When US television shows in the 1960s turned their attention to LSD, the most notorious drug of the turbulent era, they often did so from the viewpoint of the preceding decade: the culturally conservative 1950s. Such is the case for each of the episodes discussed here. One of these, the earliest to focus on LSD, is from the 1950s. All the rest are from the 1960s, but in their collective ethos, the framework of implied authorial values, these shows belong to the 1950s. LSD threatened the socially conservative world of business suits and suburbs.
Below are eight US television episodes, arranged chronologically by release date, that addressed LSD. Their throwback mindset led to moments of confusion and irony, often comic in effect.
Confidential File: “LSD: Experiment in Terror”
The first US television show to feature LSD appeared in 1955, about a decade before the most powerful of the psychedelics would rise to cultural prominence. The Los Angeles-based documentary series Confidential File, hosted by Los Angeles Mirror columnist Paul Coates, focused weekly on a controversial topic, usually with local relevance. It amounted to a low-budget precursor to 60 Minutes. In one episode aired in 1955, “LSD: Experiment in Terror”, the topic was a powerful psychoactive drug being tested by a psychiatrist at the University of Southern California. Viewers from that era should have noticed a conspicuous irony: the title bears no relation to the LSD experience documented. An experiment, yes, but not even a hint of terror.
“Experiment in Terror” presents the video record of an acid trip administered by USC psychiatrist Nicholas Bercel. His subject is a 34-year-old artist who looks like the Swiss tennis player Roger Federer. The artist, Bill, trips in a miserable setting: a lab with bare walls while sitting next to a little enclosure housing EEG equipment. Despite the grim atmosphere and Bercel’s persistent questioning, Bill has a lovely time. Bercel asks, “Why did you laugh just now?” “Because the rug seems to be pulsating,” he answers, smiling. He adds that he sees flashes of violet and yellow among the pulsations. Bercel reminds him that the rug is, in fact, gray.
Throughout the trip, Bercel seems determined to find signs of distress in the artist despite clear evidence to the contrary. At one point, when Bill says something to suggest instability of identity, Bercel perks up: finally, symptoms to confirm the title terror. However, his subject sees the new Bill as bringing quite the improvement over the old model. “I don’t seem like I’m myself, I feel like I’m several other people, and all of them better. And all very benevolent.” Pressed to describe how he feels, he pauses and laughs. “A wonderful state.”
Bercel then brings his subject the quintessential 1950s takeout meal: a burger and chocolate malt. Bill makes a face and politely declines. This turn of events unsettles the psychiatrist, who questions why he has rejected the food. The artist searches for words and finally offers, “It’s too realistic.” Bercel shows his frustration. “Didn’t you say a while ago that you were hungry?” Bill: “Yes, but I’m not hungry for that. I want to feed off this feeling of joy, which seems to be coming from everything.” Evidently, Bercel hears a crazy man talking. It’s time for therapy. “Tonight, you’ll go home, you’ll eat your dinner, you can look back on this experience, and you will be perfectly all right. Your same old self.”
“That’s too bad,” deadpans Bill. TV LSD’s first great comic moment slips past the psychiatrist unnoticed.
Watch the Confidential File episode “LSD Experiment in Terror here on YouTube.
Route 66: “The Thin White Line”
When LSD next appears on television in a 1961 episode of Stirling Silliphant and Herbert B. Leonard’s crime adventure series Route 66, the calendar ’60s have begun, if not the cultural ’60s. The period most historians refer to as “the 60s,” at least in the US, begins around 1964.
Route 66 follows Tod (Martin Milner) and Buzz (George Maharis) in their weekly relationships and other entanglements the road presents. With their Corvette and unpolished good looks, the two buddies helped define the late-’50s/early-’60s male cool—a TV-ready, more upbeat James Dean.
“The Thin White Line” opens at a fraternity party that Tod and Buzz have crashed. Tod chugs a beer intended for someone else, spiked with an “experimental chemotherapy compound”. Writer Leonard Freeman knew about psychiatric testing with LSD. Milner confirmed the LSD connection in an interview many years later. As with the real psychiatrist Bercel, the fictional psychiatrist in Route 66 emphasizes the psychotomimetic danger of LSD: “In some individuals, as little as a millionth of an ounce can induce a full-blown psychosis.”
The Route 66 psychiatrist gives police more specifics about the stages Tod will go through as he wanders around the city. After an initial stage of confusion, “The really dangerous phases begin.” The irony here, similar in some respects to Confidential File, lies in the discrepancy between a psychiatric perspective on the LSD experience and what we actually see.
The first “really dangerous phase” for Tod will be a state where “he becomes uncontrollably happy”. Indeed, our acid tripper manifests an attractive cheerfulness and benevolence. He persuades a dozen dive bar patrons to contribute to charity, even though the collector is a known con artist; the con artist herself reforms by the end of the scene. Strings sound in the background to underscore this achievement. The sexiest woman from the bar invites Tod to her place at closing time.
Because he had no predecessors to imitate, Milner improvised his performance in this first fictional LSD trip. He can be forgiven if some of his acting moves suggest drunkenness rather than a psychedelic high. In the bar scene, it’s almost as if he and the writer relax into a kind of forgetting: Tod drinks so much (several martinis, chugged, with beer chasers) that the drunk shtick starts to make sense. The mainstream ’50s drug of choice, alcohol, joins – even preempts – the psychoactive chemical. Tod’s behavior is comical and a little confusing. When he acts “dangerously” at one point, breaking several glasses, which drug should we blame?
Outer Limits: “Expanding Human”
When Outer Limits aired its LSD-themed episode in 1964, the drug had received its first widespread media exposure. Timothy Leary made news when Harvard University fired him for using LSD and other psychedelics in his research with students. Writer Francis Cockrell takes the Leary story and grafts it onto Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. “Expanding Human” falters when it abandons its initial psychedelic premise.
The Leary-like Hyde in this hybrid narrative (Skip Homeier) calls his drug “c. e.”, short for “consciousness expansion”. We get a clue about it from the episode’s prelude.
Outer Limits, a sci-fi anthology series considered a knockoff of The Twilight Zone, did its best to imitate The Twilight Zone prologues written and narrated by Rod Serling. The opening remarks for “Expanding Human” benefit from the narrator’s sonorous voice: “As far back as educated men have recorded their history, veils have been lowered to disclose a vast new reality—rents in the fabric of awareness.”
A few parts of the show hint at c.e. as a vehicle for accessing this “vast new reality”. One of the research assistants tells a police officer (James Doohan, soon-to-be-Scotty of Star Trek), “It becomes a question of whether what we see in everyday life is reality and all of it, or whether reality is actually our vastly improved perception in these so-called visions.” Not bad for an early stab at psychedelic philosophy.
The problem is, for the most part, c.e. has nothing to do with visions and psychedelic revelation of a new reality. It’s about acquiring superpowers—more like comic book heroes and villains from the 1950s and early ’60s than anything Leary talked about. As one of the researchers explains, “Why not the whole being? You know, strength, intelligence, E.S.P., maybe everything.” Somehow, this psychoactive drug will make people super smart and grant them paranormal powers and bulk up their muscles, Hulk-style.
Indeed, when Hyde doses for the first time on camera, his chest muscles puff up so dramatically that his suitcoat looks undersized, and the sleeves bind his arms. Perhaps because of this clothing problem, there’s just a hint of Frankenstein to his gait. The original Hyde in Stevenson’s tale also had clothing troubles, but in his story, Jekyll’s clothes hang loose on his suddenly shrunken frame.
In “Expanding Human”, along with his swollen chest, the scientist develops disfiguring ridges and bulges on his face when under the influence of c.e. The makeup department seems to have taken its cues from low-budget horror and science fiction movies—the kind with beings deformed by radiation or chemical blunders. Luckily for Hyde, no one notices because his new mental arsenal includes a Jedi-like hypnotic power over us typical types. “Expanding Human” teases with hints of psychedelic curiosity but settles for pulp content. One human expands into a familiar monster while everyone else shrinks into feeble patsies.
Hawaii Five-O: “Up Tight”
By the time Hawaii Five-O aired in 1969, stories about Timothy Leary and LSD had permeated popular culture. (We jump ahead in chronology here for the sake of the Leary connection.) The “Up Tight” episode focuses on Professor David Stone (Ed Flanders), fired from a mainland university for irregularities involving students and drug experiments. The parallels with Leary are more detailed than the ones in Route 66, with allusions to the Summer of Love and the mention of his most famous slogan, “Turn on, tune in, and drop out”.
We see Leary through a lens of traditional 1950s values, expressed most notably by top cop McGarrett (Jack Lord). In an early scene, McGarrett interviews Donna (Brenda Scott), the best friend of the victim (a Stone student who jumped off a cliff while tripping). Donna still lives with affluent parents: McGarrett watches her dive into their shimmering swimming pool. As she rolls her eyes at McGarrett’s questions and calls him “a rock in this rotten establishment”, he summons a look of toxic disgust. “You seem to have benefited pretty well from the establishment.”
McGarrett certainly dresses for his role as “rock in this establishment”: even on his tropical beat, he wears a dark business suit. His wardrobe clashes with Professor Stone’s open-neck cotton shirts and beads; of course, they differ in values. After Stone explains that the victim had been searching for “a vision of truth—a central experience,” McGarrett mocks Leary’s psychedelic slogan: “How, exactly? By turning on, tuning in, and dropping out?”
In its earnest messaging against “turning on”, Hawaii Five-O becomes most vulnerable to ridicule. For one thing, it portrays non-addictive LSD as if it resembles heroin, a villain of police dramas long before the psychedelic era. McGarrett refers to the victim as a “user”, and soon we see Donna turning pale as she craves another hit of LSD.
Then there’s the curious problem of nomenclature. Although the show describes Stone’s drug in ways that indicate LSD, characters mainly refer to it as “speed”. Speed? Flowers in her hair, kaleidoscopic color effects, psychedelic music, visions of God: there no mistaking the chemical in question here. McGarrett once gets it right, asking Stone, “Do you know where she got the dose of speed or acid?” The drug muddle only gets worse when Stone later lists “acid, Benzedrine, and mescaline” as basically the same thing. It’s almost as if a script editor wanted to sabotage the anti-psychedelic message.
The drug in Hawaii Five-O brings another consequence often associated with LSD: trippers jumping from dangerously high places. Two incidents from real life helped to install this meme. One involved US government scientist Frank Olson, and the other actress Diane Linkletter, daughter of television celebrity Art Linkletter. But Olson was very likely pushed, and Linkletter very likely not tripping when they went out their respective windows. No matter: fiction has carried on the tradition.
In Hawaii Five-O‘s “Up Tight”, we have not one but two acid jumpers. The young woman at the opening jumps to her death in a visionary ecstasy. Later, Professor Stone heads for the cliff after a massive dose of speed, but McGarrett saves him just before he launches.
Watch Hawaii Five-O’s “Up Tight” episode here on Paramount Plus.
The Ed Sullivan Show: “Nancy Sinatra’s Sugar Town”
Both in its origin and taste, the broadly appealing variety show, The Ed Sullivan Show, stood for the 1950s even as it aired through the next decade. Producer/host Ed Sullivan capitalized on the Beatles and other popular ’60s rock acts, but he censored what he considered offensive or culturally subversive lyrics. Among the lyrics he objected to came from “Light My Fire” by the Doors: Sullivan assumed that the word “higher” referred to drugs.
Jim Morrison sang it on the show anyway, and Sullivan fired him forever from his show. It’s safe to say Ed Sullivan would never have featured a song about the blissful experience of acid-tripping.
Except—if the song’s meaning were well enough concealed, and the artist was someone he had never associated with the hippie counterculture. That’s what happened with Nancy Sinatra and “Sugar Town”. The song seemed perfectly safe: it had reached #1 on the Easy Listening chart, almost a guarantee of innocuous content. But songwriter Lee Hazelwood had LSD sugar cubes in mind when he dreamed up the mythical title town. His lyrics describe a pleasant, vague place perfect for solo happiness.
Sullivan invited Sinatra to sing the catchy hit on his show in 1966. She is dressed conservatively by ’60s standards (knee-length dress, high collar) against a pink background that looks like wallpaper. She and several dancers perform cute dance moves. “Sugar Town,” the cultural entity, meshes so well with Ed Sullivan’s 1950s ethos that its alliance with the psychedelic 1960s goes undetected.
The best moment—the most embarrassing for Sullivan, if he ever got the scoop about “Sugar Town”—comes just as she finishes the song. He steps over to Sinatra and puts one arm around her. He thinks the audience has not applauded with sufficient enthusiasm. “Oh, come on!” he says, gesturing broadly with his other arm. “Come on now!” Ed Sullivan, famously squeamish about drug content, finds himself cheerleading for LSD.
American Bandstand: Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”
Another mainstay of 1950s music television would soon make an intentional but awkward venture into psychedelia. American Bandstand, hosted since 1956 by Dick Clark, invited singers and bands to lip-sync bestselling hits on their soundstage.
In June of 1967, the show welcomed Jefferson Airplane. “White Rabbit” had become a surprising top ten hit: surprising because Grace Slick’s lyrics almost explicitly advocated the use of psychedelic drugs. Clark seems uneasy from the get-go as he introduces the band. Dressed in his typical business suit and sitting in the front row of the Bandstand audience, he offers this for context: “One of the most talked about groups in the whole world—a little controversial—but tremendous hitmakers.” He can’t entirely repress his worry, but he keeps the focus on the music charts, his show’s raison d’etre.
After a nervous Clark mangles his first attempt to pronounce “surrealistic” (from the 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow), Jefferson Airplane performs “White Rabbit”. “Feed your head!” rings out twice at the song’s close; Grace Slick holds the final note with operatic stamina. Clark looks down and says impromptu, “Oh my my.” For a moment, he appears nonplussed. But he recovers to find plausibly honorific adjectives: “This has got to be one of the most unique and unusual recordings ever.”
Jefferson Airplane finishes their set with “Somebody to Love”, and Clark comes over, as usual, to chat briefly with the band. Somehow, he knew better than to approach Slick because of her unique lyrics or because she had come dressed in a version of a nun’s outfit. He settles on Paul Kantner, rhythm guitarist, as his best chance for a sensible dialogue.
Clark had a question from the perspective of parents who wanted their 1950s back. Kantner’s reply probably surprised Clark and amused his friends in Haight Ashbury. “Older people worry,” Clark begins. “They see the way you’re dressed. They hear your music. Do parents have anything to worry about?” Kantner doesn’t even hesitate. “Yes, I think so. Their children are doing things they didn’t do, and they don’t understand.”
Dragnet: “The LSD Story”
Jack Webb thought he understood what the children were doing in 1967 when he decided to revive his old police show from the 1950s. He wrote “The LSD Story” as the first episode of a new Dragnet. Dragnet had established itself in the 1950s as television’s most popular police procedural. Webb liked to take stories from real Los Angeles police cases so that his show had immediate cultural relevance.
With Dragnet now situated in the psychedelic era, the police face a new threat to society but rely on familiar resources: a benign police bureaucracy, personal lives that don’t intrude on their work, and witnesses with good memories and plain syntax. TV Guide placed “The LSD Story” 85th on its list of the 100 greatest episodes in television history. Most people recognize it now by the nickname “Blue Boy”.
“The LSD Story” narrates the triumph of law over dissolute pseudo-religion. The champion of the losing side is Blue Boy (Michael Burns), an 18-year-old free spirit who has painted his face blue and yellow. Opposing him are Sergeant Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan). Friday and Gannon dress in gray, every scene; the new Dragnet was shot in color, but you’d never know from their suits. Blue Boy doesn’t think much of their wardrobe. He enjoys the psychedelic parade of colors: “Brown, blue, yellow, green,” he announces, “orange, red, red, red: I can hear them all!” He grabs at Gannon’s gray coat and tears the shoulder seam. In Webb’s drug-themed civil war, the union is gray and the rebels are blue.
Blue Boy doesn’t think much of their wardrobe. He enjoys a psychedelic parade of colors: “Brown, blue, yellow, green,” he announces, “orange, red, red, red: I can hear them all!” He grabs Gannon’s gray coat and tears the shoulder seam. In Webb’s drug-themed civil war, the Union wears gray, and the rebels wear blue.
When Friday and Gannon arrest Blue Boy (code violation: “in danger of leading an idle, dissolute, or immoral life”), he shouts at them, “You’re the dirty disbelievers!” he is quoted inn a March 2020 article on Medium. Blue Boy is being a little unfair here: it’s not that they don’t believe, it’s just that they believe in the gray stability of normal cognition and legal drugs.
One of the best moments in “The LSD Story” comes when the worlds of gray and blue briefly overlap, with lovely comic irony. Friday is standing outside Juvenile Hall, about to light a cigarette. Blue Boy, just released from his booking, intercepts Friday’s cupped hand to light his own cigarette. Blue Boy blows smoke in Friday’s face and sneers, “Satisfied, Sherlock?” Blue Boy briefly joins the gray world and alerts us to the dangerous drug hiding in plain sight.
Near the end of “The LSD Story”, Friday and Gannon bust a party of tripping teens. We see the partiers looking utterly peaceful: painting, listening to music, meditating. The two officers crash in and arrest them as if they had just robbed a bank and taken hostages: “All of you! Stay where you are! Freeze! You’re all under arrest!” Gannon grabs one of the mellow partiers and pushes him around. The bullying tactics are uncalled for, given the setting. Friday looks disgusted at their blue light bulbs and orders “a couple of black and whites” to arrest the group. “Black and white”, metonymy for a police car, takes on new meaning in the war of gray versus blue.
Adam-12: “Grand Theft, Horse?”
Jack Webb’s next show, Adam-12, featured two cops on patrol in a black and white. He used Adam-12 as another vehicle to express his disdain for hippie culture.
The 1969 debut season includes an episode in which LSD enters the script. “Grand Theft, Horse?” finds officers Malloy (Martin Milner) and Reed (Kent McCord) pursuing a young man who has stolen a horse from a riding academy. The woman in charge (Maura McGiveney) describes the thief as a “hippie”. She provides further detail, with evident disgust: “You know, long hair, beads, dirty—the whole bit.”
Yet when the officers catch the horse thief (Tim Matheson), he doesn’t look anything like the person described by the woman. He’s a Texan with short hair; he wears no beads, flowers, or anything else typically associated with hippie identity. Neither Malloy nor Reed comments on the obvious discrepancy between the description they received and the man they have apprehended. It’s an odd moment of discontinuity that subtly undermines Adam-12’s preferred anti-hippie tropes.
The young Texan had come to California “to find himself”, he tells the officers, but gets caught up in the various drugs people offered instead: “something to swallow or smoke or stick in my arm.” Of all these drugs, he chooses to elaborate on only one of them, LSD. “That stuff just tears the rag right off from the bush.” The Southern idiom he uses means roughly, “is truly outrageous.” He has more to offer: “I saw things that I knew weren’t there.”
For Jack Webb, champion of “just-the-facts-ma’am” plain speaking (that’s his signature phrase for fending off digression in Dragnet), here lies the worst danger in the use of the hippie drug. Simple facts about “what is real?” become elusive.
As the affable Texan discusses LSD from the back seat of the Adam-12 patrol car, he asks Malloy and Reed, “Y’all ever try acid?” They both shake their heads; of course not. But wait, that’s not true! Officer Malloy, played by Martin Milner, had quite the acid trip back in 1961—when cast as Tod, sharing adventures with car buddy Buzz, predecessor to car buddy Reed. If Milner had a secret fascination for the drug Webb despised, he would not have told his boss. Webb brought his cop shows into the 1960s, but with his 1950s values intact, ready for any psychedelic challenge to what’s “real”.
Watch Adam-12: “Grand Theft – Horse?” episode here on Apple TV+.