Dragnet : Friday's promotion to Lieutenant.

Friday's promotion to Lieutenant.

It is largely forgotten now, but during the 50s version of the show, Sgt. Friday was promoted to Lieutenant and Officer Smith was promoted to Sergeant on the final episode of the second to last season. This was an interesting episode because we found out right at the beginning that Frank was getting the promotion, and much of the episode involved Frank bragging to Joe about how he considered them to be equals now, which meant, among other things, that he was no longer going to do all the driving. The very last scene shows Frank and Joe waiting outside the room where all the department's promotions are going to be announced. Frank wants to be the last person to enter the room, and he keeps waiting for the person to show up whose getting a promotion to Lieutenant. That's when he finds out that it's Friday who gets the Lieutenant promotion.

It always annoyed me that when Webb decided to resume the series in the 60s with Harry Morgan, he reverted Friday back to the rank of Sergeant with no explanation. I'm sure Webb did that because "Sgt. Friday" had become such a part of pop culture, but it still offended me that they never explained why he was no longer a lieutenant. It would have been easy for them to throw in a quick explanation about cutbacks or layoffs requiring many officers to take a step down in rank, but it was never mentioned.
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