"There are no safety nets below trees! Kids are climbing and falling to their deaths! Something MUST be done! NOW!"

Quincy featured Jack Klugman as medical examiner Quincy who takes every case he is involved in personally. There never seemed to be any death by natural causes. There was always more digging to be done to discover foul play, drugs, cover-ups or toxic waste dumps in people's backyards. He annoyed everyone, from cops who wanted to wrap up cases quickly to his boss, who was always flipping out the moment Quincy told him he didn't believe the evidence presented. Even his assistant, Sam, would get nervous whenever Quincy slammed his fist down and demanded all kinds of intricate tests done on bodies and then would rush to the scene of the crime to yell at everyone involved and push around anyone who did not respond well to his questions.

He was, in many ways, the antithesis of Columbo, where Peter Falk played at being a bumbling cop with little skill or interest in the case in order to creep confessions and clues out of unsuspecting people. Quincy took on cases like an out of control locomotive. In all his years on television, Quincy never discovered a situation where he was wrong or where the person on his examining table died of wholly natural causes. Perhaps he did when the cameras weren't on.

The show always ended in the same way, with the gang heading down to the local bar and joking their way through an epilogue in which they often recapped the case. No matter how angry Quincy's boss was, or how annoyed the police were with him, as soon as they sat down in that magical bar, everyone was happy and everyone loved Quincy.