With "77 Sunset Strip" nearing the end of its fourth season, someone at Warner Bros. apparently felt the series needed a change-of-pace, and the result must have come as somewhat as a shock to its loyal viewers. The set-up is fine, finally promoting Jeff Spencer's pal, police Lt. Gilmore, to the lead role. This time, however, it's the cop who needs the private eye's help when a powerful homicidal mobster tries to pin the blame for a murder he committed on Lt. Gilmore! Sounds silly, but it's played dead seriously and, up to a point, it's a surprisingly gripping if downright nasty episode as the monstrous mobster terrifies Gilmore's wife with threatening phone calls regarding the safety of the Gilmores' teenage daughter who's away from home attending a private school. Fortunately, this potentially stomach-turning subplot is quickly dropped, but what transpires is still quite sickening with the graphically depicted murders of two of the mobster's cronies, one of them being a rather endearing blonde floozy whose gruesome murder seems purely gratuitous, especially when the camera doesn't have the decency to pan away from her demise but instead stays focused on the poor sobbing girl, almost taking a fiendish delight as she screams, takes a bullet in the chest, and slowly slumps to the floor.
If you think I'm insinuating that this episode goes way over the top as far as good taste is concerned, you're absolutely correct. One of the main pleasures about this series was that it never took itself too seriously, always keeping an appealingly light-hearted tone and a subtle sense of humor that made every episode so much fun. "Framework for a Badge" is no fun at all, leaving the viewer with a bad taste in the mouth. But that's not to say there aren't compensations that still make it worth watching: The script is taut and tight (I blame the director for trashing it); the Ivy-League-handsome Roger Smith is always a welcome presence, enhancing every episode he's in by portraying Jeff Spencer as a sensitive, quick-witted, good-hearted heartthrob; and the entire cast deserves praise for their uniformly excellent performances, among them Byron Keith (always terrific as Jeff's policeman buddy); Irene Hervey (the lovely leading lady of many 'B' movies of the '30s and '40s, now still luminous in her late 40s and downright heartbreaking as the policeman's distraught wife; and Tom Drake as the mobster's shifty lawyer only 18 years older than when he achieved stardom as Judy Garland's dreamy "Boy Next Door" in the classic "Meet Me in St. Louis", his good looks long gone, and his now-ravaged face, at only 43, betraying his years of heavy drinking that ironically qualified him for a career as a first-rate character actor.
If you think I'm insinuating that this episode goes way over the top as far as good taste is concerned, you're absolutely correct. One of the main pleasures about this series was that it never took itself too seriously, always keeping an appealingly light-hearted tone and a subtle sense of humor that made every episode so much fun. "Framework for a Badge" is no fun at all, leaving the viewer with a bad taste in the mouth. But that's not to say there aren't compensations that still make it worth watching: The script is taut and tight (I blame the director for trashing it); the Ivy-League-handsome Roger Smith is always a welcome presence, enhancing every episode he's in by portraying Jeff Spencer as a sensitive, quick-witted, good-hearted heartthrob; and the entire cast deserves praise for their uniformly excellent performances, among them Byron Keith (always terrific as Jeff's policeman buddy); Irene Hervey (the lovely leading lady of many 'B' movies of the '30s and '40s, now still luminous in her late 40s and downright heartbreaking as the policeman's distraught wife; and Tom Drake as the mobster's shifty lawyer only 18 years older than when he achieved stardom as Judy Garland's dreamy "Boy Next Door" in the classic "Meet Me in St. Louis", his good looks long gone, and his now-ravaged face, at only 43, betraying his years of heavy drinking that ironically qualified him for a career as a first-rate character actor.