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1As a dedicated cop, Joe Friday encounters more than his share of human tragedy.
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3* [[http://ia700304.us.archive.org/23/items/Dragnet_OTR/Dragnet_49-12-22_ep030_Twenty-Two_Rifle_for_Christmas.mp3 "Twenty-Two Rifle for Christmas"]], a ChristmasEpisode that was made for both the radio and TV versions, teaches AnAesop about the dangers of giving guns to children as gifts -- in the harshest way possible. Stanley Johnstone finds the rifle his parents bought him for Christmas. He loads it and takes it to show to his friend Stevie Morheim. While the children are playing with the gun, it accidentally goes off, killing Stevie. Stanley takes Stevie's body to a nearby cave and prays for God to bring his friend back to life, but it doesn't work. When Stevie's father is told, he breaks down sobbing, babbling about all the nice gifts he bought for his son -- gifts he decides to give to Stanley.
4* "The Big High" - an elderly gentleman asks Friday and Gannon to talk to his daughter and her husband about their marijuana use, worried that their behavior is putting his infant granddaughter in danger. After several debates with the couple throughout the episode, Friday and Gannon get called back to the residence and find everyone whacked-out on drugs. Friday asks where the baby is, and the Mom remembers she put her in the tub. They rush upstairs, only to find out it's too late. [[VomitingCop Gannon literally runs out of the bathroom because he's going to be sick at the sight.]]
5* In one episode where it starts with the report of a gardener finding a baby in a garbage can. One would just shed tears and cry at the thought of such after seeing that part.
6* One episode involving a child abuse case begins with Friday detailing several cases of abuse to a woman from a local community organization. She truly had no idea how awful abuse cases could be as she breaks down in tears after Friday and Gannon leave when she asks to be alone and collect herself. Even Friday was having a hard time maintaining his professional attitude while outlining the details of each case. And many of the cases are NightmareFuel.
7* "The Starlet" from the 1960s revival had Friday and Gannon searching for a 16 year old girl who ran away and came to LA to be in the movies. She succeeded, [[GoneHorriblyRight too bad it was in porn]]. At the end, [[spoiler: they find her in her room in a dingy rooming house lying on a matress on the floor, having killed herself with a fatal overdose. By her side was an envelope adressed 'To whom it may concern.' The letter inside had the words, 'To whom it may concern' and nothing else.]]
8* "The Big Children" has Friday listing the details he has to write on a [[DeathOfAChild report]] for a neglected and abused toddler.
9-->'''Joe Friday''' ''(narrating)'': John Albert Kessler: white male American. Age: twenty two months. All the pertinent facts and data would be listed on the crime report. And if and when the case was closed the report would be filed away. Wouldn’t be different from a thousand other dead body reports: same size; same color; same number up in the left hand corner. In the course of ten or twenty years on the job a police officer sees a lot of them. Most of them he forgets. A few of them he never forgets.
10* "The Big Producer" qualifies, although more in the TV version than the radio. A former movie maven who was been reduced to making porn and selling it to high schoolers relives his glory days in the abandoned (or underused for the radio version) studio where he shot his now forgotten films.
11* Joe Friday cries exactly twice over the entire course of the series: in the radio episode "The Big Sorrow" and its subsequent adaptation for television. The episode was written immediately after the sudden death of actor Barton Yarborough; Jack Webb decided that it was only right that Romero go out the same way as his portrayer and much of the episode deals with the sad fallout from Romero's loss. There was [[RealitySubtext more to it]] than pure acting - Webb and Yarborough were good friends.
12* Any scene in General Receiving Hospital where a priest is called in--it means there's nothing the doctors can do.
13* Any homicide case is this automatically.
14** Almost any episode where a police officer is killed on duty.
15** At the end of "The Big Thanksgiving", Friday and Smith get called down to a warehouse where a robber shot it out with police. Friday's told a uniformed officer, Barney Swanson, was wounded. Swanson banters with Friday a bit, then asks Friday to call his wife. Friday looks through his wallet to find the number, but when he asks Swanson he sees the uniformed officer has died.
16** The episode "The Big Hammer" from the 1960's revival. The landlord of an apartment was found bludgeoned to death by a claw hammer. Gannon and Friday are questioning an elderly man who lived in the apartments, and who went with the victim every Wednesday to lay flowers on their wives' graves. After they finish questioning him, the man mentions that Wednesdays will be a lot longer now, because now he has three graves to lay flowers on. It's the man's absolutely heartbroken, verge-of-tears expression that makes it.
17** In "The Big Barette", we see the murder victim's funeral.
18** "The Big Bar" deals with a robber of bars who, after claiming all the cash, [[MoralEventHorizon shoots the bartender anyway]]. In one scene, the widow of one of the bartenders is trying to come to grips with the fact that her husband has been senselessly, violently murdered in front of her.
19** In the 1966 movie, Friday and Gannon have to break the news to a French immigrant that his brother, visiting from Paris, has been murdered, and since neither Friday nor Gannon speak French, it falls on the man himself to break the news to his nephew, the dead man's son (who can't be older than eight or nine). The kid's shock and grief is palpable, and when he implores Friday and Gannon to find and punish the killers, you will be weeping with him. By the way, the uncle was clearly planning to celebrate his naturalization as a US citizen, but it will now be marred by the fact that his brother will not be there celebrating with him. The most heart-crushing part of that scene is when the boy is singing a French translation of "Swanee River" for his uncle, oblivious to the family tragedy.
20** In one of the early radio episodes, Friday and Romero are investigating the robbery and shooting of two military officers, one of them fatally. Later, after they interview the dead man's father, Romero comments that the old man has just about everything he could want. Friday replies, "Except his son."
21** "[[SpoilerTitle Claude Jimmerson, Child Killer]]". Two missing girls, ages eleven and seven, and it turns out a couple days after they vanish that they were raped and murdered by someone their parents knew. Put yourself in the parents' shoes.
22** The series finale, in Detective HQ division, is an ''Series/Adam12''-esque collection of cases Friday and Gannon deal with, focusing on the victims of the crimes. It opens and closes with robbery-homicides.
23*** A friendly old man devoted to his great-granddaughter is murdered for his social security money. Imagine being the one to break the news to the kid, who's already been orphaned in an auto accident.
24*** The final segment covers the robbery of a mom-and-pop grocery store, where the robber shoots the husband in the stomach to punctuate a taunt. Later, in the hospital, the status update comes in the form of a priest to give him his last rites.
25--->'''Witness''': ''That two-bit thief gets his [Miranda] rights, and Julio gets his last [rites].''
26* In one episode, concerning the fallout of the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., Friday has investigated enough violent deaths to know Coretta Scott King would want the media circus and the demonstrations to be over and done with so she and the kids could have a chance to grieve and heal.
27* Mrs. Carver's tearful request to Friday and Gannon in "The Big LSD" that when they find her son Benjie ("Blue Boy") Carver to tell him she and her husband still love him is HarsherInHindsight because when Friday and Gannon do find Blue Boy, he's an hour dead of a barbiturate overdose.
28* One episode has Friday and Gannon investigating a LoonyFan who only ever steals TheMerch of a few comic book heroes. But when he's caught, he turns out to have turned to those superheroes as an escape from a painful life--his dad walked out when he was one, and all through school he was mercilessly bullied. At the end, he needs psychiatric help.
29* In one episode, a young married woman and her 9-week-old baby go missing. It turns out that the young woman was committed by her sister to a mental hospital after suffering a severe breakdown. The woman's mother-in-law had been constantly harassing her, trying to make the woman divorce her husband and give up her baby. The sister reveals that in addition, what finally caused the breakdown was the death of the baby. She tearfully concludes that the mother-in-law got what she wanted: "Harriet hasn't got the baby. Nobody's got him."
30* The WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue to an episode that has Friday and Lockwood save a jumper from suicide reveals that [[ShootTheShaggyDog he took his own life anyway a few months later]].
31* In "The Big Honeymoon", the first victim of this especially cruel scam was DrivenToSuicide when the con man broke her heart and absconded with the honeymoon funds.
32* "The Big Knife": The suspect literally breaks down in tears when he's finally caught. The MotiveRant that he gives reads more like a checklist for intrusive thoughts that are escalating. He cries about how he didn't actually want to hurt the girls, but he couldn't sleep, couldn't study, couldn't concentrate unless he slashed a girl. And then he thanks them for catching him as he felt like he was going to kill someone next.

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