3/15/07: “The Chinese Cookie Caper” (1961)Any good Leftist would have to salute the diversity of the old
Dick Tracy cartoon series. The famed cartoon cop mainly worked in a supervisory role here, recycled in the same opening footage as he assigned a criminal case to a true UN of a police force. There was Joe Jitsu (Asian), GoGo Gomez (Latino), Heap O’Calorie (Irish), and a bulldog named Hemlock Holmes (from England, or whatever the hell place it is that produces people who sound like Cary Grant).
The series still featured the wonderful rogue’s gallery that made “Dick Tracy” a classic comic. Flattop, Itchy, The Brow, and Pruneface all appear—and we also get Stooge and Mumbles in “The Chinese Cookie Caper.” The episode opens as Dick Tracy sends Hemlock Holmes off to Chinatown to find pearl smugglers. Why doesn’t Tracy send Joe Jitsu? Because Joe is obviously Japanese. Show some consideration.
Hemlock gets hungry and goes to the same restaurant where Stooge and Mumbles are smuggling pearls in fortune cookies. Mumbles goes out (in disguise) to serve Hemlock, but the arch-criminal isn’t a very good waiter. Hemlock makes an understandable assumption, though. “Every time I want chop suey,” he says, “I run into the same problem—the language barrier.”
Here’s why this episode touches us on a personal level: We live right next to the most densely populated city in America. No, it isn’t New York City. It’s the corrupt paradise of Union City, New Jersey—with that density courtesy of a flourishing population of illegal aliens. The government of Union City loves illegal aliens. They also love the drugs and prostitution and gang activity that the illegal aliens bring to town. You won’t see the Union City police interfering with any of that action. They do, however, try to keep the gang graffiti hidden.
Anyway, we face a language barrier anytime we try to do anything in Union City. We wish we could do what Hemlock Holmes does. He calls up Dick Tracy on the two-way wrist radio. Granted, Hemlock’s just trying to figure out how to say “chop suey” in Chinese. The sly dog still gets the results we’d like to get.
Dick Tracy quickly deduces that Hemlock is dealing with a criminal element, and rushes over to the restaurant with gun in hand. Tracy gets a shot off, too. There’s a happy ending that we won't see anytime soon in real life. In our neighborhood,
we’re the ones who get arrested. Once again, cartoons are better than reality. Let us draw lessons from them.
Make it your own: “The Chinese Fortune Cookie Caper” can be found on
The Dick Tracy Show: The Complete Animated Crime Series DVD collection—and it’s the very last of the 130 episodes contained on the four discs. Did we watch them all before finally discovering the episode best suited for this site? What do you think?
