When Dragnet returned to prime time after an eight-year absence, Jack Webb’s hard-boiled cop show had clearly left the ’50s behind. The story we were about to see was not only true, it was ripped from the headlines: Sergeant Friday and his new sidekick, Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan), must investigate the spread of a new hallucinogenic drug among L.A. teens.
The episode plays like a more subdued version of “Reefer Madness,” highlighted by director Webb’s version of a “psychedelic” party and Friday’s hip lingo. “You’re pretty high and far out. What kind of kick are you on, son?” he grills his prisoner, Benjie “Blue Boy” Carver (Michael Burns), an 18-year-old who paints half his face blue and the other half yellow. Do we have to tell you how “The LSD Story” ends up when the final dum-de-dum-dum is heard?
Original Airdate: January 12, 1967
