It was a lazy Saturday morning at the content mill when I got the tweet: the script for an unproduced episode of Police Squad had leaked all over the internet and it was my job to clean up the mess. My name is Matthew Dessem, nights and weekends culture editor, Brow Beat, a special detail of the Slate culture team.
Police Squad … now there was a name I hadn’t heard in years. It aired on ABC in the spring and summer of 1982, only a few months before I went deaf. We’d all thought there was something a little fishy about the way it was canceled—the network sent guppies—but now, 35 years later, the legendary sitcom was a very cold case. Grabbing my warmest coat, I hit the siren, then stopped by the motor pool to get the siren fixed. It was 6:42 when I arrived at the scene.
The script had been found on the website of David Misch, in a part of the internet so bad even break-dancing cops stayed away. I remembered Misch well—he used to run with Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker during the 1980s jogging craze, plus he wrote for Police Squad—but I could tell he’d come down in the world just by looking at his address: the bottom of a mine shaft in Death Valley. A couple of hired gorillas from the network had already paid him a visit, judging from the banana peels. He wasn’t happy to see me.
“Is ood a ee a seeth efisodo o-leaf squid is it adent ee cahol!” Mish sneered.
“Snap out of it!” I told him, unsnapping his gag.
“This would have been the seventh episode of Police Squad! if it hadn’t been canceled,” Misch said. “All the episodes had two titles as a joke, so this one was called ‘ “Testimony of Terror” or: “A Kitten for Amy.” ’ ”
“Can I quote you on that?”
“Sure,” Misch said. “Just remember to alternate between single and double quotes when you tell people, ‘The episode’s title is “ ‘Testimony of Terror’ or: ‘A Kitten for Amy.’ ” ’ ”
“So you’re saying, ‘Be careful with quotation marks when you tell people, “The episode’s title is ‘ “Testimony of Terror” or: “A Kitten for Amy?” ’ ” ’ ” I inquired.
“Not exactly,” Misch replied, handing me the script.
The story was a parody of Ironside, NBC’s cop show in which Raymond Burr played a detective, paralyzed from the waist down, who solves crimes in a wheelchair. In Misch’s script, Police Squad’s Chief Ironblock gets caught in a scene from Goldfinger—also in a car crusher—and has to learn new methods to fight crimes now that he’s a 2,500-pound block of iron.
“I was supposed to direct it, too, but ABC canceled the whole show. Later, Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker reused the gag and the exclamation mark in Top Secret” Misch said. “If I were writing this on the internet instead of saying it out loud to you, here at the bottom of this mine shaft in Death Valley, in a conversation that definitely really happened, I’d embed a YouTube clip right here and prove it to you!”
“Your story’s garbage, Misch,” I said, throwing his story in the garbage. “You got Lieutenant Detective Frank Drebin right, but there’s no Chief Ironblock on Police Squad!”
“Maybe not,” Misch said. He handed me a 20-dollar bill and winked. “But maybe you remember a little character named ‘Norberg but Played by Peter Lupus Instead of O.J. Simpson Like in The Naked Gun so You Can Enjoy His Incompetence Without Thinking About Those Horrible Murders Unless You Remember Who Played the Character In the Movies’? ”
“Maybe,” I said, handing him a $50. “Would this help me remember?”
“Maybe you wanna take a look at Page 20, then.” Misch said. Neither one of us acknowledged the 200-dollar bill he slipped into my pocket.
“Maybe I do,” I said, showering him with tokens from Bally’s Aladdin’s Castle. “Maybe I do.”
“Maybe you should,” said Misch, as he backed up a dump truck full of cowry shells.
Maybe I did. On Page 20, Norberg was trying to cheer up Chief Ironblock without reminding him that he’d been mashed into a block of iron:
David Misch
It was hysterical. “Get a hold of yourself!” I hollered, slapping the script again and again until everything was quiet. “Your screenplay checks out,” I told Misch as he stamped a due date on the card in the back cover. “I’m going to post a link to it on Slate. Looks like you’ll be doing all your screenwriting in the Statesville Prison from now on.”
“But you’ll get coal dust all over the script on your way out of the mine,” Misch pointed out. “You want to borrow my briefcase to keep it safe? It’s titanium.”
I took his advice. “You might say this is Police Squad’s toughest case yet,” I quipped.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” he told me.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” I replied. Then we both froze in place as, behind us, an entire section of the coal mine caved in. Miners and rescue workers ran around frantically trying to save their comrades from crushing death, but David Misch and I stayed perfectly still. Almost.
