This NBC sitcom starred acid-tongued Don Rickles as Chief Petty Officer Otto Sharkey of the US Navy – A 24-year veteran stationed at the Navy Training Centre in San Diego, California.
Sharkey was responsible for making sailors out of a diverse ethnic group of raw cadets, most of whom had never been away from home before.
The various ethnic stereotypes were all targets for Sharkey’s verbal assaults, but underneath his brash exterior beat a heart of gold, especially when he sensed that a recruit was having a problem handling his insults or was suffering the problems of adjusting to sea life away from home.
Lieutenant Whipple was Sharkey’s overbearing and long-winded supervisor while Captain Quinlan was the attractive female base commander.
When CPO Sharkey returned in October 1977, to replace the short-lived The Sanford Arms, Sharkey had a new, male commanding officer – Capt. “Buck” Buckner.
The show can claim to feature one of the first depictions of punk rock and moshing on American television, as The Dickies turned up in the 1978 episode ‘Punk Rock Sharkey’.
CPO Otto Sharkey
Don Rickles
Seaman Pruitt
Peter Isacksen
Daniels
Jeff Hollis
Kowalski
Tom Ruben
Skolnick
David Landsberg
Captain Quinlan
Elizabeth Allen
Chief Robinson
Harrison Page
Mignone
Barry Pearl
Apodaca
Philip Simms
Rodriguez
Richard Beauchamp
Shimokawa
Evan Kim
Lieutenant Whipple
Jonathan Daly
Chief Gypsy Koch
Beverly Sanders
Captain “Buck” Buckner
Richard X. Slattery
