Title: The RAND Report
Directed by: Noam Pitlik
Written by: Roland Kibbee and Reinhold Weege (story), Reinhold Weege (teleplay)
Air Date: January 20, 1977
Previous: Community Relations
Next: Fire '77
Guest Starring: James Gregory, Martin Garner, Anna Berger, John William Evans
"The RAND Report" is the 14th episode of the third season of Barney Miller.
The whole precinct is in an uproar over a report written by the RAND Corporation
, one of those awful think tanks, and published in "Newsweek". The report claims that plainclothes detectives are mostly useless and that uniformed cops on the beat do most of crime prevention in cities. All the detectives in the 12th are offended, while Levitt, who is bitter about not making detective himself, smugly waves the report around.
It turns out that it isn't just the 12th Precinct that's overreacting to the report, it's the entire NYPD. An edict comes down from on high that the most junior detectives, Detectives 3rd Grade, are to don uniforms and walk a beat one week a month. The 12th only has one 3rd Grade detective—Wojciehowicz. Wojo, who has failed the sergeant's exam four times and is pretty embarrassed about that, gets very upset when he's told that he's going to have to walk a beat. In fact, he quits.
Meanwhile, Fish is sent out to investigate a report of robberies at a nursing home. The squad room also has to deal with one Mr. Himmel, an old man who comes into the precinct in hysterics: his wife is trapped in an elevator with a purse snatcher, and he is certain that she's being raped.
Tropes:
- All Gays Love Theater: Luger thinks that every Hollywood actor, past or present, is gay—except John Wayne.
- Bleak Abyss Retirement Home: How Fish describes the retirement home where he goes to investigate burglaries. He says that on visiting day, they all get dressed up, and nobody comes.
- Celebrity Paradox: Inspector Luger says that every actor in Hollywood is gay except for John Wayne. Left unanswered is whether Luger has ever seen John Wayne film The Sons of Katie Elder and why the actor who appeared as Morgan in that film looks just like him.
- Dramatic Shattering: Still seething about having to go out on patrol as a uniform, Wojo says "I gotta break something." He calms down, steps out the squad room door...and then shatters the glass in the door.
- Elevator Failure: Mrs. Harris and the purse snatcher got stuck in an elevator when she chased after him, and it failed. Mr. Harris is in mortal terror that she's being raped, but all that happened was that she and the purse snatcher had a pleasant conversation.
- Everybody Did It: The solution to Fish's case of robberies at the retirement home. They were all stealing from each other, because they're bored.
- Lame Pun Reaction: Barney was such a Straight Man that it became a kind of inverse Running Gag about how he wasn't funny. In this episode he comes into work, jokes "Another day, another collar", and is offended when none of his detectives laugh.
- Take This Job and Shove It: Wojo is pretty insecure about not being able to pass the sergeant's exam, so when he's told he has to put on a uniform again he freaks out and quits on the spot. The episode ends with Wojo coming back to work in his uniform, still unhappy but deciding he shouldn't throw away a career.
