Title: Graft
Directed by: Noam Pitlik
Written by: Lila Garrett and Sandy Krinksi (story), Danny Arnold and Chris Hayward (teleplay)
Air Date: February 13, 1975
Previous: Snow Job
Next: The Courtesans
Guest Starring: Dick O'Neill, Buddy Lester
"Graft" is the fourth episode of the first season of Barney Miller.
Inspector Kelly, formerly of the 12th Precinct, returns to the squad room...as a representative of Internal Affairs. Kelly, who seems to resent Barney, makes barely veiled threats about busting members of the 12th for graft and corruption. (He's also aggressively racist, insulting Chano, Yemana, and Wojo.)
Suddenly, almost everyone is paranoid. Wojo reveals that he wrote some answers for the detective's exam on his shirt, and is worried that IA will bust him for that. Fish worries about a tax deduction that he took for a police convention in San Francisco years ago. Even Barney is stressing out, yelling at his wife Liz for getting cut-rate steaks from a butcher who likes cops.
Tropes:
- Call-Back: The men of the 12th are so paranoid about Kelly that they hesitate to pick up the newspaper that that the newsboy routinely delivers for free. At the end of the episode, after Kelly's been booted out of IA, Barney makes a big show out of picking up the paper and reading it.
- Dom Com: Barney goes home and blows up at Liz because he's stressed about work. (This would be the last Dom Com scene on the show as it was exclusively a Work Com thereafter.)
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The second, and last, episode to feature a scene in Barney's apartment.
- Foreshadowing: Kelly blows off Barney's contempt, saying "I'm gonna do this job no matter where it takes me, from the smallest precinct up to the commissioner's office!" It does take Kelly to the commissioner's office...and he's busted back down to beat cop.
- The Gambling Addict: How addicted to gambling is Yemana? When Yemana worries about making bets with his bookie on a police phone line, he has the bookie arrested, so they can place bets from the comfort of the jail cell.
- Internal Affairs: An IA cop named Kelly threatens to nail members of the 12th for corruption. (Later in the series IA would be represented by a recurring character, Lt. Scanlon.)
- Politically Incorrect Villain: If it weren't enough that Kelly comes barging into the precinct breathing threats of investigations, he also makes bigoted/racist comments to Chano (Puerto Rican), Wojo (Polish), and Yemana (Japanese).
- Sarcasm Failure: Kelly horribly butchers some Spanish to Chano, saying "Bonay diaz" when he was going for "buenos dias." Chano sarcastically says "José Feliciano!", to which Kelly answers "Pretty good, thanks."
