several people high on acid including a painter eating paint off a paintbrush who tells them Benjie left. Friday calls in for officers to arrest the partygoers and finds out a drugstore has recently sold 3,000 empty pill capsules. At the drug store, the pharmacist, Ben Riddle, identifies Benjie as purchasing the empty capsules and gives them his address. Friday and Gannon arrive at an apartment building and get a key to Benjie's apartment from the manager. Inside they find Benjie's friend, Phillip Jameson, and many drugs. Benjie is on the other side of the room motionless, having been that way for about an hour, and after telling Phillip he wanted to "get further out". Friday checks his pulse and declares, "Well, he made it. He's dead". Closing narration "The story you have just seen is true. The names were changed to protect the innocent. On December 15, a Coroner's inquest was held at the County Morgue, Hall of Justice, City and County of Los Angeles. In a moment, the results of that inquest." "At the inquest, the coroner's jury ruled that the 18-year-old suspect had administered himself an overdose of lysergic acid diethylamide in combination with various barbiturates and had thus taken his own life." Text: "BENJAMIN JOHN CARVER - - Deceased." Reception The Old-Time Dragnet Show with Adam Graham, writing in 2010, claims that this particular episode was voted #85 for "greatest TV episodes of all time" by TV Guide and Nick at Nite’s TV Land. Describing the social context, he says: The show does a great job showing how those who are charged with enforcing the law are often frustrated by the law. It was also cutting edge in dealing with the issue of LSD in 1967 ... For some, this represented a hard hit back against the emerging counterculture ... Friday re-emerged as the rock solid hero we needed in a time when everything was shifting. Scott Beale at Laughing Squid wrote, "It’s a bit ironic that the LSD episode is the first episode of Dragnet in color." Themes While the episode centers on the dangers of LSD, the climax shows that Benjie died not of an LSD overdose (which is nearly physically impossible), but rather a barbiturate overdose, which another character says was brought on by Benjie's desire to get "farther out." The plot in this episode was inspired by a real life acid test