As an episode in the fifth season, both cases render the episode a bit rote.īut before we look at the second half of “Wojo’s Girl,” let’s examine the setup in the first half.
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For such a concise template of the mission statement of the show, this half of the episode could almost serve as a pilot for the parent series itself. It’s transparent enough a tactic that Dietrich makes the observation and compliments Barney on the strategy. Second, they tend to allow these advocates to settle things between themselves by throwing both parties into a confined space with time on their hands. First, by allowing us access to different professions and points of view, they allow their advocates to speak for themselves, almost more like a courtroom drama than a cop show.
The two charged each other with assault.īarney Miller, as well as Barney Miller, both specialize in two things. Wojo and Dietrich bring in Nells Finney and Frank Mallory, the latter played by Philip Bruns, previously seen as Harry Cranston in “Bus Stop.” Mallory was trying to get a refund from Finney’s travel agency after a terrible twenty-eight day vacation, a honeymoon he never had.
Though Dundee attempts to recruit anyone he can, Barney warns Dundee that they’ll be keeping an eye on his recruitment/weapons center. Harris brings in Phillip and his recruiter Colonel Charles Dundee, a man who’s in “several” armies and who romanticizes war as “the one thing we can depend on in a crazy, mixed-up, uncertain world!” Barney clearly feels differently as we see in the other case of the episode. Now, she’s upset that he’s become obsessed by a local mercenary recruitment center and appears ready to travel the globe fighting wars. It features Doris Roberts as Harriet Brauer, returning with a complaint against her husband Phillip, played again by Peter Hobbs, who previously also played Charlie Prevette in “Strike: Parts I & II.” Previously she reported her husband for selling all of their possessions for gold. The first half of the episode is a pretty standard, if subpar, affair. But more importantly, and this may be by design, we don’t get much insight into the motives of Wojo or his new girlfriend, Nancy, played by Darlene Parks, a pretty and good actress with fairly sparse resumé. The previous hour-long episode used its time to build tension, whereas this one might have benefitted from a splicing at that seam.
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The episode is one full hour, however there’s a very thick seam in the middle. There were other opportunities as well with Wojo and Wentworth and Harris and Dietrich, each pair serving as potential fodder for series of their own.Īll this makes the issues with this particular episode a little bit perplexing. It would have been quite ambitious to set up entire sets of secondary characters for each cop.
I have heard that, as with the episode “Fish” and the arc started with the episode “Evacuation,” this was intended to be something of a backdoor pilot for a spinoff centered on the detectives’ off-duty lives, a bit like the Springfield-centered spinoff of The Simpsons that never got off the ground. I will say that I think that there are several issues with the episode that stem largely from the premise and the structure of the story. So it was interesting to give it another look. At the time, I didn’t realize it was an hour-long episode, and I think that affected my reading of the episode. As a fan of Barney Miller since 2003, and someone who has owned the complete series box set for a few years, I’ve hopped around to episodes that piqued my interest.
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