NYPD Blue, Season 2, Episode 5, "Simone Says"

Story by Stephen Bochco & David Milch & Walon Green
Teleplay by David Milch & Walon Green
Directed by Gregory Hoblit

PLOT ONE: FATAL ATTRACTION
Detective Lesniak's overpossessive ex-boyfriend, Detective Abruzzo, shows 
up at the stationhouse to try and get her to talk to him. He's very 
obviously drunk, and she tries to get him to leave quietly. Abruzzo pulls 
out his .38 revolver and tries to force her to go with him. Fancy, who's 
been watching the whole situation from his office (and calling for some 
uniforms), runs out and manages to seperate Abruzzo from Lesniak. They 
struggle, and Abruzzo's gun goes off, punching holes in a window. 
Sipowicz decides to get involved, but Abruzzo knocks him into a file 
cabinet, injuring his ribs. Finally, newly arrived Detective Bobby Simone 
enters the fray and manages to pin and cuff Abruzzo, who's carted off to 
Bellvue for a 78 hour psychiatric evaluation. Fancy promises Lesniak that 
if Abruzzo is going to be put in prison, he'll let her know in advance.

PLOT TWO: NEPOTISM VS. INCEST - WHICH IS WORSE?
Lesniak is visited by Mrs. Davis (played by Steven Bochco's wife, Barbara 
Bosson). It seems that Mrs. Davis' husband has been molesting their 
daughter for years - even to the point of sleeping with her every night. 
Mrs. Davis is afraid to press charges against her husband, so she's come 
to the stationhouse to see if a detective would be willing to 
"discourage" Mr. Davis from touching his daughter. Lesniak tells her that 
they can only do something if she or her daughter is willing to make a 
statement. The daughter is brought in and is reluctant to say anything - 
she thinks she'll go to jail if she talks - but eventually Lesniak and 
her mom convince her. 

Then, the fun starts. Medavoy brings in Mr. Davis using a b/s story about 
some moving violation, then brings him into interrogation and tells him 
why he's really there. Medavoy appeals to him as a family man and says 
that if he signs a statement admitting everything he's done to his 
daughter, then he might get off with just having to take counseling. Mr. 
Davis buys this, and as he's about to write his statement, Medavoy 
casually says, "As a formality, I'm going to read you your Miranda 
rights." Davis doesn't flinch and signs the statement, whereupon Medavoy 
places him under arrest and tells him, "I hope they put you away, you 
sick son of a bitch."

PLOT THREE: A BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE...
Sipowicz and Simone are assigned to investigate the murder of a mobster's 
son, who was gunned down outside his girlfriend's apartment building. To 
make matters worse, a stray bullet from the shooter's gun went through a 
window in the apartment building, killing an elderly woman who was just 
sitting in her own apartment, waiting for her daughter to show up.
Sip and Simone find the girlfriend, a fashion model, and bring her in for 
questioning. Sipowicz is convinced that the murder had to do with the 
guy's father; Simone thinks the girlfriend's old boyfriend from Jersey 
had something to do with it. 

Simone is right; after they bring the ex-boyfriend, a construction worker 
who still loves the model very much, he confesses fairly quickly, 
apologizing for killing the elderly woman. Sipowicz feels bad for the guy 
and tells him that if he "remembers" having struggled before the gun went 
off, it would really help to put it in his statement.

PLOT FOUR: SIPOWICZ AND THE NEW GUY
Andy's in a foul mood. He doesn't even want to consider the fact that 
Simone might be an okay guy - no matter how good he is, he's no John 
Kelly. In addition, his doctor just told him he needed to get reading 
spectacles, which he's embarrassed about. 

When Simone comes into the locker room in the morning, he merely 
introduces himself, and Andy decides he can't work with him, complaining 
to Fancy, "He said 'How are you?' Can you believe that?" Eventually, Sip 
does come up with two somewhat more legit gripes about Simone: 1)Simone's 
last detail was as a driver for the police commissioner, and he got his 
detective-2 rating because of politics; 2)Simone seems *way* too nice 
with witnesses - he even goes out to buy yogurt for the model. 
Eventually, he lets up a little, especially after Simone is proved right 
in his theory on the murder. But he still doesn't like the guy - when 
Sylvia suggests they invite him along to dinner, he says, "He's my 
partner. I'm not friggin' married to him." 

That night, Simone invites all the detectives on the squad (except 
Lesniak - who I guess was out at Bellevue visiting Abruzzo) to a nearby 
bar for drinks (somebody obviously tips him off about Sipowicz, and he 
gets him a club soda). There, Simone and Sip get into a bit of 
one-upsmanship about which pet is better to have: tropical fish (like 
Andy's) or homing pigeons (which Bobby raises). After Medavoy and 
Martinez take off, Bobby reveals to Andy that the reason he was driving 
for the commissioner was that he needed an easy detail after his wife 
died of breast cancer a year ago. This strikes a nerve with Andy - has he 
really been too hard on the guy? - so he invites Simone to go with him to 
dinner with Sylvia. Bobby says he'd like to get the paperwork for the 
murder case out of the way, and heads back to the stationhouse. 
As he's working there on witness statements, Andy comes in, saying, "I do 
my own paperwork." He gives Simone some Greek food he got at the 
restaurant, and sits down to help out with the paperwork. After a moment, 
he pulls his specs out of his pocket and puts them on. They keep working, 
into the night.

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Well, I was definitely waiting to reserve judgement on Smits till I saw 
what he could do. I'll say the following: I was impressed, but I want to 
see more. Tonight, we basically got to see the soft side of Simone - how 
he wants to fit in with Sipowicz, how he got the yogurt for the model, 
how he consoled the dead woman's daughter, how his wife died of breast 
cancer, etc. It's a good idea to stress right away that he's not a John 
Kelly-clone - Kelly was much more of a tough guy on the job and kept his 
feelings bottled up off the job - but by the same token, I want to see 
the other shades of Simone. The closest we came was in the scene on the 
Manhattan Bridge, where they went to pick up the construction worker 
boyfriend, and the other guy got in Simone's way, but that seemed like a 
Kelly bit - I want to see Simone's style.

Otherwise, I really liked Smits. He really is a likable guy, and there's 
not a hint of that Victor Sifuentes slickness in Simone. That final scene 
with the two of them doing the paperwork and eating the Greek food was a 
bit of a warm fuzzy, but by the same token, we're already kind of 
comfortable with the guy, aren't we? That's impressive.

I will say this, though: both Kelly and Caruso could be really boring at 
times, because of the monotonous, control-freak aspects of the character, 
but when he exploded with his "righteous fury", there was no more 
exciting performer or character anywhere on television. That's one of the 
reasons people were drawn to NYPD Blue in the first place. So far, it 
seems that Smits will be much more interesting to watch going through the 
everyday stuff, but what'll happen when the time comes for Simone to 
explode? Could be interesting....


Other thoughts on the show:

-Did anybody notice how Sipowicz & Simone quickly drifted into an 
interviewing pattern? When they interviewed the model, Bobby did all the 
talking, with Andy standing in the background silently. When they brought 
in the construction guy, Andy talked to him while Bobby remained silent. 
It makes sense - Simone's more empathetic and would be more likely to 
convince the model to give up her boyfriend, while Andy is tough and more 
likely to scare the boyfriend into confessing. My only problem is that 
the duo seemed to develop this bit of give and take instinctively on 
their first day together, without any discussion of strategy. For two 
guys who don't quite get along yet, they sure have one hell of a psychic 
link.

-Wanna bet it was Sylvia's idea for Andy to go back to the stationhouse? 
At the very least, I'm sure she had some "input" on the subject.

-Those of you who have the patience to read the Drinking Game all the way 
to the end will notice an entry under "Guest Stars" which reads: "If the 
guest star is Barbara Bosson, Steven Bochco's talentless real-life wife, 
shoot the TV and write an angry letter to ABC complaining about the evils 
of nepotism." My letter's already in the mail.....

-Medavoy's con job on the child molester was probably the slickest bit of 
interrogation we've seen on the show so far. Medavoy's not a tough guy 
like Sipowicz or the departed Kelly, so scaring the guy into confessing 
would never have worked. Convincing him that it would help him out later 
was very smart, and the way he casually read the guy his rights was 
nothing short of brilliant. BTW, notice how Greg tried to connect with 
the guy by saying he was also a family man? Does that count if he's 
divorced from said family?

-The whole "Abruzzo goes nuts" sequence was very well done - it looked 
like a real fight and not a Hollywood stunt sequence. However, as I was 
going to sleep, a thought occurred to me. After Abruzzo's gun goes off, 
there's a long closeup on the hole in the windowglass. Later in the show, 
the old woman dies because a stray bullet came through *her* window. Do 
you think that's coincidental?

-Well, so much for James' expanded role. What'd he have, two lines? Three?

-I'm not sure yet what rules to come up for Simone for the Drinking Game, 
other than "He talks about his birds." However, I think there may be a 
new general rule: the John Kelly Moment. Anytime a character seems to be 
behaving like Kelly - like Simone came dangerously close to while 
talking to the dead woman's daughter - that's a drink right there. 
Martinez will be exempted from this, because his character is *trying* to 
be Kelly.

-Speaking of Our Departed Hero, did anybody else notice that his name 
wasn't mentioned once? Simone referred to him as "Your [Andy's] 
ex-partner." Hell, his name wasn't even really big enough to read on the 
locker sticker - even before Simone crossed it out and wrote in his own 
name (a nice bit of symbolism, btw).

-Line of the Week: None. Andy didn't seem in the mood for his standard 
quips. However, the whole "fish versus pigeons" discussion was priceless.

-One final note on Simone: I remember reading in several places that 
the reason Simone and Andy didn't get along was because Simone was 
supposed to be an arrogant jerk. I'm glad they went in a different 
direction - having Andy not like him just because of the Sipowicz 
Stubborness (tm) is much more interesting and realistic.

Catch you all next week, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.

-Alan Sepinwall
-sepinwal@mail.sas.upenn.edu

RANDOM QUOTE:

"Did you steal this car?"
"I sure did!"
"Well, I'm not sure that's even a crime anymore, there've been a lot
  of changes in the law."
	-Chevy Chase & a panicky teenager, "Fletch"