NYPD Blue, Season 2, Episode 15, "Bombs Away" Story by Stephen Bochco & David Milch & Bill Clark Teleplay by Ted Mann & Gardner Stern Directed by Jorge Montesi PLOT ONE: THE DICTIONARY DEFINES 'ASSASINATION' AS... George Putnam, AKA Webster, has been brought back to the stationhouse to appear in some lineups relating to some non-Webster robbery/homicides. As Bobby is waiting for the first witness to view the lineup, he gets a page from Sergeant Agostini, and goes to the lobby of the 15 to discover Arnold Rudman, the father of Putnam's final victim, waiting for him. Mr. Rudman says that he's started a victim's support group and would like Bobby, whom he thanks for catching Putnam, to take part. He also asks if he can get one more look at Putnam up close. Bobby is wary, but he lets Mr. Rudman view him through a two-way mirror. After the witnesses ID Putnam, Bobby, James and Greg prepare to escort him back to Riker's. On the way outside, Bobby notices Mr. Rudman still hanging around the lobby, but Rudman assures him he's not going to do anything. But as soon as they get Putnam out the precinct door, he's gunned down by sniper fire. Bobby's convinced that Mr. Rudman was responsible, and when James discovers that the target scope on the murder weapon was purchased by Rudman weeks ago, he's certain. He talks to one of the members of Rudman's support group, who tells him that Rudman and a Mr. Senquist were the only ones who ever talked about retribution against Webster. Senquist, a former military marksman and the father of one of Webster's earlier victims, has a very flimsy alibi that's quickly disproved by a cabbie who says he picked up Senquist a few blocks from the precincthouse only minutes after the shooting. Bobby quickly realizes that Rudman got Senquist to do it by paying for Mrs. Senquist to go to an expensive clinic for her kidney dialysis. Senquist confesses, but won't implicate Rudman. Later that evening, Rudman shows up at the precincthouse again. When Bobby confronts him with the info about the target scope, Rudman tells him that it was stolen - he filed a report on it weeks ago. Bobby realizes that he can't guilt Rudman into confessing, but he gives him a warning: one day, Senquist is going to realize that he got the short end of the deal and turn him in. And in the meantime, Rudman has to live with the fact that his daughter's still dead and that he's responsible for another man's murder. Rudman is shaken up - the moral implications never really hit him until then, apparently - but walks out of the station calmly. PLOT TWO: TICK, TICK, BEEP BEEP On their way from the dry cleaners to the precinct shortly before Putnam is assasinated, Bobby and Andy get into a collision with a Romanian immigrant named Ilisascu, who just happens to have a woman locked in his trunk and a briefcase filled with explosives in his back seat. In interrogation with Andy, he spouts a lot of revolutionary jargon about how America is run by the rich. The kidnapped woman's statement is enough to get Andy a search warrant for Iliascu's apartment, where he finds a cachet of handmade bombs, as well as an address book filled with the names and travel routes of prominent rich families in the city. Sipowicz goes back to interrogation and gets Iliascu to sign a statement confessing to the explosives posession and kidnapping, but Andy's convinced that he's already planted a bomb somewhere. Eventually, he admits that he has - one of the families in his book is lying in their home with dynamite and thermite switches strapped to their backs - but won't reveal the name and address unless he's set free, given a million dollars, and a plane to fly back to Romania. Andy's not in the mood to play nice, so he gives him a few well-placed knees to the midsection and groin and obtains the names of the victims, which enables the Bomb Squad to get to them in time. Afterwards, Andy goes to lockup to see Iliascu, who bitterly claims that if he was a rich man, Sipowicz never would've beaten him - to which Andy responds, "Hey, pal. This is America. I would've beaten on you rich or poor." PLOT THREE: COME AND KNOCK ON MY DOOR... Donna's still very upset with Greg, and won't even talk to him. In desperation, he calls her sister Dana in the hopes that she'll convince Donna to take him back. But when he goes to visit Dana at her apartment, she's only interested in trying to seduce him. She's unsuccessful, but that doesn't matter to Donna when Dana tells her later that Greg came to visit her. PLOT FOUR: PLEASE GOD, LET THAT BE THE END James finally works up the nerve to ask out Adrianne on a date - dinner at a fancy steakhouse in Brooklyn. She politely tells him that she's decided it's not a good idea to go out with people on the job anymore. James jokingly says that he'll quit, but Adrianne makes it clear that she's not interested no matter where he works. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, I wasn't especially crazy about tonight's episode, but it didn't provoke nearly the anger that last week's did. In addition, there were some excellent moments: the actual assasination of Putnam, Andy's forced confession, and Bobby's final chat with Mr. Rudman were all very intense and very well done. But "Bombs Away" was brought down by two major problems: 1)Far too much speechmaking in both the Webster and mad bomber stories; and 2)The presence of another grating Donna/Dana/Greg triangle episode, with a little James/Adrianne idiocy thrown in for good measure. At least the James/Adrianne story seems done with for now - I hope. I still cringe everytime Dana makes an appearance, though, because whenever she does, "NYPD Blue" turns into a bad 70s sitcom, with even more predictability. Could either Medavoy or Donna please have a storyline that doesn't demean their characters? As for the speechmaking problems, I've never been especially fond of shows that get up on a soapbox - my least favorite moments on Hill Street Blues were when Frank and Joyce debated ethics. When nearly a third of the show is taken up with Andy listening to Iliascu's propaganda, I have to shake my head and ask, "Did I just turn on Picket Fences?" The moral debate in the Webster case was a bit more satisfying, if only because even Simone seemed to feel that Putnam was better off dead, but couldn't admit that because of his obligation to the law. I'll say this about Andy's beating of Iliascu: if I was in his situation, I would've done the exact same thing, but I wouldn't have acted nearly so smug about it afterwards. Unlike the "lie detector" he used on the wife-beater near the start of the season, where he had no real proof that the man was guilty and also had plenty of time to coerce a confession, here he was operating under a clock - if he didn't get the address very soon, people would've died. But Andy's self-satisfied attitude when talking to Iliascu in lockup was a far cry from John Kelly's "I'll just have to live with myself" attitude last year when James asked him about beating up suspects. In addition, there didn't seem to be any kind of tension at all in the Iliascu investigation - there was always a very vague sense that there were other bombs already out there, but essentially, that plot element wasn't brought up until the very end, making the early parts of the story seem very slack and pointless. If, on the other hand, we had a story where Andy found out very early on that there was a family at risk, tried every other means of persuasion to get Iliascu to give him the names, and finally had to resort to stomping on him, we might have had something interesting. As it was, we had twenty minutes of listening to Iliascu spout propaganda and call Sipowicz a Polack, and five minutes of an actually interesting, tense story. Getting back to the Webster story, here's a quote from my review of "In the Butt Bob" where Mr. Rudman first appeared: "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." Well, so much for rewarding drama or originality - they just waited a few episodes for Mr. Rudman to take action. Bleah. Shorter takes: -Why do Andy and Bobby go to the same dry cleaner's? I would think they would both use one in their own neighborhoods. -I think it's a stupid story idea, but this was the first time I kind of enjoyed the James/Adrianne story, because James actually seemed alert and awake for the first time in weeks. The "I'm glad that you're glad" exchange, while somewhat cheezy, had Nick Turturro smiling for the first time in a long time. And at least Adrianne let James down easy. -Wouldn't the lineups of Putnam have been tainted since the witnesses came forward only after they saw him on TV? -Lines of the week: "Who made you the fashion police?" and "This is America. I'd have beat you rich or poor." -Alan Sepinwall -sepinwal@mail.sas.upenn.edu -http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~sepinwal/ RANDOM QUOTE: "Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown." -Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"