The Final Cannon Statistics Are Here!

One of my Dunbar friends, Tim Smith, recently retired, which made me jealous. Well, not jealous, exactly. I’m happy for him, and don’t begrudge him the accomplishment. But I wish I could join him; I’m emotionally, spiritually and physically ready. In any case, you might remember that he’s been drip-feeding us detailed statistics about the 1970s TV series Cannon. He sent in three seasons-worth, compiled over several years. But since the retirement… we suddenly have the entire five-year stats! He powered through the remainder of the DVD box set in short order. Here are the results:

As you might recall, Frank Cannon was a portly gentleman. During the ’70s they had a bunch of private investigator/detective shows, and there was usually a hook of some sort. Barnaby Jones was the old one, Ironside was the one in a wheelchair, McCloud was the urban cowboy, Kojak was the bald one. And Cannon? He was the fat one.

But did it slow him down? Clearly not. Check out those numbers. He got himself into 103 fist fights in five years. Just think about that. 103!! I haven’t been in a fight since high school. Cannon, who was morbidly obese, engaged in fisticuffs every 18 days on the average, for five years. Maybe he should’ve been known as Frank “Loose” Cannon? Am I right?

And I brought this up before, but I always hear about cops retiring after 25 or 30 years of service, and it’s mentioned that they never fired their guns in the line of duty. Not once. Cannon, on the other hand, fired his an astonishing 183 times in half a decade. Shouldn’t there have been some kind of investigation? The man was running wide open. Soldiers fighting the Nazis in WWII probably didn’t shoot their guns that often. He was also amazingly accurate, hitting his target 45% of the time. That’s a lot of people showing up at the ER with bullet wounds, all at the hands of one man. How was he not thrown into prison??

In his defense, however, others shot at Cannon nearly 300 times during five years. But he was so nimble — a prancing sprite of a man — he was only hit 4% of the time. That sounds pretty good, but it still adds up to a single person being shot 13 times. For most people that would be a devastating and debilitating turn of events. But Cannon just returned to his fashionable apartment, popped on a chef’s hat, and prepared another scrumptious gourmet meal. You know, after being shot again and again and again.

All of those stats are wild, but the one that bothers me the most is the number of times Frank was knocked unconscious. Twenty times in five years! That can’t be good. You can’t just go around sustaining violent blows to the head so severe you black out. If that happened to me once, I’d be super-traumatized and paranoid for the rest of my life. But not Cannon, he’s knocked out, throws haymakers, shoots people, sustains bullet wounds across his great body, crashes his car and administers karate chops all willy-nilly. And he’s in terrible shape to begin with! The man has a 50-inch waist, for god’s sake.

Thanks Tim, for this Pulitzer-caliber contribution to investigative journalism. And congrats on the retirement! I’m happy you’re using your free time in a similar way as I would.

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