The story behind "Hash"

Kendall Rivers had a Friday Question about the 70's sitcom BARNEY MILLER.  (It since has become an entire post)  Here's the FQ:

Could you get Tom Reeder to give a full backstory of the behind the scenes of Hash from the germ of the idea to the taping?

Happily, I was able to do that. Tom is a good friend and graciously agreed to answer your question. By the way, that is my single favorite episode of BARNEY MILLER.

This episode got written over forty years ago, so I can't say, "Oh, I remember it like it was yesterday." I went through some of the dusty clutter in my office, though, and found some notes. The original title on my first story outline for it was "The Gift" (the hash brownies given to Wojehowicz by a woman named Gloria). It had a B story about a guy who turned himself in after being AWOL from the Marine Corps for 16 years. On the next pass, that element went away and the title changed to "Pot". That lasted until the second draft of the teleplay. Someone -- it may have been Reinhold Weege -- made the sensible suggestion that the secret ingredient in the brownies be changed from marijuana to hashish, because its effects come on more quickly, which helped move the story along.

By the way, I don't think I made the original pitch of the "everybody gets stoned" notion. During that time in the middle of the third season, there were some changes happening in the production staff. As I recall, Chris Hayward was leaving and Roland Kibbee was coming in; I think maybe Kibbee was the one who lobbed that germ of a story idea. I also want to mention that in the final draft of the teleplay, Reiny contributed a lot of good dialogue. We were both new writers then; Barney Miller was the show on which both of us got our first writing assignments.

I have no idea how much past personal experience (if any) influenced the actors' performances, but I think we'd all agree that they were convincing -- particularly Jack Soo. I loved his interpretation of the song "It's Almost Like Being in Love" at the end of Act One. That song is from the musical "Brigadoon", and I had been in a production of that show while in high school. It popped into my head when I was writing the script. As Ken will attest, you never know where inspiration is going to come from.

Thanks so much to Tom Reeder. He also wrote some of the best episodes of MASH and CHEERS.

And here is the episode itself.    Set aside a few minutes.  It's well worth watching.


from By Ken Levine