NYPD Blue, Season 2, Episode 9, "Don We Now Our Gay Apparel" Story by Stephen Bochco & David Milch Teleplay by Channing Gibson & Charles H. Eglee Directed by Michael M. Robin PLOT ONE: GENDERBENDER MURDER Sipowicz and Simone get called in on a murder at a gay bar - the club's co-owner was found tied up and shot in his office on the night the bar has "Drag Night." Bobby comments that the method of tying-up is very similar to a murderer he put away years ago, but that guy is supposed to still be in jail. A transsexual witness tells Andy that the bar's bouncer gave the dead man mouth-to-mouth, which makes Andy suspicious - why try to breathe life into a guy whose head is practically blown off? Using the patented Intense Interrogation (tm), Sip and Simone find out that the murder was actually a robbery attempt that went too far. And, to top things off, the murderer *was* Simone's old collar, whose status as a free man is never really explained. PLOT TWO: A FATHER'S LOVE Ever since Dan Breen moved out of his apartment, he's been constantly following his son Danny around, despite continued warnings by Andy that Danny is still dangerous. Dan tells Andy he'll stay away if Andy keeps a closer eye on Danny. Sip has a sector car pick up Danny, who's high on marijuana, and take him back to his apartment. Danny won't take his medicine, and when Andy makes him, he just hides it under his tongue. Andy's frustrated - Danny won't even eat his food, because he thinks it's poisoned - and leaves. Later on, Dan tells Andy that he feels he has to move back in with Danny, because he'll never have another son. Andy doesn't approve, but tells Dan to call him every four hours. Dan agrees, but Andy doesn't even get the first call and goes to the apartment, where he finds Dan stabbed to death. He finds Danny wandering the streets wearing a blood-soaked shirt and takes him in by himself - he even drives Danny from the stationhouse to Central Booking by himself. PLOT THREE: THE HAPPY DAY Despite a lot of false alarms, Fancy's wife finally gives birth to a beatiful boy, who they name Arthur Fancy Junior. PLOT FOUR: THE CURSE One of Medavoy's neighbors, an elderly woman, was cheated out of $3,000 by some gypsy "fortune tellers." Because the Frauds division is backed up, Greg takes on the case himself, and goes undercover as a new customer - posing as a widower whose wife left him some insurance money. The gypsy tells him the money is cursed, and that she must cleanse it for him. He arrests her after she tries to switch his cash with newsprint, and she puts a curse on him - at which point he develops a tremendous itch in his neck. The itch persists, and, fearing that he is cursed, Greg tries to talk Sylvia into dropping the charges against the gypsies so long as they make restitution to his neighbor. Sylvia finally agrees, and walks away scratching her neck, while Greg's itch is mysteriously gone........ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode provoked two very diverse reactions from me. On the one hand, I was shocked by the fact that Steven Bochco and David Milch, the series' creators for cryin' out loud, would churn out such a generic plotline. On the other hand, Supervising Producer Michael Robin turned in another outstanding directing job and Dennis Franz gave his best performance of the season by far - and that's saying a lot. I'll get the bad stuff - the writing - out of the way first. Let's start with the Murder of the Week. What was new here? The fact that a *very* minor witness to the crime - so minor that the character's dialogue could've been given to someone else - happened to be a transsexual? Pardon me while I contain my excitement. Milch and Bochco took their usual cookie-cutter plot - murder, intense interrogation, confession, bust (with the occasional use of a police wire) - and tried to decorate it with a bunch of actors in drag and a real-life transsexual. But it really didn't matter that the murder took place in a gay bar or that one of the witnesses used to be a man, so Andy's interview with the transsexual witness came across as just what it was: window dressing. Next, we have the death of Dan Breen. The set-up of this story in the previous episode was amazing - that last scene of Dan moving out of the apartment was devastating without ever being maudlin - but anyone could have predicted that Dan would end up dead. In fact, one person already did that a few days ago right here on alt.tv.nypd-blue. Bochco and Milch could've done so much more with this story. For example: -As someone else suggested, Dan is forced to kill Danny in self-defense, magnifying his guilt even further -Danny winds up dead because he can't take care of himself (for example, we saw that he had stopped eating) Or they could have just had Dan leave Danny alone and let the guilt eat at him. That's the least melodramatic ending, and in some ways the saddest, but they could've just ended the story last episode if they wanted to do that. In any event, I (and everyone else) could see Dan's death coming a mile away. Then we have the birth of Fancy's child, which we *never* saw. Not only was this Fancy's first subplot of the year, but it was the culmination of a relatively lengthy and engaging subplot from last year, and we didn't even get to see the actual birth, didn't get to see Fancy tense up even more during the delivery, didn't get to see Arthur and his wife sharing the joy together with Art Jr. All we did was *hear* about it, which was incredibly anti-climactic. Now, I understand that the actress playing Fancy's wife was busy doing her soap, but I would've rather seen them get a replacement actress (or else put off the birth until she was free) than be denied seeing a moment we've been awaiting for more than six months. James McDaniel did wonders with the few bits he did get - I especially liked the absent-minded way he approved Medavoy's sting operation - but he really didn't get the chance he should to do his thing. Okay - end rant. Now for the good stuff. For starters, while the stories were all hopelessly dull and predictable, there was a lot of energy in the performances and direction. The arrest of Leon Nato (the killer) was very taught - the line about how the EMS guys outside "only know how to shoot" would've made *me* drop the gun - and once again gave us a brief glimpse at Simone's tough side. But what really carried the show was Dennis Franz, who defies all acting superlatives. Everytime I think he's topped himself and can't get any better, he does. With even less dialogue than usual, he was extraordinary at conveying every single bit of discomfort, anger, and pain at the ever-worsening Breen situation. As he tried to talk to Danny about the Mets - to see if he could make some kind of connection with this kid - his tone never changed but you could see in his face that he knew it was hopeless. It also showed the right way to use the "new" Sipowicz - just because he's no longer getting shitfaced and calling everyone an asshole doesn't mean he's become Alan Alda. He was extremely frustrated with Danny but kept it bottled up because of his promise to Dan. And that lockerroom scene between Sipowicz and Fancy! My God, but that may be the best few minutes the show's done since Licalsi confessing to the priest last year. For starters, we had all that history between Andy and "Lou": Fancy chaining him to a desk after the shooting, Sipowicz making racial cracks, Fancy taking him to the rib joint, Andy saving Fancy's job when Habrill was out to replace him, Fancy belatedly acknowledging Andy as the senior man on the squad after Kelly quit, etc. These two have fought a lot and also gone to bat for one another, and Fancy really wanted to help Andy. But on top of that, you had the two totally contrasting moods: Fancy's tremendous joy and Sipowicz's agonizing pain. And because of the two divergent emotional places they were coming from, neither one could connect here; Fancy was too happy to be able to be reassuring to Sipowicz and Andy was too griefstricken to be able to properly congratulate Fancy. I've always known Dennis Franz was a great actor and I've always thought that James McDaniel was a good one, but they both boosted my admiration of them to new heights. Let's just hope the writers give us more Fancy/Sipowicz interaction. So, I've bitched and I've complained. Did I like it or did I hate it? Well, I've gotta give this one a thumbs up - in fact, this is probably my favorite post-Kelly show of the season, and maybe my favorite of the season, period. While the writing (or, at least, the plotting - I'll get to dialogue in a bit) was mediocre at best, the acting and directing were stellar at worst. And I'll take good acting over good writing any day - I've gotta agree with my old English teacher who said "I would rather watch Laurence Olivier read from the telephone book than watch Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing." Other comments: -I hear Bochco's next project for ABC is going to be a season-long maxi-series detailing a murder trial from start to finish. Maybe the reason the episodes have been so self-contained this year is because he's burning himself out trying to keep a single storyline going for a whole season. Whatever the reason, I want more story arcs! -This is the second time Andy's really gotten emotionally involved in a case: the first being the Bucci kidnapping. The last one ended happily (he found Jenny), while this one ended tragically. I wonder what'll happen the next time he has to be more than a cop - will he be able to handle it? -While I thought the plotting was awful, I thought the script was wonderfully subtle. Unlike a show like "Picket Fences" or "Chicago Hope," which feels the need to spell out every character's feelings with a big speech, "Blue" people usually have to get across their feelings by playing the subtext, which I find much more rewarding dramatically. For example, in the scene where Bobby and Fancy talk about Fancy's wife, the dialogue could've been very obvious and had Simone make a comment about knowing what it's like to lose your wife, but he never did - the writers knew we were smart enough to make the connection on our own, and Smits was good enough to get the point across without having to mouth an awkward line about his wife. -Speaking of Simone, he went down in my esteem this week for using that coffee mug with a Mets log on it. Ugh. :-) -Sylvia actually got to do her job again this week. The writers had better be careful - that's twice already this seaon. :-) -As for the transsexual performer, whether or not I feel she was superfluous to the plot, I liked the scene between her and Sipowicz, especially her theory on the murder. -So how exactly did Leon Nato get out of jail? -Desk Sergeant Agostini got a first name this week: Vinny. Well, since he's played by Vincent Gustafero, I guess it was an easy choice. He still needs to shave that mustache, though. -It's a shame Medavoy wasn't involved in the gay bar murder investigation. Considering his stunned reaction to the cross-dressing tendencies of a murder suspect from last season (the episode with the two annoying hairdressers from Long Island), I would've liked to see how he handled the news of the witness's sex change. -Line of the week: "Do I have to ride back with him?" "No, we've got a limo waiting for you." For once, Medavoy gets to deliver the zinger. -Alan Sepinwall -sepinwal@mail.sas.upenn.edu RANDOM QUOTE: "I know things about pigeons, Lily." -Clint Eastwood, "In the Line of Fire"