'The Mod Squad,' 'Adam-12' and how TV brought the counterculture into 1968's cop shows
"One black, one white, one blonde" was the tagline for a new kind of cop show that premiered in 1968 on the heels of Vietnam's bloody Tet Offensive, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, a shootout between the Black Panthers and Oakland police, and the passage of the Fair Housing Act.
"The Mod Squad" featured a multiracial trio of nonconformist crime fighters: Long-haired rebel Pete. Black activist Linc. Flower girl Julie. On other long-running detective shows of the era, such as "Dragnet," they would have been cast as the disrespectful young people arrested during aimless protests or a raid on a free-love cult.
The rabble on the wrong side of the law was now the law. Series TV, like the country, was changing. It had one foot
