Characters on Reno 911!

This is a list of characters appearing on the television program Reno 911!.

Lieutenant James "Jim" Ronald Dangle (played by Thomas Lennon) is the highest-ranking deputy in the department and is usually seen wearing his trademark short-shorts, which he claims that he wears for "mobility." In a season 6 episode where the officers watch a video of themselves in the late 1980s, Dangle is seen wearing full-length jeans. Unfortunately, his jeans caught fire, forcing Dangle to cut the bottom parts of his pants off, resulting in the hot-pants he currently wears.

Dangle is gay. In an interview about Reno 911 and his character Dangle, Lennon says, "There's always this question, 'When's Dangle coming out?' and I'm like, 'Have you seen the show?' On the first episode, he makes out with another man for about two minutes.. I guess people think he's closeted because Trudy is in love with him, but that has more to do with the fact that she's severely brain-damaged." He openly harbors an attraction to Jones and occasionally flirts with suspects. In one episode, Jones apparently had sex with him out of sympathy ("I'll try anything once"), after which Dangle was hospitalized because, as Jones said it, "he can't fucking walk." (The incident occurs off-camera, with the actual events undisclosed). Dangle was briefly married to a woman named Debbie (see below) and he briefly believed that he fathered a son (a result of sex with what he thought was a drag queen), but DNA results proved otherwise. Dangle also felt attracted to a female officer from the Department of Homeland Security who was in Reno to conduct counter-terrorism training but the experience left him uncomfortable and confused. It was revealed later that the female officer was actually a very well-disguised man (and was part of a team of con artists, along with the other Homeland Security "trainer"), which caused sexual confusion among the heterosexual deputies who had also felt attracted to her. Prior to Trudy's brain damage, Dangle apparently had an affair with her while married to Deb in 1988. Despite her brain damage, he still engages Trudy romantically on occasion, most notably in Reno 911!: Miami where Trudy asks Dangle to have sex with her out of pity; to which he complies.

Dangle leads the briefings in the mornings, but often ditches work along with a few other officers, as one time Dangle spent an afternoon trying to destroy an old microwave instead of helping investigate a murder. He apparently keeps tabs on officers after or during work, as he is found by Johnson in her favorite salon, using her name for an appointment. Dangle is favorable to Jones, and compares Jones to "Glue" saying he and the department are "A little birdhouse that Jones is keeping together." Dangle, along with the entire department, is extremely under qualified for his job, as he is sometimes either seduced or mislead by suspects to let them go. Dangle engages in police brutality with his fellow officers, as he once beat a suspect to the point of tears after the suspect had insulted him. Dangle looks up to the FBI, as in an episode where a group of FBI agents come to investigate a murder, he makes his officers line up in a perfect order to greet them, and takes on an "Important" mission to get coffee for the agents happily, but resents them for taking his case.

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