Abe Vigoda who played NYPD Detective Phil Fish on Barney Miller has died.  There have been reports of his death in the past, but this time it’s official.  I have always maintained that Barney Miller was one of the most realistic police shows on TV.  That realism had nothing to do with tactics, techniques, or deductive ability.

What made it realistic was there was no way to predict what kind of problem was going to darken the doorway of the 12th Precinct detectives.  What mattered was that they were going to rely on each other’s strengths and weaknesses to arrive at was an equitable solution before the half hour was up. It was about the journey not the destination.

One of my favorite episodes involved Det. Fish and Captain Barney Miller.  It took the whole half hour for the gag to play out and could only have worked with Det. Fish.

Barney is approached by a headhunter firm that is looking for a new police Chief in a small Florida town.  Barney isn’t really interested and passes the contact to Fish.  Fish isn’t sure but follows up on the contact.  Life in the 12th continues and in breaks in the action Barney and Fish continue to discuss the relative merits of a small town police job.

Fish asks Barney what happened to the previous Chief, a question Barney can’t answer.  Fish finally supplies the answer of what happened to the previous Chief to Barney.

As Fish put it, “He died of boredom, seems that one day this guy was bored and went in and shot the Chief four times…”

Det. Fish may not have been a recruiter’s dream.  He had lost a step or two and couldn’t run with the young dogs.  Life had shown him more often than not you got the test first and the lesson later but he kept plodding along.