Title: Atomic Bomb
Directed by: Noam Pitlik
Written by: Reinhold Weege and Tom Reeder
Air Date: December 15, 1977
Previous: Tunnel
Next: The Bank
Guest Starring: Phil Leeds, John Getz, Karl Bruck, Will Seltzer, Helen Verbit
"Atomic Bomb" is the 11th episode of the fourth season of Barney Miller.
An extremely smelly man, namely a sewer worker, comes in to the 12th Precinct. He reports that while repairing the pipes in an apartment, he observed a lot of suspicious-looking material that made him think that the occupant of the apartment might be a terrorist.
Nick comes back from the apartment, which according to him looks like "Frankenstein's laboratory", with a hunk of metal piping and a man from the bomb squad. The bomb squad guy thinks that it might be a ham radio, but when the owner, college student James Thayer, is brought into the station, Thayer confirms that it's a bomb. An atomic bomb, which he made for a project. Thayer's bomb is missing the plutonium necessary for the kaboom, but Barney is sufficiently alarmed to call the FBI. Agent McKuen of the FBI (John Getz from Blood Simple) arrives, bringing with him one Dr. Reinhold Bauer, an atomic scientist.
The second case in the usual two-case formula involves a panicky older woman, Helen Krueger, who barges in begging the police for help. It seems her husband Harry, depressed over heart problems requiring a pacemaker that have made him unable to work or have sex, is planning to have himself cryogenically frozen. The detectives of the 12th call in both Mr. Krueger and Mr. Swanson of the "New York Metropolitan Cryonic Society".
In personal news, Harris is still struggling to find an apartment.
Tropes:
- Call-Back: When Mrs. Krueger is telling her husband that she misses him and wants him back home, he tells her to be careful, clutching his heart and saying that she's got him "fluttering". At the end of the episode Dietrich trolls Barney by saying that there's tons of plutonium unaccounted for, causing Barney to angrily say "DIETRICH!". When Dietrich asks what's wrong, Barney says "Fluttering, Dietrich, just fluttering."
- FBI Agent: Agent McKuen, who, like most feds that visit the squad room, is an ineffectual sort who is terrified of making a decision.
- Human Popsicle: Mr. Swanson's line of business. He believes in getting frozen and waiting for the "better world" to come in a hundred years.
- Nazi Grandpa: The German-accented scientist is a little too enthusiastic about Thayer's mockup A-bomb.
- Bauer: [wistfully] Can you imagine how things would be if we had developed this first?
Thayer: We did.
Bauer: [remembering himself] Oh sure, sure. Now we did. But before... we didn't.
- Newhart Phone Call: Harris is more hopeful about his endless apartment search, after having played bridge with someone who knows a guy named Nemmings who has an apartment available. Harris makes the call, and winds up having to spell out N-E-M-M-I-N-G-S, H-A-R-R-I-S, and A-P-A-R-T-M-E-N-T.
- Ripped from the Headlines: About a year before this episode aired, a Princeton student named John Phillips
published a paper about constructing an atomic bomb made from $2000 of parts (minus the fissile material). It became a national news story and the FBI did in fact confiscate his mockup. - Toilet Humor: Before the main plot gets rolling, everyone is grossed out by the sewage worker, who stinks up the whole squad room.
