NYPD Blue Season 2, Episode 10, "In the Butt Bob" Story by Stephen Bochco & David Milch Teleplay by Ted Mann & Burton Armus & Gardner Stern Directed by Donna Deitch PLOT ONE: THE DICTIONARY DEFINES MURDER AS.... At the site of a murder by strangulation, Simone finds a note made up of words cut out from Webster's Dictionary, which is the calling card of a serial killer the press had dubbed "Webster" who had been inactive for a while. Webster's note says that the dead man's girlfriend will be the next body found. The father of the missing girl, Mr. Rudman, offers a big reward for the return of his daughter, but her strangled body is found later in the day, along with a note from Webster taking credit for that murder and one in Battery Park from a few month's ago. Simone is sure that the killer is in fact Webster, but the police task force created to solve the Webster murders isn't convinced - especially since Webster's previous MO had been death by shooting and not strangulation. Simone stays with the double-murder - at which point Mr. Rudman offers him a million dollars if he'll kill the man who murdered his daughter. Bobby declines. After looking through some incident reports from Battery Park on the same day the other murder Webster took credit for took place, he finds a report for an "attempted mugging" where the victim was shot in the buttocks. Simone thinks the two crimes are related, and if the male shooting victim was involved with the strangled woman, it would prove that Webster was still at large, since he always killed couples. The shooting victim, Bob, is brought in, and Andy and Bobby convince him to let doctors remove the bullet from his rear. The slug matches (at least to 90% accuracy) all the other Webster bullets. As Bobby is about to tell Det. Solomon of the task force about this development, Solomon and Inspector Aiello (the head of the task force) tell him that they have a lead on the murders that day; Mr. Rudman's daughter's body was found in the trunk of her car, and a traffic ticket had been issued to a male driver of that car earlier in the day (though after her boyfriend was killed). Aiello reluctantly lets Simone and Sipowicz along for the collar and is noticably peeved when they're the ones to make the actual arrest - because the suspect tried to escape through an alley where Aiello had stationed the two of them. In Interrogation, Bobby manages to get the suspect to admit that he was driving the car that day, at which point Aiello tells Bobby that Solomon will handle the interrogation on his own; it's clear that nobody wants an "outsider" getting credit for a task force case. PLOT TWO: FANCY'S OLD STOOLIE VInnie Greco, Fancy's old informant (who was responsible for the bust that got Fancy his gold shield) turns up with information about a potential armored car robbery. Fancy's suspicious, since Vinnie is supposed to be in Florida as part of the Witness Protection Program (he claims he left because he missed New York), so he sends Sipowicz along with Vinny to pose as a weapons dealer to the would-be robbers. The meeting goes well, and Fancy tells Commander Haverill about it; Haverill, mistrustful of Fancy anyway, asks to speak to Vinny before he'll allocate any money or resources to further the case. The next day Vinnie shows up in Fancy's office and claims that he had another meeting with the two hoods later that night, and that a noted crimelord had been there. When Fancy presses him, Vinnie says that the crimelord wasn't really there, but he'd testify that he was to help Fancy's career. Fancy smells a rat and searches Vinny and finds a wire - that Haverill gave Vinnie to set up Fancy. So the Lieutenant sends Vinnie back to Haverill with a wire of his own, and gets enough evidence to incriminate Haverill - when the time is right. PLOT THREE: LESNIAK IS HARASSED....AGAIN On her way to work, Lesniak is approached by a flasher, who she promptly busts. His lawyer and his therapist claim that he's working on his "problem" and Adrianne finally agrees to let him off with a warning, but the next day, he's brought into the stationhouse again for exposing himself to another woman. This time, Lesniak brings in Sylvia to prosecute. The flasher agrees to cop to a misdemeanor and enter a counseling program, but as he's agreeing to this, he loses control of himself and flashes everyone again. PLOT FOUR: BOBBY AND THE REPORTER While he's investigating the Webster case, Simone runs across Benita Alden, a reporter he was friends with when both worked at City Hall (him, as the Commish's chauffeur; her, as a City Hall beat reporter). Benita's now working the crime beat, and she keeps trying to pump Bobby for info on the Webster case. He gives her a few very vague off-the-record answers, and she eventually asks him out to dinner. He agrees, and despite a temporary argument about whether she's just using him for information, they make plans to go out. PLOT FIVE: ANDY'S DOMESTIC STUFF Andy's decided that it's finally time to tell his son about him and Sylvia, so he invites Andy Jr. to dinner at Sylvia's place, with much trepidation. Andy Jr. and Sylvia get along fairly well, and before dinner he tells his father that he's enlisted in the Air Force and will be leaving for training in two weeks. After Andy Jr. leaves, Andy tells Sylvia that he feels like he missed so many opportunities with his son - the death of Dan Breen has him thinking about a lot of the missed opportunities in his life. Sylvia suddenly says, "Ask me again." It takes him a second to figure out what she's talking about, and then quickly asks her to marry him again. This time, she says yes, and they kiss passionately. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I really enjoyed tonight's episode, if for no other reason than that it broke (to a certain extent) the rigid format that we've all been bitching about lately (and that Gardner devastatingly parodied in that post of his from last week). At least one, if not both, of the major plotlines of the episode (Haverill vs. Fancy and Webster) appear to be continued next week. In addition, we finally got a hint of Simone's personal life besides the death of his wife and his pigeons; Fancy got a meaty storyline unrelated to the birth of his child; and we got the return of Andy Jr. (albeit for only a few minutes). While there wasn't a soul-shattering high like the Sipowicz/Fancy lockerroom scene from last week, there also weren't any of the blahhs that have been creeping into the show lately. I enjoyed it from start to finish - even the obligatory comic relief subplot, which I usually try my best to ignore. Good stuff. I'm not sure whether we'll see more of the Webster stuff next week, but I'd say it's a pretty fair bet, if only because Reni Santoni (Solomon) and Andy Romano (Aiello) are Bochco favorites. We still don't know exactly what happened after Solomon started interrogating the suspect on his own, nor do we know if there'll be any further attempts by the task force to hog all the glory. And even if this is the last we see of this particular case, the methodology of the investigation was definitely different from the standard "Figure out the suspect right away and interrogate him ferociously until he cops to the crime" motif. True, we had Andy convincing Bob to let them take the bullet out and we had Bobby coaxing a confession about the car from the suspect, but we also had Simone doing research (checking the incident reports), ballistics tests, etc. I couldn't predict the outcome of this particular investigation right from the get-go - though it rapidly became clear that Solomon et. al were going to close ranks on the case regardless of outcome. In addition, I thought at first that the show might end with Mr. Rudman killing Webster; the Avenging Father was a staple on Hill Street Blues. It was much more real, and much more dramatic, to have him come to grips with the fact that he was helpless to do anything. And that final two-shot of him and Bobby sitting together on the bench was a nice touch - each one knows what it's like to lose a loved one and be powerless to stop it. The Vinnie/Fancy/Haverill stuff continued the episode's motif of the politics of the NYPD - Aiello wanted Simone out of the interrogation so his own guy (Solomon) could get the glory, while Haverill wants Fancy off the force so he can put his own guy in charge of the 15th squad. Haverill's shown to be a pretty good bad guy - I've actively disliked him since his first appearance last year - and while I'm looking forward to his presumably getting his just desserts next week, if they write him out altogether, I'll miss him. With both him and Inspector Lastarza (the Internal Affairs guy who was manipulating Licalsi last year) gone, the show won't have any "in-house" villains. It was also a real pleasure to see Joe Pantoliano - a veteran character actor (his last big role was as Tommy Lee Jones' sidekick in "The Fugitive") and one of the best at playing scuzzballs in the history of the business - on the show. Unlike Steve the Snitch from a few episodes ago, Vinnie wasn't remotely a clone of HSB's Sid. In addition, while on the one hand Pantoliano had me mistrusting everything Vinnie said, he also got across Vinnie's loyalty to Fancy - a very neat trick, if you ask me. I know Pantoliano is a busy guy (there's some unwritten rule in Hollywood that either he or Michael Caine has to be in every movie ever made), but I hope he appears again. Not only is he fun to watch, but he and James McDaniel play off each other very well. The Lesniak and the Flasher subplot could've been absolutely dopey and offensive if it hadn't been for David Wohl's marvelous deadpan as the flasher. His whole speech about how he felt that need to be punished after being arrested the second time had me in stitches - he was just so bloody serious and forthright about it that I couldn't stop myself from laughing. This is probably the first comic relief subplot of the season I've actually found funny, mainly because Wohl totally underplayed his part. All the other comic characters we've had this season (Dana Abandando, Steve the Snitch, the gypsies) have been played so broad that they didn't fit at all within the framework of the show - the jokes were too forced. But Wohl just relaxed into his role and was terrific. As for the two romantic storylines, I'm a bit hesitant about Bobby's and very excited about Andy's. I'll take care of Bobby first. First of all, I thought that Simone wasn't supposed to get a girlfriend this season - the producers wanted us to get comfortable with Simone as a cop before they showed us his romantic side (and risk comparisons to David Caruso and his butt). And regardless, I'm not sure what Simone sees in Benita, other than the physical. Simone seems a bit deeper and more sensitive than Kelly, who was often a male slut who would bang anything with a good set of legs, so I can't buy that he would agree to go out with her based just on looks, but there didn't seem to be any other kind of chemistry there. Who knows? Maybe Smits and Melina Kanakaredes (say that five times fast) will develop more of a rapport in the episodes to come (she's supposed to appear at least two more times), but for now, I'm not overly excited. I'd rather see Bobby's pigeons. :) At the opposite end of the relationship spectrum, we have Andy and Sylvia. The scenes at their apartment at the end of the show were wonderful - from Andy Jr's reaction to the presence of his dad's fish to Andy Sr's reaction to the news about the Air Force to Sylvia's sudden decision to marry Andy. I think it was very clever of the writers to take Michael DeLuise's dorky "SeqQuest DSV" haircut and use it as a plot point, particularly a plot point to get Andy and Sylvia engaged. I get the feeling that we won't see Andy Jr. again for a while (at least until SeaQuest is cancelled) - this was just a graceful way of writing him out. And even though I knew it was coming (having read various articles about the episode beforehand), I still thought Sylvia's "Ask me again" was marvellously spontaneous - it seemed perfectly natural that she would make up her mind at just that moment. In all, I thought this was a terrific episode - minute-for-minute, the best of the Simone shows. Shorter takes: -Upon further review, I see that previous posters were right: Simone's mug bears the logo of my beloved Knicks, and not the Mets. Bobby, all is forgiven! :-) -Where do the detectives get the clothes they wear while undercover? Until now, I thought it was just their own civillian-wear, but the stuff Sipowicz was wearing for the meeting with the two hoods was hideous even by his standards. Was that department issue or what? -Speaking of Andy going undercover, is it me or is he the last guy in the universe you want to send undercover? His face practically screams "COP!" -Considering that Michael DeLuise was able to spare the time from his other series to play Andy Jr. again this week, I'm even more upset that the actress who plays Fancy's wife wasn't brought back last week. Can one of our behind-the-scenes lurkers explain what happened there? -How come Lesniak always winds up dealing with the sexual deviants? There's her fatally attracted boyfriend, her problem with the tit- cup, the incest case, the promiscuous HIV+ guy, and now the flasher. Does anyone else sense a theme? -Line of the week: "Why don't you give that ass guy a call?" -Alan Sepinwall -sepinwal@mail.sas.upenn.edu RANDOM QUOTE: "What we've got here is failure to communicate." -Strother Martin, "Cool Hand Luke"