"The Layoff" starts out with the 12th already shorthanded by 14 layoffs, the city panicking because there are now "2000 unemployed cops runnin' around loose!" (this provides the final mention of Rod Perry's Det. Wilson, last seen in episode 2 "Experience"). A captured fur thief (Oliver Clark, first of six) claims he never stole anything, simply finding $12,000 in furs thrown out in a good neighborhood (Fish: "Bernice would do anything for a fur coat, if she could DO anything!"). The always adorable Candice Azzara (first of three) is a delight as a manicurist (nicknamed Lizzie Borden!) who stabbed her male client because he mistook her for a prostitute, praising the 'lovely hands' of the fur thief (Fish: "he should have kept them in his pocket!"). But the expert scene stealer is Bob Dishy (later seen in "The Delegate"), as impoverished stockbroker Mr. Shine, who punches a female stockbroker (Sandra Deel) in front of her office, and is apprehended with her purse. He claims to have been married twice ("a waste of eight months!"), and asks Fish for a cup of coffee ("Why not? You've had everything else!"). The victim offers to drop the charges if he'll just return the $68 he stole ("I went through Hell for this money!"). Fish caps it off with his response to Shine's comment that he never hit a woman before in all his life: "you weren't married long enough!" Milt Kogan makes his fifth of six appearances as Officer Kogan, while Barbara Barrie's Liz Miller is again absent.