking joke going on through this entire scene where the manager comes in and is like who are you I'm a policeman policeman we can make that work and like gets the slutty police outfit out anyway but that's not they're talking to this woman and again the dialogue is completely by the books cop

[00:41:07] show stuff like where was like bugsy mangione when he did this oh bugsy I haven't seen him in a while you know but that really I thought nothing it's just fucking filler words she says at some point do you mind if I change and again it's like oh change I know what she means by change but linguistically that's a very vague word with a lot of different meanings uh oh she goes behind the little partition and a different fucking woman

[00:41:37] comes out just like oh fuck god damn it fuck I think the reason I get mad is because I it wasn't me yeah there's a lot of that and because there little touch I'm not saying oh I could have wrote slumdog millionaire I'm saying like oh I could I would love a chance to iterate on a

[00:42:28] joke on there and that would be enough just because there's so many there's like a hundred jokes per episode the numbers favor me one of them is going to get in I would at least do as good of a job as my other jobs yes which is to say I'd be laid off but only after a couple of years which is fine because again the show lasted six episodes years great quantity god six

[00:42:58] episodes I think the one time that it wasn't great was the episode where for cover frank had to be a like stand-up comic slash mc at like a nightclub and the stand-up set that he did was that's dated because like the joke is supposed to be frank is like an all time like this button down completely stoic police guy who's undercover as a comedy

[00:43:29] nightclub host is great at it and is one of the best there ever was like the next Dean Martin but his jokes are very old that's the one time oh speaking of not being dated that was something that we talked about I don't want to let this pass by especially now more than ever because of the internet and because of stuff being on streaming if you are a comedy head you have access to such a wide range of comedy

[00:43:59] from so many different comics with so many different sensibilities from you know for decades of time back then you had your comedy movies you had TV shows you had record albums that you had to fucking buy from the store that was how you heard comedy that wasn't on TV or the movies or live or you could go to a live stand-up show and if you didn't live near a city then you can't now we can see so much comedy we like to think that we are more sophisticated in our comedic

[00:44:28] sensibilities as a result we see Tim Robinson this is so innovative and forward thinking you have to be a real comedy head to fully get this normies don't understand corncob TV they don't understand bozo dubbed over what I'm saying is that it feels like as a comedy person in 2025 that we are more evolved and have a sharper sense in general than there used to be you go back and you watch who's

[00:44:58] on first you must admit that it is a classic and very innovative but it feels old it feels like vaudeville guys doing patter on stage it feels old fashioned police squad no Tom and I actually went back and forth about this about whether like the average median sort of pop culture savviness when this debuted in 82 compared to

[00:45:31] ready for it because I was making the point that even your average slop consumer today might have a wider breadth of media knowledge and understanding than maybe someone in the 80s and you were actually like it does not matter you were like there's nothing to what the show is doing requires so

[00:46:01] is a non-issue was your point am I correct yes it is just like pure fundamentals honed to a razor's edge and then of course the key is it is absolutely relentless and like that that fast pacing again I think that might be a reason why it was didn't cash on as a TV show but really did as a movie because the naked gun is just police squad but longer and without runners which

[00:46:31] the relentlessness I think may have been a mark against it because I don't think I mean I've seen old sitcoms from the 80s they ruin everything because

[00:47:01] you can't have these fucking stupid look I'm trying to tell jokes here I can't have people laughing and clapping afterwards yes dude you say that like it's a joke but it's real like I don't have time for your little gums to go ha ha I'm like I have important fucking work to do such as I need in this interrogation scene where the dialogue is completely a

[00:47:31] laugh line I need there to be the Eiffel Tower in the window that's very important again what TV in standard definition tube TV from 1982 is going to be clear enough that the normal person watching while they're making dinner is going to notice the Eiffel Towers in the fucking window that is so god damn noble we talked about this so much that like the most important thing is to like stick to your artistic guns and like what it means to make your

[00:48:01] voice heard even if it doesn't go with like what is you know commercially best practice that's so noble and that's that that's putting the Eiffel Tower in the background of the police station but they definitely put it in there then yes yes god damn it it's so much better than the movies and I love the movies but like my favorite episode I believe it's the fifth episode it's the one where Frank has to

[00:48:47] he's trying to make a key with the machine and it launches up out of his hand into the ceiling and there's all these keys stuck in the ceiling anyway this has my favorite joke of all time which is you know how people tie a note to a rock and throw it through a window to be intimidating well that happens and then Frank gets the rock he goes to the lab and he says can you explain where this came from and the answer is

[00:49:17] billions of years ago the earth was a ball of roiling magma that eventually began to cool it formed a hard crust out of a substance we now know is rock it just like oh man it is the best there was another joke I I got it mixed up I thought you were going to say another thing but I realized that's from another episode

[00:49:47] because this isn't a runner this is just a joke they through the window but this is they hold up a window that's just by its fucking own self and they said a note was tied to this window that was

[00:50:17] thrown through the rock garden just rearrange the things I know it's more complicated than that but like god damn it like it never I think the reason this is so timeless and feels contemporary even now is because it really does just hit the very simplest types of humor which is what if they said something but then what you saw was wrong and it's like

[00:50:47] well I guess I would fucking laugh like an idiot wouldn't I and then they decide well okay that kind of joke is kind of shallow you know there's not a lot of insight to it it's basically just a pun so the way we're going to make that stand on its own is that you never have a fucking second to catch your breath you were just being pummeled to shit by them and it's again 15 out of that 22 minutes you're in that freefall state of like oh my god yeah it's just a rush down it's a zerg rush from

[00:51:17] the jump you blitz them and then it's not so much each individual zerg matters is the fact that there's just all these fuckers uh so good i really cannot emphasize enough how much you should watch this fucking show because again it's six 22 minute episodes and it's just so good and even if you've seen the naked gun you feel like i got the gist the television format makes it worth the viewing it really does it really does one

[00:51:47] of the reasons Tom landed on police squad again we talked about it before but the reason he watched it is because he was writing some jokes he was doing some work on his own and he was like man i hate the amount of table setting that comes with setting up something and it's just very frustrating and i was like you know what would be a good exercise is watching police squad because there is zero table setting because they're doing the zerg rush which is anti table setting yes

[00:52:16] and hopefully you agree in fact the table setting that is present which is to say the cop plot is in many ways an obstacle to funny equals

[00:52:46] fast is not always true but in this case yes you have to think about this as like a kangan fight it's like you have to think about all things this police squad is a guy who has like his jab looks like 20 jabs at once and he can jab with both arms it's a barrage you ever see it man no oh it's great it's about a guy named it man it's probably pronounced differently because that's like a chinese name

[00:53:16] and not like a superhero name like it's a guy named that and his thing is that he practiced wing chun which is like that martial art style where like my thing is that I will hit you with 100 jabs in one second and you will be rendered a bowl of oatmeal because of the jiggling inside the usefulness of wing chun as a martial art but when

[00:53:46] he does his big action scenes where he showcases the incredible power thereof it looks badass as hell because Donnie Yen who plays it man is fast as hell so when he does a bajillion jabs and each of the jabs has the martial arts punch sound play so it's like he's really going that fast it looks cool so that's police squad the raid has some of that too when he unloads on a guy in short range and

[00:54:16] punches him a hundred times there's some of that in the raid the best part of the raid is when he kicks a guy over the railing of the big central staircase and you think he's going to go and splat against the floor it's crunch yeah you know he just snaps completely the wrong way and he doesn't react at all because he's instantly

[00:54:46] killed yeah that movie is just people dying but that was the only kill in the movie where I was like oh jeez yeah it's just like oh all the other ones are very like dramatized and like heightened that was physics yeah that was just like oh yeah no he would just sort of not move at all after that would he anyway we're talking about police squad police squad is good you should watch it it really is a lot of fun if you like us you should like this yeah

[00:55:15] if you liked what we said about 100 beavers and you watched 100 beavers as a result i feel like there's some commonality here especially with the visual gags 100% 100% i mean hundreds of beavers famously silent movie you were just saying you could watch police squad with the sound off same fucking thing and what was our big criticism and caveat with hundreds of beavers which is like the pacing is a little funny you have to get through the slow part before it really starts cooking but don't

[00:55:45] worry it does start cooking not so with police squad the pace is like every and this is going to sound bad but it's not any given minute of any episode of police squad could be watched by itself and they would all be as good and have as many jokes you just watch all the types of scenes at once it's like these are all the ones before they confront the perk these are all the ones where they are in the lab that actually would be a

[00:56:15] fun editing challenge not challenge because it wouldn't be hard but like a fun editing project for any film or video editors out there do that just like split the six episodes yes yes so like the first episode of police squad is just like the first sixth of all of them that would I wonder if that would be good um this isn't really relevant to anything like thematically or ideologically it's just a great joke that I think we need to talk

[00:56:45] about when we saw it we had to send a screenshot to Josh worst world our homie who loves immersive sims because so there in the first episode there were gunshots and the sort of the thing that they're investigating is the angle of the gunshot wounds that killed the victims and like where based on the angle of the wounds where must the gun have been and the way they're testing out what type of

[00:57:14] wounds certain gun locations make if they just have police guys stand there they put the gun in a certain place and then they shoot and kill them and then to try a different position they just have another police guy stand there they move the gun and then they shoot and kill him and then later Frank is on the phone telling the someone and there is a classic

[00:57:44] immersive sim pile of bodies in the corner right behind him yeah you could tell he just knocked out every guard and now he's got to check out the phone it's it's such a video game shot this is before there even was video games at least in the way that matters holy shit great show can't recommend it enough especially in this dark time where popes just hanging out with him was enough to

[00:58:14] do it and he he just beat death right like Dregula said death after the pope and he shrugged it off once and he had just said an incredible he had come out as officially pro loser thank god finally yes i mean we have had we have gone through it we've been through the ringer seems like these days the humble chicago loser has no one in their corner it was so good to have the pope and what happened when he reached out to

[00:59:01] talk about shows what what service is it on and my answer is always like stealing like download it it's torrent they're all on the torrents you can just download it if you don't know how to torrent it's easy to learn and to be clear anyone listening only torrent open source textbooks yes or stuff you already own physical copies of because that's

[00:59:31] what i do yeah wink wink try to prove me wrong you can't anyway that's all the time we have for anime sickos uh i've been tom and anime sicko imagine we freeze framed but like our cats are still moving and they start like thinking that we're dead and eating us for food uh okay bye bye thank you for listening to anime

[01:00:01] sickos i've been tom a sicko you can follow me on blue sky at tom harrison joe was also a sicko you can follow him on blue sky at sharia uncle you can follow anime sickos on blue sky at anime sickos or email us at anime sickos at gmail.com you can give us money at patreon.com slash anime sickos if you want uh please leave us a review or something i don't know tell a friend uh anyway until next time bye bye bye