History YMMV / Dragnet

** The aforementioned "City of Crime" music video. While it is a catchy tune, it's pretty odd to see a full-scale techno/rap video that would have more in common in a work like ''Film/{{Xanadu|1980}}'' than a semi-serious police procedural. Especially when you have actors like Creator/TomHanks and Creator/DanAykroyd, who are, to a modern audience, more straight-laced actors absolutely [[ChewingTheScenery hamming it up]] in more traditional, reserved roles like Sergeant Joe Friday.

** The techno music Friday and Streebek dance to at the PAGAN rally in the AffectionateParody. As well as the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcZwiVbZ4Kw theme music]].

** In the episode "The Big Explosion" Joe Friday tells unrepentant [[ANaziByAnyOtherName neo-]][[RightWingMilitiaFanatic Nazi]] Donald Chapman that as "a psycho" Chapman was also a member of a minority. To modern audiences this would likely be seen as stigmatizing [[TheMentallyDisturbed mentally ill]] people who unlike Chapman had done nothing wrong.

** ''DUN Dun DUN DUN...''

* GenreTurningPoint: This franchise has been credited in not only popularly establishing the PoliceProcedural, but also changing the image of the police in the arts from TheLestrade stereotype and the Keystone Kops bunglers into upstanding professionals and heroes for the public good.

** ''L.A. Dragnet'''s series finale "Killing Field": [[GunmanWithThreeNames John Wesley Fuller]] is pulled over by the LAPD one day on a shoplifting charge only to find his vehicle, the name on his ID, and several of his possessions are from missing people. Digging deeper quickly reveals the truth; Fuller is a SerialKiller responsible for torturing, [[SerialRapist raping]], and murdering dozens of people in his homemade TortureCellar, burying the bodies around his old house. Fuller had his accomplice record over 197 separate tapes of him torturing the eclectic variety of men, women, and children he filled his victim pool with, and one of the videos gleefully shows him promising to murder the child of a woman he's about to rape should she resist him. While his accomplice was [[FreudianExcuse twisted into evil by his abusive father]], Fuller kills people simply to feel powerful.

* BeamMeUpScotty: "Just the facts, ma'am." was never said by Jack Webb's Friday in the radio or TV show, instead originating in a radio parody by Stan Freburg. However, it had become so ingrained in popular culture by the time of the movie, Dan Ackroyd's Friday ''does'' regularly use the phrase.

** Kent [=McCord=], later of ''Series/AdamTwelve'', has a bit role in "The Big Explosion" as a cop named Martin.

** The rock-and-roll StandardSnippet that plays at most teen parties in Sixties Dragnet (and early seasons of ''Series/AdamTwelve'').

* ShockingSwerve: In the 1951 radio episode "Big Ben", Friday and Romero are investigating a carjacking. Halfway through the story, [[spoiler:Friday is shot and seriously wounded by the perp. And, for the only time in the entire series history, Joe's partner (in this case, Ben Romero) takes over narrating the case.]]

* WeirdAlEffect: ''Mathnet'', to some.

** The aforementioned "City of Crime" music video. While it is a catchy tune, it's pretty odd to see a full-scale techno/rap video that would have more in common in a work like ''Film/{{Xanadu}}'' than a semi-serious police procedural. Especially when you have actors like Creator/TomHanks and Creator/DanAykroyd, who are, to a modern audience, more straight-laced actors absolutely [[ChewingTheScenery hamming it up]] in more traditional, reserved roles like Sergeant Joe Friday.

** There was an entire episode in the 60s series dedicated to gypsies and fortune telling (at the time illegal in California) which portrayed them as essentially a bunch mob families with them trying to bribe Friday in order to 'have someone on their payroll' and him dealing with a ''clan war'' following the death of the self proclaimed ''king of all gypsies''.

* NarrowedItDownToTheGuyIRecognize: Averted on the '60s show. Creator/JackWebb used a regular group of actors to play various roles, (see YouLookFamiliar on the main page) and in such a way that even if you did recognize that person from a previous episode, it was just as likely as not that the character would turn out to be the episode's perpetrator. However, most of the actors had a 'type' of character they were known for playing, and you could reliably depend on the knowledge that if a character had played a cop before, he was playing a cop again, or if he had been a non-cop, he wasn't likely to be a cop this time out.

* Kent [=McCord=], later of ''Series/AdamTwelve'', has a bit role in "The Big Explosion" as a cop named Martin.

** 1967 series' "The Big Explosion": [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain Donald Chapman]] is a [[ThoseWackyNazis Neo-Nazi]] who had many run-ins with the law due to his various hate crimes. When Chapman learns a local school is about to be racially integrated, Chapman steals a large supply of dynamite from a construction site. Chapman uses the dynamite to build a bomb and hides in the school, with the bomb wired to the school bells, to ensure it goes off [[WouldHurtAChild when the children arrive]]. When detectives Joe Friday and Bill Gannon arrest Chapman, he stalls for time to prevent them from stopping his plan.
** ''L.A. Dragnet'''s series finale "Killing Field": [[GunmanWithThreeNames John Wesley Fuller]] is pulled over by the LAPD one day on a shoplifting charge only to find his vehicle, the name on his ID, and several of his possessions are from missing people. Digging deeper quickly reveals the truth; Fuller is a SerialKiller responsible for torturing, [[SerialRapist raping]], and murdering dozens of people in his homemade TortureCellar, burying the bodies around his old house. Fuller had his accomplice record over 197 separate tapes of him torturing the eclectic variety of men, women, and children he filled his victim pool with, and one of the videos gleefully shows him promising to murder the child of a woman he's about to rape should she resist him. While his accomplice was twisted into evil by his abusive father, Fuller kills people simply to feel powerful.