NYPD Blue, Season 2, Episode 3,
Cop Suey
Written by Charles H. Eglee & Channing Gibson
Directed by Mark Tinker

PLOT ONE: THE CHINESE CONNECTION

There's been a murder in Chinatown, and it turns out it's an off-duty cop. Even though Our Hero John Kelly is under a lot of heat from the department, he's still the best detective in the 15, so Fancy assigns him to the case, along with a fast-talking Chinese-American detective named Harold Ng, who works in Robbery. The killer left his jacket at the scene (an on-looker pulled it off while trying to grab him), which contains an apartment key and a lottery ticket that leads Kelly and Harold to him. Kelly becomes suspicious of their suspect when a lawyer who works for a Chinatown druglord shows up to represent the perp -- Kelly's convinced the druglord's trying to cover for one of his own people. Kelly also starts to think that Harold (who doesn't seem to be translating everything the non-English-speaking suspect says accurately) may be on the druglord's payroll.

In the end, it turns out that Kelly was wrong - the guy they had in custody did do it, and the druglord was just trying to get him to confess for the good of his organization and the neighborhood. Harry tells Kelly that if it had been the Mafia, Kelly would've been more accepting. Kelly apologizes.

One benefit to this case is that all of a sudden Kelly's gone from being a suspect in evidence-tampering to the guy who caught a cop killer in record time. Commander Haverill realizes he may have a tougher time getting rid of Our Hero than he'd hoped.

PLOT TWO: BEEP BEEP

Remember the wife-beater from the season premiere that Sipowicz threatened to drown if he touched his wife again? Well, apparently he didn't heed Andy's warning - his wife is found beaten to death in her apartment. The husband claims to have been at work all morning, and also claims that he saw two "suspicious" guys hanging around the neighborhood. Andy -- who's working the case with a transferee to the 15, Adrianne Lesniak (more on her in a minute) -- is convinced that the husband did it, but doesn't have enough proof until he finds a deaf shut-in who saw him (the husband, not Andy) dumping some trash in the next-door apartment building that morning, despite the fact that their building has a trash chute. Andy finds the bag, which contains bloody clothes that would seem to fit the husband, but since he didn't find them for 36 hours, they're not enough proof.

So Sipowicz - with some help from Lesniak - essentially beats a confession out of the husband.

PLOT THREE: THE NEW GUY (OR SHOULD I SAY "GAL"?)

Turns out Lesniak was transferred over from the Bronx because she was discovered having an affair with one of the other detectives on her shift. She's since broken it off, but when she goes out with the other detectives from the 15 for beers, her ex shows up and starts harrassing her, until John "Buttinsky" Kelly gets in the way -- which Lesniak does not appreciate.

PLOT FOUR: GREG AND DONNA SITTING IN A TREE....

Now that Medavoy's divorce has been finalized, he and Abnadando are getting especially frisky. Unfortunately, while they're necking in the coat room, Fancy walks in, then walks out quickly.

They're both terrified (especially after finding out why Lesniak has come over to the 15) that one of them will be transferred, but Fancy eventually talks to Greg and tells him, in a roundabout way, that if he doesn't see it again in the office, there won't be a problem.

PLOT FIVE: NOW THAT ANDY'S POPPED THE QUESTION....

Andy and Sylvia both try to dance around the issue of Andy's impromptu proposal, though Sylvia does admit that "the nicest thing that ever happened to me was when you asked me to be your wife."

Andy has more on his mind, though, because he thinks he could've saved the battered wife (see Plot One). Sylvia offers to make him dinner so they can talk, and Andy comments that "I don't want to trouble you." Sylvia responds, "Yet you want me to be your wife?"

She says that she intends to get married, and that she doesn't want anyone in her life but Andy, but they both need more time to get comfortable with each other again. Andy agrees to go have dinner at her place, though almost backs out when he finds out that she doesn't have any food yet. Finally, they walk out of the precinct, hand in hand, to go grocery shopping.... (awww.....)

Well, this was a schizophrenic show: I loved everything with Sipowicz and hated everything with Kelly. The cop killer storyline really didn't do anything for me - a friend who I watched it with summed it up best when he said, "Was that or was that not the longest confession in history?" I liked Harold Ng, but the rest of the Chinatown plot was kind of blah. In addition, rather than make use Caruso's next to last show to build up his fate, they pretty much put all the "Kelly's in a lot of trouble" stuff on hold.

Both Andy storylines, on the other hand, were spectacular. For those who'd been waiting to see someone literally beat a confession out of a suspect, y'all got your wish - but it was done in a realistic way. If ever I expected either detective to pull major Gestapo tactics, I think it was here, considering Sipowicz's hatred of the type of guy who would hit a woman. "And the fact that Fancy essentially gave his approval to it (he did hear the bulk of Lesniak's conversation with the wife-beater) gave me a chill. The show seems to get more reactionary with each passing week, and while there's a part of me that cheered when Andy started saying "Beep Beep," there was a part of me that was disturbed - both by the fact that Andy was doing it,and by the fact that I approved. You can justify it by saying that the guy was the scum of the earth - which he was - but if you give cops the power to beat who they want to, eventually Andy might wind up smacking around the wrong guy.

As for the stuff with Sylvia, not a lot of time was spent on it, but I just loved the extra spring the two of them had in their steps when they first saw each other, and the final discussion about going grocery shopping was a gem - I wasn't being sarcastic when I wrote "awwwww..."

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