Story: Tim Reid; Teleplay: Dan Guntzelman
Director: Asaad Kelada
Original Air Date: March 28, 1981
This is episode with a sneaky good script. At first glance, it unfolds in the way many WKRP episodes do... something happens and we move from character to character to see how each one deals with it. Also, WKRP was always a show that liked to take on issues of the day, and that happens here as well. However, differently than other episodes, here the characters reactions change over the course of the show, and the issue of guns and crime don't overshadow fun storytelling.
Within the cold opening, we see the station being burgled. Everyone has a different response. Bailey feels violated, like everything she touches is dirty. Mr. Carlson is shocked because he's never been robbed before. He takes the robbery very personally, asking Jennifer "Why would someone do this to me?"
But look at Venus' response.We can tell he HAS been robbed before and doesn't take it as a personal attack at all. "It was just our turn" he tells the others, as if the randomness of the robbery would somehow calm everyone down. Venus' perspective is a very important one because this episode was co-written by the actor Tim Reid. This is his impression on how his character, as both a black man and former Vietnam soldier would react to this situation. At first, he is calm, because he has seen this kind of thing before. But then, he paranoia starts to grow. Venus is more effected by the burglary than he is letting on. Johnny reacts the same way.
Les' reaction is one of nihilistic acceptance. "Modern society as we know it is doomed to a painful and stinking death!" he cheerfully informs the others. I don't think he realizes that, if that were the case, he would be the first person eaten by the masses, but whatever.
Herb's reaction is typical both for the times and for today... he buys a gun. Notice that they are robbed at the beginning of the week, maybe Monday or Tuesday, and Herb has the handgun in his desk by the time of Friday's party.
Compared to that, Mr. Carlson's reaction is reasonable given an unreasonable situation. He gets a fancy alarm for the front door.
The advertisers party is a great mechanism for the script. It puts our entire company in the building after regular closing hours and gives us a lot of great one-liners to balance out the drama happening upstairs. Les finds someone we would think is his paranoid equal at the party quoting John Donne's poem of "For Whom the Bell Tolls," but Les just casts aside young man with an indignant "What bell?"
Another throwaway joke is Andy hitting on the coatcheck girl. We've seen him do this in the past (say, with a candy stripper at the hospital) so it's well disguised that this turns out, in the very end, to be the turning point of the episode.
In the darkness of the station, Venus and Johnny's cool give way to hearing things go bump in the night. It's fascinating to watch the two men, who say later they "know better than this," move from mocking Herb for saying the burglars should be shot for stealing office furniture, to wondering where the gun is, to patrolling the halls with a loaded handgun.
Let's think about that for a moment: what is Herb's plan with having a loaded handgun in his desk at work? Is he planning on shooting a burglar? In the office? Herb might like to think of himself as a Charles Bronson tough guy, but would he ever really pull the trigger? Of course not - he isn't a killer. So it's much more likely that he would shoot himself or one of his co-workers accidently by just leaving a loaded gun in his desk.
Speaking of shooting a co-worker accidentally, Venus pulls a loaded handgun on Andy coming out of Mr. Carlson's office, as Johnny, Carlson and Les look on in panic. Gary Sandy moves quickly from terror to anger to embarrassment as it is revealed he is sneaking around in Mr. Carlson's office because he is canoodling with that same coatcheck girl. Not so embarrassed that he doesn't bring her back into the booth with him, but shaken none the less.
Of course, the lesson comes at the end when, after all the alarms and guns, the station still got robbed of their coats and purses because the coatcheck girl wasn't at the party.
It has been a lasting fascination for me of how much the issues raised on "WKRP in Cincinnati" are the same issues being raised today, thirty-seven years later. However, at the time I'm writing this particular blog, the "March for Our Lives" in the wake of the Parkland FL school shooting has dominated the news. The issue of gun control has never been more at hand. And here comes WKRP, raising the same questions about guns in society America is wrestling with today.
Roy
Other Notes: This is the first time Asaad Kelada has directed an episode since Season One.
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