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With that aside now, uh, aside, it’s on to this week’s smackdown of Abrahams vs. (as the teaser trailer for Smell of Fear so slyly identified him) “the brother of the guy who directed Ghost.” To begin with, some background on the short-lived series that would grant Nielsen his comic legacy.

Police Squad! - the inspiration for The Naked Gun films - may be the cult-iest of all cult shows. It lasted six episodes and was officially cancelled by ABC after airing four times in March 1982 (the remaining episodes aired that summer). Despite being “dumb” comedy in the Airplane! mode, it was so ridiculously out of place and ahead of its time back then that, on the eve of its 30th anniversary, it still seems like it would be a hard sell for a major network. (It would probably fit right in on Comedy Central.) I remember seeing the video boxes for Police Squad! Help Wanted and More Police Squad! - three episodes on each - in my small-town video store throughout my early childhood in the mid-to-late 1980s, and always resisting the urge to rent them. And when I eventually did, my blasé response suggests to me, in retrospect, I should have waited a while longer. To wit, it is at the age of 36 that I finally appreciate and/or understand the genius and/or stupidity of the phrase “police squad."

One of the keys to my enjoyment of the series this last time around was the utter cheapness of the visual whole, from the sets to the production design to the film stock. The show took a lot of its cues from straight-faced 1960s TV cop dramas, simply adding in absurdism, verbal humor, random sight gags, and recurring comic vignettes. (My favorite gag was one couple’s stroll through the Japanese gardens on her parents’ estate.)

Following up his career-reviving supporting role in Airplane!, Nielsen found the part which would become his trademark, although in true ironic fashion, he and ZAZ wouldn’t have a hit with the material for another six years. It may have been the best thing for the show to be yanked so early. Like British sitcoms that generally only last for two to three seasons of six to eight episodes and so strive to make every episode top-drawer, Police Squad had the chance to go out on top (so to speak) and leave a new generation of home entertainment consumers craving more.

All three Naked Gun films opened at number one their respective weeks in 1988, 1991, and 1994, with Smell of Fear nabbing the biggest debut (over $20 million) and final domestic gross ($87 million). Although David Zucker received sole directing credit for the first two Naked Gun films, ZAZ co-wrote the screenplay with Proft on the first film, and served as executive producers on all three Naked Gun films. (Peter Segal helmed Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, about which all I can say is that 18 years on, it struck me as crass and cheap and unfunny and mercilessly endless despite running only 75 minutes sans credits, as I remembered it to be. And that’s even with allowing that the opening “Odessa Steps”/Untouchables parody elicited a few chuckles.)

I find it amusing that the first Naked Gun film bears the subtitle “From the Files of Police Squad!” because, when viewing the trilogy in close quarters with the television episodes, I feel it is actually Smell of Fear that comes closest to capturing the spirit of the show, and not simply through a recycling of the most memorable gags, or the use of former “Special Guest Star” Robert Goulet as villainous Quentin Hapsburg. In the first film, from its opening attack by Drebin on a cabal of evil world leaders, through its endless pain and destruction gags involving OJ Simpson’s character, to its musical montage set to Herman’s Hermits, there was a universe of funny, it just wasn’t the Police Squad! universe. Drebin comes off more as an Inspector Clouseau knockoff (clumsy, insensitive, completely lacking in self-awareness) than a deadpan satire of a TV cop. I can allow for the need to open the concept up in expanding it into a feature film, but it felt lacking in a certain je ne sais quoi.

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