The Bookie

This one's just strange. In Jack Webb's alter ego Joe Friday's world there's no gray areas. Everything's either black or white. This episode's an exception: there's sympathy for the bad guy. Weirder still is the fact that the bad guy's Bobby Troup, who was far-more-happily-married to Webb's ex-wife Julie London (the couple would pair up in Webb's hit series Emergency! four seasons later). It's interesting to note that that Webb/Friday never would show a sympathetic doper or unrepentant hippie (there was one episode where hippie scum Gary Crosby got a haircut after realizing the error in his lifestyle), so the criminal had to be involved in the relatively innocuous activity of bookmaking. Also, gaze in awe here of Friday's smooth pick up lines. He thrives on rejection. Very, very strange stuff.