Viewpoints: Second Season

By Richard Schickel

Khan!, the Chinese private detective, has already been canceled because he does not play chop-shtik as well as Charlie Chan used to. Archer has been ax-murdered for resisting the estimable Brian Keith's attempt to supply him with the personality Ross MacDonald has refused to give him in the overpraised detective novels on which the series was otherwise distinctly not based. Baretta, it turns out, is not a sawed-off Italian shotgun but a sawed-off character actor named Robert Blake who has borrowed Toma 's old disguise kit but no noticeable amount of his suburban appeal. Stacy Keach, heretofore ABC a favorite of PBS shows with delusions of cultural grandeur, manages on Caribe to stand out less like a bright-burning thespian tiger than a sore thumb.

Thus goes television's second season, which has brought the total number of prime-time network programs dealing with crime up to an egregious, indeed maniacal total of 24. It is, however, the 24th which may be the two-ton load of straw that breaks our backs. It is called S.W.A.T., which stands for "Special Weapons and Tactics" team. Judged by its premiere as a special two-hour segment of The Rookies, it seems to be aimed at the neo-fascist market. Let one lonely lunatic start squeezing off a few idle rounds, and great black trucks, chock full of cops encumbered by all the latest weaponry and communications equipment, roll magically to the scene and start blasting away. Meanwhile, their stalwart leader (Steve Forrest) tells us that if we are going to have a war on crime, cops had better stop being so damned human and lovable--like all those bums on the competing shows --and they had better start acting more like an army.

Only Hope. This show is, of course, the logical end product of TV's obsession with the police. The philosophy it espouses is that the men in blue should be given tanks, howitzers, B-52s and carte blanche to level any neighborhood through which they suspect a crook might be passing. After all, that is the way real armies are supposed to behave in the field. Every American home a hootch, every American street a Vietnamese jungle trail--that is the idea S.W.A.T peddles, and it is no more pal atable here and now than it was then and there. One can only hope that viewers will start suing for peace.

Or turn to Barney Miller, which is not only the best new cop show but also the best new sitcom as well. That is faint praise, considering the competition. But at least Barney Miller is not concentrating on one joke--Karen Valentine's shortness on Karen, George Jefferson's uppityness on The Jeffersons--or covering stupidity with loudness as they do on Hot L Baltimore. Admittedly, one half-hour show offers only faint hope of restoring the Mack Sennett spirit to our view of the police. Still, there is variety about the humor in a detective squad room that contains a black, a Puerto Rican, a Chinese, a slow-witted Pole, an old gaffer tottering gratefully toward his pension and a captain (Hal Linden) whose graceful toleration of foolishness never becomes syrupy.

Then, too, the parade of muggers, hookers, gay purse snatchers and shyster mouthpieces has offered some good opportunities for comic cross talk. Indeed, as they do in real life, the cops in Miller's group have developed a certain weary understanding of their regular clients that strikes one as truer to day-today police life than Stacy Keach trying to act tough while wearing a smart suit. Anyway, Barney Miller offers novelty and vitality and that rarest of TV commodities, good gag writing. It alone prevents the second season from being a total loss. One hit in nine trips to the plate by the networks--about their average.

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