12/1/2023 0 Comments Fish barney miller![]() Harris likes attention and he dresses sharp. Dietrich exists in a world without people, just entities. He’s aspirational and appreciates great art, fine cooking, world cinema and his own prose, which tends to be over-rich. His aim is to be the classiest, a man of taste and style. But the two can co-exist because, in the end, Harris doesn’t want to be the smartest. He just likes to stay interested, and he figures that’s what people are for: to provide him with subjects for his experiments.ĭietrich’s special victim is Harris (Ron Glass), who’s definitely the second smartest of the detectives. Yet the traps don’t cause any harm to his colleagues Dietrich’s too benign for that. His defining trait is that he enjoys turning conversations into traps that his colleagues wander into. He’s simply a brainy fellow who’s been alone his whole life. As far as I can tell, the series never mentions that Dietrich is German. The same goes for Dietrich (Steve Landesberg), his fellow oddball. Yemana’s a one-off who can be understood in relation to nothing but himself. By 1990 his dreadful filing would have been the peg for “Are you sure you’re Japanese?” gags. ![]() Nick’s salient traits are somnolence, gambling, eccentricity, kindness and lack of order. Nor did the Japanese have any particular stereotype the producers could slap on him, not unless you count Pearl Harbor and the production of cheap radios, neither of which apply to Japanese Americans per se. Back in the 1970s America had read far fewer articles about high-achieving immigrants from the Pacific Rim. Yemana’s in a different situation, ethnically. ![]() Wojo (Max Gail) gets smarter as the series goes on, but for the first few seasons he’s the dimmest bulb in the room. WASPs don’t have to jawbone the world into getting their name right (“It’s spelled just like it sounds!”). Another give-away regarding the pamphlet: “The WASP, a sweet, guileless clod, is Wojo.” Wojo, or Wojociewicz, is definitely a Pole, and Poles definitely aren’t WASPs. Hence his last name and the program’s occasional gags about touchy whites and World War II. “The Chinese American is sad-sack Nick Yemana (Japanese American Jack Soo),” the copy says, “the culprit who makes the squad room’s famously lethal coffee.” Nick isn’t Chinese just like Jack Soo, he’s Japanese. I’m the only person to have read this booklet. Buy the complete set of Barney Miller DVDs and you get a booklet full of liner notes. ![]()
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