Police officers have to treasure those moments when things take a turn for the absurd.
- In one episode, The guys try everything to rid the unit of a nasty smell, but it keeps getting worse. Originally it was a perfume spill but air freshener and gasoline got mixed in as they try desperately to cover it up.
- In the episode "Training Wheels," Officer Wells suggests having several officers impersonate paperboys using unclaimed bicycles to try to trap a group of car strippers. Wells gets the short end of the stick several times: first, he arrives late at the beginning of the tour and winds up with a girls bike; then, he's yelled at by an irate newspaper customer (after Malloy tells her that Wells is her paperboy); and lastly, the bike he's riding is wrecked when capturing the car strippers. The look on the little girl's face when he tries to explain how her bike got wrecked is priceless.
- Another moment in the episode has Malloy and Reed pull over a man in a VW bus for rolling a stop sign. The man rants about how the police lump in everyone with long hair in together and they should see them as individuals, only for Malloy to calmly let him off with a warning (although he offers to write him a ticket if the guy really wants him to). The man's about to start his car when a high-pitched voice starts yelling "Down with the pigs!" from the back of the van. To Malloy and Reed's amazement (and amusement) there's a parrot in the back of the van who says nothing but that.
- In the episode "Easy Bare Rider", Malloy and Reed pull over a DUI suspect. Only to find that not only is the guy drunk, he's naked (he apparently spent the morning at Pismo Beach sans clothes and left his pants there). Reed calls for a sergeant to bring a blanket, while Malloy tries to explain to the sloshed gentleman why it would be inadvisable to get out of the car. At one point, Malloy snarks that they don't even have the usual crowd of gawkers that he could try to borrow a jacket or shirt from.
- Malloy and Reed pull over a M8 Greyhound
armored car (with gun turret). The bemused Malloy asks for the guy's license, but the driver also pulls out everything to show the car is street-legal and properly registered. He also says he's been pulled over 37 times in the past month. After a moment, Malloy suggests the driver give him a picture of the vehicle so they can send it out to the rest of the divisions so that they won't continue to bother him. - The trouble with The Alleged Car in "Beast", in an it-wasn't-funny-at-the-time sort of way.
- Speaking of The Alleged Car, a pair of drug dealers' choice of hiding place fails in a Dumb Crook Story kind of way: they hid the heroin in the gas tank—and a bag ruptured. Heroin + Engine = Kaput.
- In another episode, a burglar raids a synagogue, but is going to have some trouble fencing the typewriter, which is designed solely for Hebrew.
- In one of the airport episodes, a thief picks the pocket of a Marine bound for Okinawa and tells Reed and Malloy it's his own money for Chicago—not realizing the Marine has already changed his money into yen.
- A drug dealer tries to dry his pot in a laundromat dryer. Made even funnier when they find out that the guy he got the pot from sent him to the laundromat because the supplier's own dryer broke.
- "Dana Hall" had Officers Wells and Woods making impolite jokes about the capability of Reed's new female partner. During the shift, Reed and Hall bust a couple of car strippers. The one Hall pursues turns to see where she's at and collides face-first into a concrete post. After getting the guy checked out at the hospital, they bring him and his partner to the station to be booked. Woods, walking by, asks Reed if the bandaged crook put up a fight. When Hall says she was the one who took him into custody Woods gets wide-eyed and stammers "I gotta go find Wells!" After he darts off, Hall asks Reed not to tell Wells what really happened.
