Barney Miller - Atomic Bomb

It's getting to the point where a large percentage of people visiting RF Cafe are too young to remember a TV show called Barney Miller (starring Hal Linden). It was a prime time sitcom from the 1970s that centered a New York City police detective office. The main character was Captain Barney Miller, and there was an accompanying cast of characters that dealt with events and people in their own unique ways.

My favorite character was Detective Sargent Arthur Dietrich (Steve Landesberg). He was the serious intellectual with a very dry sense of humor that came out at just the right moment. One episode has always stuck out in my memory where a college student claims to have built a working model of a thermonuclear bomb as part of his Master's thesis project. All it lacks for detonation, per him, is plutonium. The on-hand bomb squad expert ridiculed the idea of it being any kind of real bomb, his decades of experience on the force being his guide (still has all his fingers as proof of it). All the guys in the office have just finished dismissing the notion as ridiculous when Dietrich walks in, takes a look at the contraption, and casually asks, "Where did you get the atom bomb?"

I produced a clip below that shows the scene.

"Atomic Bomb" aired December 22, 1977 on Barney Miller

Posted February 4, 2015