Barney Miller references...

In Season 6, a two-episode show called "Vanished," features Barney asking Dietrich for help with a crossword clue: Occupation on the floss.  Turns out it was a George Eliot novel called Miller on the Floss, where the occupation was a "miller," as Dietrich said the setting was in a mill.  The strange thing to me, after Dietrich reveals the answer...is that he asks Barney if he needs any help with "blank" google. (This all occurs before the first commercial break of the first episode.)

In Season 8, an episode entitled "Games," features Wojo referencing Reagan, with respect to an army woman prostituting herself in an effort to help her mother in a nursing home and pay her rent when she loses a roommate. This all takes place before and just after the first commercial break (or the theme song).

SEASON Air Dates    
Season One - 1975        [FORD]
Season Two - 1975-76   [FORD]
Season Three - 1976-77 [FORD/CARTER]
Season Four- 1977-78 [CARTER]
Season Five- 1978-79 [CARTER]
Season Six- 1979-80 [CARTER/REGAN]
Season Seven - 1980-81 [REGAN]
Season Eight- 1981-82 [REGAN]

KEY NEW YORK 1970s Dates

1970 – Greenwich Village townhouse explosion: 3 members of 'the Weathermen' are killed when a bomb they were building accidentally explodes in the basement of a townhouse
1971 - NYPD Officer Serpico testified before the Knapp Commission about Police Corruption [basis for 1973 film Serpico starring Al Pacino]
1972 – John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Natuarale hold up a Brooklyn bank [basis for the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon starring Al Pacino]]
1972 - NYPD discloses that around 200 pounds (91 kg) of heroin [basis for the 1975 film French Connection]
1973 – The body of 29-year-old NY teacher Roseann Quinn is discovered  [basis for 1977's film Looking for Mr. Goodbar]
1974 – President Nixon resigns. Vice President Ford becomes the 38th President.
1975 - (Feb) New York City enters a serious fiscal crisis.
1975 - President Ford angers New Yorkers by refusing to grant the city a bailout unless they cut social services and fire public employees
1976 – David Berkowitz killings (aka the "Son of Sam")
1977 – (jan) Carter sworn in as the 39th President
1977- "fiscal conservative" Democrat Ed Koch elected NY mayor
1977-  New York City blackout (July 13)
1978 – Lufthansa heist: At the German airline's JFK Airport cargo terminal [basis for GoodFellas]
1980s - Nearly a million people emigrated out of NY during the 70s  
1981 – (Jan) "fiscal conservative" Republican Ronald Reagan inaugurated as the 40th President
1981 - (Oct) Reagan's Drastic cuts to social assistance begin....

Reagan references are tricky because he was, an actor and TV spokes model, the Governor of California (1967–1975) and ran an unsuccessful Presidential bid in 1976 - but any post 1980 references are to him as President.

I've never heard of this comic strip, but I think this is the answer....

wikipedia wrote:Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, originally Take Barney Google, F'rinstance, is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck. Since its debut on June 17, 1919. As of 17 June 2019 Barney Google has run for an entire century, making it the third longest-running and uninterrupted comics series of all time, after Rudolph Dirks' The Katzenjammer Kids and Frank O. King's Gasoline Alley.

Season 2, episode "Grand Hotel" features a hotel head of security (a former cop of 19 years) Huntzinger say if he would have been the one testifying to the Knapp Commission as to what he'd seen on the force, the film would have been called Huntzinger, not Serpico. Occurs around the 18 min mark of the episode.

Season 3, episode "Asylum," (1977) features a southern-accented Statesman mentioning he's only a few days into his job - with the new administration. He comes in around 6-1/2 minutes into the episode. He's the one who makes the statement, "We no longer have accents. You do."

Barney Google. Thanks.

That makes sense - especially since he asks "Barney" if he needs any help with it!

Season 1, "Bureaucrat" episode (1975), a drunk federal government employee does a brief Nixon impression (arms up, peace signs in both hands).

I appreciate the run down of some of the New York City 1970's events.  From memory, I put up a few that should closely correspond to your 1970's list.

My idea for putting up the references was mostly for marking down some of my favourite moments of the show.  Eventually, I would like to put together a video of those moments.  Due to the fact that I'd have many moments I'd like to mention, I'll add to this, off and on, as I re-visit the seasons.

Just started Barney Miller! Episode 3 done.

Hey, that's great!!

Barney Miller, like M*A*S*H, has a skeleton of American history to hang the sit-com meat on. It is the history of New York city in the 1970s and therefore 'ground zero' for the end of 'Liberalism' as a the major political force in the US. The show begings just after Nixon resigns sending the country into turmoil and ends half-way through Reagan's first term of bring "Morning in America"

Jim Woolsey wrote:Fall of 1973 ... Remember, we had a felon as Vice President, and immediately after the Attorney General forced his resignation, the special Watergate prosecutor was fired, the Attorney General resigned, then the "Saturday Night Massacre", [then the the Senate War Resolution] passed over President Nixon's veto in late autumn of 1973.

This all occurred in the midst of the U.S. strategic nuclear alert that followed [as the] Arab nations launched the Yom Kippur War against Israel, and both the Soviet Union and the U.S. went on strategic alert. It was one of the most tumultuous periods in modern American political history. I was late for a hearing because I had to sit in a gas line, because it was in the middle of the Yom Kippur War. I remember sitting in that gas line seething that the Saudis cut off our oil. In one way or another. I've been teed off about this issue for 35 years!""

The NY of the early 1970s was a Sodom and Gomorrah riddled with public debt, massive amounts crime, and explosion of brothels, porn shops and gangs. By the late 1970s "fiscal conservatives" had risen to power to slash social services. The 1980s 'Reagan Revolution' would bring "social conservatives" to power that would militarize the police and attack all drug-use and deviations from the nuclear family. The scourges of AIDS and nacro-gangs would be equally devastating.

The show doesn't know all this when it starts in 1974, it just a TV sitcom premised on the amusing idea that even a Hippie/Freak center like 'Greenwich Village' still needs police.

Greenwich Village was known as an artists' haven, the Bohemian capital, the cradle of the modern LGBT movement, and the East Coast birthplace of both the Beat and '60s counterculture movements. Greenwich Village contains Washington Square Park, as well as two of New York's private colleges, New York University (NYU) and the New School. John Lennon said, "I should have been born in New York, I should have been born in the Village, that's where I belong."
Greenwich Village was patrolled by the 6th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.
Greenwich Village has undergone extensive gentrification and commercialization since the 1980s.

Barney Miller is a mircocosm of this history: the decay of public services, the rise of crime and vigilantism, the surge of prostitution and 'mom and pop' stores becoming porno outlets, the introduction of bullet-proof vests, RAND reports and undercover narcs, and the simmering cauldron of 1970s NY politics.

There is that characteristic 70s gloom that hangs over the 12th Prescient as the public money dries up and crime rises, relationships break, careers stall and finical successes end in lawsuits.  There is also a sampling of that crazed, over-sexed, neurotic urban melting pot that was NY in the 1970s.

And in the middle of all this is a 'liberal' police captain who thinks angry people can talk their problems, he is not interested in using violence or even religion or ethnicity (even his own).  We know that Miller is on the wrong side of American history, so were the 'liberal' producers of the show.

The 12th Prescient must be torn down, for a new, cleaner, leaner, safer, more conservative, New York to be constructed. The next American TV set in Greenwich Village was the NBC sitcom Friends (1994–2004) featuring vapid corporate consumers living in a post-gentrified 'Village'.



"Video of old 42nd Street being torn down to make room for the "New 42nd Street"... and it's sterilization into a plastic "Disney" version."


Reagan's "Morning Again in America" election ad

Greenwich Village (ABC 1974-82)

- multi-ethnic, single-gender, Government Service

Greenwich Village (NBC 1994-2004)

- white, hetero, Corporate Consumers

World Trade Center (1973–2001)

Barney Miller was set in Greenwich Village, to the east is, well, East Village.

Wikiepdia wrote:Sesame Street's founder, Joan Ganz Cooney, stated in 1994 that she originally wanted to call the show 123 Avenue B, after the Alphabet City area of the Lower East Side and East Village.

So in 'TV Land' the 12th Prescient was working beside Sesame Street.  The story of that neighboring Prescient would be an interesting story....

HootsytheOwl
HootsytheOwl
9 years ago
Totally wonderful! Funny " The Police"  music style reference...

Mandy Patinkin - Sesame Street - Officer George

The episode that matter most is also one of the more difficult episodes to watch:
Barney Miller S05E10 The Harris Incident  

https://westreamtv.wordpress.com/2014/10/04/741/ wrote:
Here’s the exchange between Wojo and Harris:

WOJO: K, well, all I wanna ask is, uh, how come after four years of working together, somethin’ happens on the outside and it gets turned against us?

HARRIS: Look man, you don’t understand so why bother?

WOJO: Well maybe I can understand! I never thought of you as black!

HARRIS: See?

WOJO: But I thought of you as a man! I thought of you as a friend! As a partner! If you want me to think of you as black, okay fine, whatever you want! (beat) But just let me know, so I don’t go offending ya when I don’t even know I’m offending ya.

Due to the impasse, Dietrich chimes in with a sentence that completely sums up his character, and therefore gets a knowing laugh from the audience, “Semantics is my life.”

Though Barney is skeptical, Dietrich goes on to explain that Harris understands, but that they’re just not saying it properly. It really does appear that Dietrich and Harris are growing closer together. Barney concedes that he didn’t think he’d have to say anything at all on the matter. Harris and the rest also understand that this will happen again.

Knowing he’s reached everyone, Dietrich says that “It only takes two to make a dialogue…five to make popcorn. That’s what Barney said.”

Originally, the ending of this episode had Harris apologize for his frustration, but Ron Glass rightly objected. Had that ending taken place, this episode would have been a misstep along the lines of “Rape.” It demonstrates the value of a diverse group of voices in the process. There were female writers on Barney Miller, but they were a rarity. Perhaps, as in this episode, some insight could have occurred there.

In light of the of all the events over mid-2010s, this episode is more timely than ever.  This episode works as a meditation on race from a white perspective, which means it’s good as a conversation starter.  Therefore it should not at all be considered a conversation ender without a dialogue from friends whom this effects.

FROM THE TV SHOW: Firefly:

“So, uh, how come you don’t care where you’re going?” Kaylee (Jewel Staite) asked.

“’Cause how you get there is the worthier part,” Shepherd Book (Ron Glass) replied.

For each of those lines, I can remember exactly how the words are spoken by the actors.  It's also one of my favourite examples of Wojo (Max Gail) being more serious.  Another favourite is when Wojo is told to not take things so personally about Agent Orange (also the episode's title), and he says, "It is personal!" and throws his pencil against the desk and it bounces off toward the camera.  He then goes on to talk about being in Vietnam and if he isn't feeling well or has trouble in bed, he wonders if he might have been affected by exposure to agent orange.

There is one line Dietrich says before "Semantics is my life."  It's "Can I say something?" or "May I say something?"

Glad to hear Ron Glass refused to apologize.  In that same episode, I remember how he pipes up in response to Barney saying they need to do things by the book:  "You mean the book, written by the man!"