S.W.A.T. – ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ (1975)

               SWAT, meaning Special Weapons and Tactics and referring to a specially trained division of a police force, was created as a term in 1964 by the Philadelphia Police Department. It came in direct response to a series of violent bank robberies that the city was finding difficult to respond to. This escalation of force proved unsurprisingly popular with other police departments, with the next major association to take up the unit being the LAPD in 1967. Tellingly one of the key implementation managers for Los Angeles PD, inspector Daryl Gates, wanted the acronym to mean ‘Special Weapons Attack Team,’ which I think gives a good idea as to where their heads were at. This adoption was made after the widespread freakout in law enforcement circles after the Watts riots in 1965 and was sold to the public as a response to lone-gunmen scenarios and a direct counter to the increased firepower available to civilians. I’ll just note that one of the first uses the newly formed unit was put to was to ‘oversee’ the ongoing strikes of the United Farm Workers union led by Cesar Chavez, including crowd control and the placement of snipers ‘just in case.’

Trivia: the audience never sees or hears the driver.

“S.W.A.T.” came into this world as a back door pilot disguised as a two-part episode of “The Rookie” during its third season. In fact the first episode of the two-part pilot was broadcast only six episodes after the Christmas episode I just wrote about. The only character appearing in these pilot episodes that made it to the series was the main character of Lt. Daniel ‘Hondo’ Harrelson as played by Steve Forrest. The entire concept of a SWAT team was introduced to the established characters in the episode, with some of them questioning its tactics and usefulness, but luckily their worries were proved fully unwarranted by the end and everyone was on board for more officers lugging around military weapons for use on civilians.

The show was instantly controversial due to its amount of violence and graphic (for the time) depictions of drug use and other societal problems. Having previously reveled in the gritty details of “The Untouchables” from over a decade before I question whether it was really an escalation or if the show got caught up in one of the media’s semi-recurring fits of puritanism. Its first season was a mid-season replacement and thus only twelve episodes long, with the second and final season being twenty-five for a total of thirty-seven episodes. Some claim that it was this inclusion of violence and the ongoing controversies around it that led to its cancellation, but I tend to think it’s more likely that the controversy caused the show’s move to a Saturday night time slot and a subsequent dive in the ratings, which was the ultimate reason for its demise. Of course it’s almost impossible for a piece of media to be too violent nowadays so it’s only fitting that it was revived both as a 2003 film and an ongoing tv remake that started in 2017.

Although it spun off of “The Rookies” it was a very different show from its progenitor, both structurally and tonally. Instead of more picaresque adventures paired with soapy personal drama it focused on a single case each week which somehow involved the SWAT team. In the real world such units are reactive in nature by design, called in when the regular officers find themselves overwhelmed or when a particular situation needs some specialized equipment or knowledge. They are not an investigatory unit and would have little to no interaction with the general public. If it’s made up of permanent members they would likely wait on-call until needed like the staff of a firehouse, making it somewhat more complicated to generate enough stories for a long-running weekly series.

They save the budget for action scenes.

It's not impossible, of course, the current remake series is on 149 episodes and counting. What’s surprising about the original show is how quickly it got downright goofy with its setups. Here’s the wiki summary of the 19^th episode of the modern remake series: “The S.W.A.T. team is assigned to protect a high-profile Russian journalist who is visiting Los Angeles from assassins but, when her unwillingness to cooperate results in a shootout, Hondo forces her to reveal that she is on the verge of uncovering a massive weapons smuggling operation and is trying to meet a source who will provide the final key.” Here’s where the original had gotten to by then: “Two teenagers seeking shelter in the warehouse of Colby Electronics anonymously alert Olympic SWAT after a group of criminals break in and kill two police officers. Before they can escape, a teenager sees the face of one of the criminals—former U.S. Senator Greg Colby.” Those are two pretty different scenarios, tone-wise. Other episodes of the original cramm the team into situations such as: criminals loading up a stolen tugboat with dynamite and holding a Nobel-prize winning marine biologist hostage for a million dollars, or a guy avenging his dead wife by listening in on police scanners to snipe suspects. Quite a lot of episodes revolve around the team either protecting someone they don’t want to protect or assaulting a location containing boarded-up gunmen with sympathetic backstories.

The show wasn’t on air long enough to cycle through its main talent. It was led by the aforementioned Steve Forrest as ‘Hondo’ Harrelson and featured four other SWAT officers: T.J. McCabe, played by James Doleman, Dominic Luca, played by Mark Shers, David ‘Deacon’ Kay, played by Rod Perry, and Jim Street, played by Robert Urich. It also had a few recurring characters, such as Hondo’s wife Betty, played by Ellen Weston, and Rose Marie as a kind of mobile lunch lady named Hilda, who features in today’s episode. Secondary stories in the episodes would rotate between the cast’s personal lives, with most of the attention going to Hondo. Urich was the only real breakout star of the series and we’ll see him again when I take a look at an episode of “Vega$.”

What first struck me about this episode is that it has the premise of a mid-tier episode of “Columbo” with the brains of a cocker spaniel. I want to give the show some credit for winding it’s A and B stories together by the end but the way they get there is convoluted to the point of annoyance. I’ll summarize the B story fairly quickly, since it’s basically an episode of “The Love Boat” set in a children’s ward.

Yeah, that's how that works. Totally silent.

Like just about every episode I’ve watched so far the members of the SWAT team have been raising toys and funds for charity, in this case presents and a party for the children who are going to be in the hospital on Christmas day. This is what ropes the lunch lady Hildy into their plans as they lean on her to help with the catering. While they’re visiting the hospital to prepare, Hondo runs into the hospital’s main rich benefactor, Doris Wainright Bristol, played by guest star Anne Francis. It turns out she’s spending the holidays at the hospital undergoing cosmetic surgery. She claims its because they pamper her so much but it becomes clear very quickly that she’s desperately lonely. She and Honda have a bit of history together so he keeps checking in on her, gently urging her that maybe volunteering to help with the children’s Christmas party might be more fulfilling than another round of facial peels. While she’s happy to write a check to help offset the cost of the shindig she resists attending until the very end of the episode, where she happily serves food to the children and marvels about how they don’t know she’s rich but like her anyways. It’s a very predictable, sappy story that wraps up complicated emotions in a tight little bow.

It's the rest of the episode that is annoyingly stupid. It doesn’t necessarily start off that way: a career criminal with a doctor girlfriend gets her to admit him as a terminal patient under a false identity because he knows that rich lady Bristol always insists on wearing her jewelry around, including when she’s checked into the hospital. He plans on laying low until Christmas Eve, when activity at the hospital is at a low ebb, in order to steal the jewelry and flee with his lady overseas. The plan diverts from any possible cleverness when it’s revealed that he and another associate are just going to bust into her hospital room with guns and take them by force. It also has wonderful sections where the girlfriend will act controlled and intelligent when she’s being a doctor but the second she’s alone with her criminal boyfriend she starts simpering and hanging on his every word. At one point she starts to point out problems with the plan and he shushes her and tells her to stop thinking already. I’m a little surprised that the episode even acknowledges that women doctors are a thing that exists.

              What this means is that we have a trio of thieves planning a crime in the same hospital where a group of SWAT officers are putting together a children’s Christmas party. I’m willing to buy that as a small enough coincidence to swallow for a 70’s cop show. Where my suspension of disbelief starts to become strained is when the head of those same officers just happens to be social friends with the target of the thieves, a key fact in their eventual downfall. There are less stupid ways to accomplish this end.

Pulse-pounding stuff.

              Being a rich white lady of course Bristol brought her personal staff at the hospital, including a secretary and a bodyguard who’s a retired police officer. When the third member of the thieves turns up at the hospital to supposedly visit the guy who was admitted, the bodyguard recognizes him and starts poking around. There’s an odd but necessary scene where he tells the secretary that he’s going to warn their employer and call the cops but she says he’s just being paranoid and should keep his mouth shut, which he does. I have no ability to justify this decision to you, it’s just as stupid as it sounds, but the episode wouldn’t have happened without it. Even more stupid is that when the bodyguard was nosing around he asked the accomplice doctor about the visitor, who of course tipped off the other two, who then decide to keep going with the plan anyways. I almost threw my pen at the screen. Eventually the bodyguard just barges into the room of the thief admitted under a false identity and recognizes him. As he’s telling them all how he’s going to blow the whistle on the whole operation the main bad guy shoots him with a totally real and not wildly inaccurate silenced six-shooter. Those things totally exist.

              They dump the body at the back of the hospital where it’s quickly discovered. There’s now a whole other set of detectives at the hospital looking into the murder but after she learns of his death the secretary decides to take her story to Hondo and his team of SWAT agents instead. So I guess there’s just an extraneous group of police officers wandering around the hospital taking statements during the climax of the episode? After he talks to the secretary Hondo takes his concerns to Ms. Bristol’s doctor, who’s more than happy to supply him with the name and chart of every patient admitted within a few days of her admittance. I was winding up to do a whole rant about how inaccurate this was when I realized I don’t actually know the relevant rules governing the divulgence of medical records in 1975 and do not care to do the research to find out, so we’re just going to blow past all that. After spending about five minutes making the slightest effort they recognize the doctored chart and the entire squad is called to the hospital on full alert. They pile into the van and head over, sirens wailing, then split up once they arrive: sniper to the roof, one to the parking lot to cover escape attempts, and two inside to back up Hondo, all lugging military rifles around.

              I’ll point out that the cops have no way of knowing that the criminals are already on the move and this is a wild escalation. They turn out to be right, but that’s no excuse.

              Perhaps all of the criticisms about violence were affecting the show because for a wham-bam climax the ending is pretty tame. The bad guys threaten Ms. Bristol into giving up the jewels. The doctor accomplice sees Hondo tearing around the hospital and warns them that the cops are onto them, so they grab Ms. Bristol and the secretary as possible hostages and head for the service elevator. As they’re waiting for the elevator Hondo finally huffs his way up the stairs to their floor and yells at them to freeze. They hide behind the hostages, fire some laughably fake shots, and take the elevator to the ground floor where one of the other officers is waiting for them. They toss off a few shots and get back in the elevator and go down another floor to the basement. They send the doctor out to grab the getaway car since she’s not burdened by a hostage and then get pinned down by Hondo and the two backup officers. The non-doctor accomplice quickly breaks and runs out of the hospital where he jumps into the getaway car. The doctor just starts screaming for her boyfriend as they peel off only for the sniper to apparently wound the driver, causing him to crash. The officer in the parking lot quickly takes them into custody.

Yeah, make the sick kids stand up and sing.

              There was a line in the wiki where it claimed that the LAPD itself was supposedly concerned about the amount of violence portrayed in the show, worrying that it would make people think less of the department, and while I scoff at that idea in general if the next scene is characteristic of the show in general I will grudgingly concede the point. The main bad guy is now by himself with two hostages, one of which he has under either arm with his gun pointed at the officers. He starts shuffling the three of them towards the door when the supposedly highly trained SWAT officers start firing bullets a few inches to their side. He creeps towards the door, they keep shooting. This is revealed to be a distraction so that Hondo can crawl around some boxes unseen and leap onto the criminal and subdue him. The amount of sheer stupidity and recklessness displayed by everyone in this scene just poleaxed me. Of course it works on the television show but I can see even the 70’s LAPD objecting to a portrayal as dumb as that.

              I can’t call this the worst episode of tv I’ve watched this month because “The F.B.I.” exists, but I kind of think it might be the stupidest one so far. I suspect that I put my finger on something when I mentioned that centering a traditional crime show on a SWAT team, with the inherent limitations of such a specialized force, seemed likely to cause problems for the show’s writers, since the premise became strained way earlier than it should have. I guess they didn’t have the ability to shift tones to being a full-on action show likes its contemporary remake, either due to budget constrictions or it just not being feasible with 70’s television production. None of the characters are particularly memorable, even by the low standards the shows have set so far, and it has the emotional intelligence and sophistication of one of the cheaper Hallmark cards. I was all set to rail against a show glorifying one of the single greatest escalations of force against the civilian population in US history but based on this episode it doesn’t have anything interesting to say about it, not even in its defense. I really think that a bunch of tv writers read a couple of magazine articles about this new police force called a SWAT team, learned they could dress up some actors in body armor and haul around big guns, and shoved that into an otherwise anodyne policy procedural. I’m willing to bet that the modern version has a whole lot more going on that’s objectionable, but this show just isn’t worth getting that upset about.