The opening episode of Dragnet's seventh TV season finds police detectives Friday (Jack Webb and Smith (Ben Alexander) rounding up a group of draft-dodging teenage dropouts who have turned to thievery. The kids hope to use their ill-gotten gains to establish their own country on an uninhabited island off the California coast, and have even gone so far as to draft their own self-serving "constitution." Although Friday puts the punks in their place with another of his long-winded patriotic speeches (backed up with a stirring rendition of America the Beautiful), it takes an ironic final plot twist to convince the youngsters that they've messed up. "The Big Constitution" was later updated as "The Big Make", an episode of the late-1960s Dragnet revival.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
