NYPD Blue, Season 2, Episode 22, "A.D.A. Sipowicz" Story by Stephen Bochco & David Milch Teleplay by Ted Mann & Gardner Stern & Nicholas Wooton Directed by Mark Tinker PLOT ONE: THE BLESSED EVENT With his wedding less than 36 hours away, Andy is beginning to get very "skittish." He gets into a fender-bender on the way to work, yells at the slightest provacation and generally acts like he's preparing for his funeral instead of his wedding. His mood doesn't improve when Sylvia informs him that, without even consulting him, she cancelled their hotel reservations in Montreal to stay in a "get-away-from-it-all" woodland cabin. His bachelor party isn't much fun, either, since he's sworn off the two key components: booze and hookers. Sitting with Bobby in a corner of the church just a few minutes before the ceremony is scheduled to begin, Andy says that he feels calmer now, but still cracks jokes about running out. Salvation arrives in the form of Andy, Jr., who managed to get a pass at the last minute to leave the base. Staring at his clean-cut kid looking dashing in his uniform, Andy's face lights up. His smile grows even wider when he sees Sylvia march down the aisle, looking stunning in her gown. The ceremony begins... PLOT TWO: DRINK YOUR TROUBLES AWAY Bobby's concern over Diane's drinking reaches epic proportions when he sees her do a sloppy pat-down of a female suspect and miss the woman's ankle holster. She still gets upset whenever he broaches the subject of booze with her. But when Bobby specifically asks her not to come along on a bust with him, she begins to do a little reevaluation. At the end of the shift, she tells him that she's finally realized that she has a problem - and that she wants to take a break from their relationship until she's got her drinking under control. However, after several hours of sobriety, her resolve weakens a bit and she shows up at Bobby's apartment, asking if she can "cheat" a bit by letting him hold her. Bobby obliges her request. PLOT THREE: TAXI BLUES Fancy's brother Reggie shows up at the 15 with more bad news about his problems with Sgt. McNamara. This time, McNamara assigned Reggie to ticket gypsy cabs attempting to illegally pick up fairs at the Port Authority, and when one of the cabbies accused Reggie of trying to shake him down, McNamara not only didn't do anything to nip the complaint in the bud, he personally helped the cabbie write a statement for Internal Affairs. Fancy's talk with McNamara goes nowhere, so he asks Bobby to help him out. With the help of Martinez, Medavoy and Lesniak, the cabbie who filed the complaint is brought in on a weapons charge (James pulled him over after he ran a red light and spotted a gun under the seat). Bobby offers to drop the charge in return for the cabbie telling the truth about Reggie. He's only too eager to do it - he says he only claimed Reggie shook him down to beat the ticket, then let McNamara prod him into signing a statement. He recants his story for IAB, and the charges against Reggie are dropped. Fancy tells Reggie to put in for a transfer ASAP, and gives his brother something to think about by mentioning that none of the four detectives who helped him out were black. PLOT FOUR: ANDY JOINS THE BAR Andy and Bobby's investigation into a Chinatown mugging- turned-murder is going nowhere fast, until a woman shows up with credit cards from the victim. She caught her boyfriend, who frequently pulled robberies in Chinatown because the Chinese don't fight back, cheating on her, and went to the cops for revenge. By leaning on some of the perp's junkie pals, Andy tracks him down and busts him. Bobby gives him the standard "sign a statement and I'll put in a good word for you" speech, but the perp wants to talk to someone from the DA's office. Frustrated over the way his day's been going, Andy decides to do a little playacting. Armed with his reading spectacles and a briefcase he borrows from John Irvin, Andy looks the part of a DA when he marches into Interview One, though he neither confirms nor denies that he's with the DA's office as he gets the perp to sign a statement. Due to a legal technicality, the confession still stands, but an Assistant DA chews out Andy for almost blowing the case. MISCELLANEOUS PLOT THREADS: Martinez and Lesniak finally get together for coffee two nights before the wedding, and James almost kills her cataract-ridden dog when it collides with a lamppost while James is walking him. At the wedding, Adrienne reassures him that it's not a big deal. Though not invited to the wedding, John still gets Andy a gift: a quilt with fish on it. Greg has been back with Marie for four days at the time of the wedding, and it's obvious she's a lot happier than him. She decides that the wedding is an opportunity for them to renew their own vows; Greg rolls his eyes and asks that they do it silently. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, that was.....disappointing. A season that started in drudgery before showing a lot of promise ends in mediocrity. There were some special moments tonight, but they were few and far between. With the exception of the scenes at the wedding chapel, the entire episode felt not only ordinary, but dull. And even the wedding was grossly mishandled. When Andy Jr. walked in and Andy Sr. smiled, I was almost ready to forgive the rest of the episode for being perfunctory. After two years of scowling, sneering, and looking awkward, Andy finally looked genuinely happy - and Dennis Franz's beaming face brought a tear to my eye. Then Sylvia walked down the aisle, looking resplendent in her gown, and Andy smiled even more at the sight of her, and everything felt magical. And then they cut away to Bobby's apartment before we got to see any more of the wedding! We didn't get to hear Andy's vows, which I'm sure would've been really touching. Ditto for Sylvia. We didn't get to see Andy kiss the bride. We didn't get to see Andy get that infamous crown of flowers placed on his head. We didn't get to see Andy and Sylvia dance at the reception. We were deprived of all of that. They could have made more time in the episode for all of that stuff. The murder investigation was just as perfunctory as any other and could have been trimmed quite a bit - especially the bit with Andy posing as a lawyer. Given the right amount of time, that might've made for an interesting story: Andy goes over the line trying to coerce a confession and gets in trouble for it. But the tongue lashing he got from the ADA was so brief that I barely even caught the explanation for why the confession was still valid. In addition, I felt upset that the episode ended with the scene between Bobby and Diane. That scene felt important, since the story was left hanging after their conversation in the lockerroom, but this episode was Andy's - or at least, should have been - and I would have been much happier if Bobby's embrace of Diane had been followed by Andy and Sylvia enjoying their wedding night - even a thirty-second scene of the two talking about married life would have been enough. But we didn't even get that. We also got very little of Sylvia. Anyone who doesn't believe that the female characters are appendages of the men should look no further than this episode. While we got to see Andy's angst for two straight days, we got nary a glimpse of Sylvia's with the exception of her brief conversation with her father right before the ceremony started. Reggie Fancy's story seemed very rushed and shallow. Again, this was a story with a lot of potential mileage that got swept under the carpet very rapidly - Bobby talked tough to the cab driver for thirty seconds and the problem was solved. It was also a lot more two-dimensional than Reggie's first appearance. There, Reggie was just as much in the wrong as McNamara, and Mac's bigotry was painted a lot more subtly. Here, Mac was clearly the villain in a story that was literally painted in black and white instead of the original's more intriguing shades of grey. I wasn't especially crazy with the resolution of Diane's story, either. After four episodes of buildup, the payoff was very much on the anticlimactic side - the bit with the ankle holster was a real "blink and you'll miss it" number. And Diane's admitting her problem came too rapidly and was dramatically unsatisfying. I realize that this particular method was more realistic than, say, Diane getting shot on duty or causing someone else to get shot, but NYPD Blue has always had a good mix of realism and high drama, and there was very little drama here. If Kim Delaney joins the cast in the fall (which would be a definite boost for the show's barely-visible female contingent), maybe we'll get more mileage out of Diane's attempts at sobriety, but right now I feel very unsatisfied. What gets me more than anything else about the finale is that the episodes leading up to it were so good. The show was back on track after the bumpy start created by Caruso's exodus, and I expected things to get better and better until they reached a peak with the season finale. They didn't. Not only was this a fairly dull episode, but the writers really dropped the ball on the climax of the longest-running storyline in the history of the show: Andy and Sylvia's courtship/engagement. I suppose I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up, but when the rest of the storyline has been so uniformly excellent, raised expectations came easily. C'est la vie... Shorter takes: -There was one other scene of note: James' impromptu musical salute to Andy at the bachelor party. That may have been Nicholas Turturro's most convincing performance to date: I was prepared to shoot myself, too, if the commercial break didn't interrupt the song. :-) -Speaking of Martinez, his relationship with Lesniak still seems like a one-way street: when he made his comment about her being the best-looking woman in the chapel, she looked more uncomfortable than complimented, and that was before she spotted Fancy sitting down in front of them. -Another disappointing thing about the finale: we didn't get to see James compete in the boxing tournament. -Was Gail O'Grady even in the episode? I saw her in the background of a bunch of scenes (most notably when Greg cast a forlorn look in her direction while Marie babbled about the wedding vows), but for pete's sake, John Irvin still had more lines than her! I don't mind that, persay - as I've said before, I think John is a more interesting character than Donna - but if they weren't going to give O'Grady anything to do in the last few episodes, they might as well have let her stay on vacation and brought her back in the fall. -One good thing about Greg's reconciliation with Marie: it gives him new opportunity to bitch about the traffic from Long Island - always a good time-killer. :) -Funniest/saddest moment of the night: the camera panning from Sylvia's side of the church, loaded with packed pews, over to Andy's side, with less than twenty people in attendance. I laughed for a minute until I realized how embarrassed Andy must have felt at the same sight. -LOTW: "Greg, I want you to make me a promise." "Andy, I already told ya I'd feed your fish." "No - if he goes more than two verses, I want you to blow my brains out." -Andy & Greg discussing James' musical talent -Alan Sepinwall -sepinwal@mail.sas.upenn.edu -http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~sepinwal/ (NON)RANDOM QUOTE: "I would say 'Res Ipso Loquitor' if I thought you'd have the first clue what it meant." "Ipso *this*, you pissy little bitch!" -Sharon Lawrence & Dennis Franz, in the very first episode of "NYPD Blue"