NYPD Blue, Season 2, Episode 20, "The Bookie and the Kooky Cookie" Written by George D. Putnam Directed by Mark Piznarski PLOT ONE: THE RETURN OF PSYCHO WOMAN Sylvia informs a very relieved Bobby that the murder case in which Joyce Novak, the possibly mentally unbalanced woman who had volunteered to lie about her testimony if Simone would sleep with her, was a witness is going to be pleaded out. At the time of the investigation, Bobby got Joyce to keep her story straight by insisting that he couldn't express any feelings he had until the case reached its conclusion in court. Now he has to find out a way to let down Joyce easy - even if he was interested (which he definitely is not), he's still seeing Diane Russell, who's just transferred from Undercover into the detective's squad of the 15. Bobby's lunchtime meeting with Joyce doesn't go well at all - once Joyce realizes that he's not interested, she accuses him of breaking a promise and tells him that he'll be sorry once she changes her testimony. Even the threat of a perjury conviction doesn't dissuade her. Bobby tries to get Sylvia to move up the time of the plea hearing, but it can't be changed, so he has to resort to a few amateur theatrics to keep Joyce from putting the kibosh on the whole thing. When she marches into the courtroom to mess up the proceedings, Bobby sits her down and says he's changed his mind about her. For added effect, he has Diane come in and say he has to give testimony in another courtroom, then brushes her off to stay with Joyce. Joyce remains captivated enough for the plea arrangement to go through without a hitch, at which point Bobby drops the act and tells Joyce to get lost. Determined to get some kind of revenge, Joyce goes to see Lt. Fancy and announces that she wants to file charges of sexual misconduct against Bobby, claiming that he had been sleeping with her until the plea bargain and then broke off the affair. Fancy, quite bluntly, tells her that he doesn't believe her and suggests that she see a psychiatrist, but offers to conduct an investigation anyway. Joyce stalks off, but not without screaming at Diane, whom she believes stole Bobby from her (she has no real evidence that Diane and Bobby are together). At the end of the shift, a slightly inebriated Diane (who just took a few swigs of booze in the squad lockerroom) is accosted by a knife-wielding Joyce in the parking lot. Diane disarms her easily and Bobby gets ready to cart her off to Bellevue. PLOT TWO: MAMA KNOWS BEST Despite all the craziness with Joyce, Bobby (along with Andy) still finds time to investigate the murder of a neighborhood bookie. After their first suspect, a working stiff who owed the bookie $11,000, appears to be clean (he says he paid his debt shortly before the murder took place), the detectives zero in on the bookie's chauffeur, who for some reason wasn't driving him that morning. Bobby's interview with him doesn't go very well - the chauffeur gets beligerent without provocation. A tip from ex-detective-turned-sleazy-bodyguard Mike Roberts (who worked off and on for the bookie) leads Andy to check the records for the bookie's cellular phone. As it turns out, its still in use, with repeated calls to the mother of the chauffeur. When Andy and Bobby pay her a visit, she proves a real charmer - a loud-mouthed chainsmoker who kicks them out after Andy lies about how much money was stolen off the dead bookie (he says it was $47,000 instead of $11,000). The mother, convinced her son ripped her off, threatens him with a gun, at which point Bobby and Andy (who tracked them both down thanks to the phone records again) arrest them both. Once in custody, the chauffeur confesses fairly quickly. PLOT THREE: JOHN, WE HARDLY KNEW YE (the sequel) Donna stops by the squadroom, looking fit and rested, and tells Fancy that she's ready to come back tomorrow. This means that John the temp is going to be reassigned, much to his disappointment - he'd grown attached to the detectives in the squad. Late in the day, he gives them all cards thanking them for the experience. When he compliments Fancy on the way he runs the squad, Art tells him that there's an opening for a secretary in the Anti-Crime office upstairs, and that he'll recommend a now re-enthused John for the job. PLOT FOUR: ANDY AND THE MAN UPSTAIRS In preparation for their impending nuptials, Sylvia takes Andy to see her priest for a counseling session. Because all three are pressed for time, the priest asks to talk to Andy in private since he's known Sylvia since she was a child and doesn't know Andy at all. Andy's very uncomfortable with the priest - a discomfort that in large part is owed to Andy's current lack of faith in God, which he reluctantly admits to. That night, when Sylvia asks Andy what he talked about in the session, he explains his nonbelief by telling her the story of a particularly gruesome case he worked on years ago involving a battered baby that got fed to his father's dog after the father killed him. But, he tells her, while he doesn't have faith in God, "I've got faith in you." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alright, I give: NYPD Blue is finally and totally back on track. After the mediocrity of the season's first half and the out and out badness of some of the midseason shows (particularly "Bombs Away"), I was reluctant to give high praise to the show, despite outstanding episodes like "Vishy Vashy Vinnie" (Simone interrogates Webster) and "Innuendo" (the crazy grad student shoots up a city block), continually saying to myself that they were isolated exceptions to the show's general decline, rather than signs of a new upward trend. Well, with "The Bookie and the Kooky Cookie" (one of the season's best titles, btw), I can finally feel comfortable that the show is sailing smoother seas again. While the mystery of the bookie's death was fairly routine, the rest of the episode - particularly Bobby's courtroom seduction of Joyce and Andy's final monologue - was outstanding. The plotting of the Psycho Woman story was nothing special, but the strength of Blue has never been the writing (which tends to border on the predictable), but on the acting and directing. This story was no exception. Dealing with Joyce seems to bring out the best in Jimmy Smits' acting - he's usually very laid back, but in the courtroom scene tonight (and in the hot dog scene during Joyce's first appearance) he had this very quiet and compelling intensity that just kept me riveted. And the constant cutting between Bobby and Joyce and the plea bargain proceedings a few feet away just made the scene unbearably tense. Nicely done. The development of Diane Russell as someone who will in all likelihood bring Bobby a lot of pain continued with her beverage consumption in the lockerroom. With two episodes left in the season, I figure something tragic will happen in the finale, but I don't know exactly what yet. I'm definitely intrigued, though - and I wonder if Andy (who it was pretty obvious caught the liquor on Diane's breath, as well as the kind of alkie behavior he used to indulge in) will turn her in. So Donna's back for good starting next week, eh? To be perfectly honest, I'd rather have seen John stick around - in only a couple of episodes, he seemed a lot more interesting than Donna has in a long time. I was afraid the writers were going to let me down and have him develop a crush on Simone - he kept throwing a lot of furtive glances Bobby's way during the ep - but it turned out that he was just attached to all of the people in the squad. Let's hope that once he moves upstairs he doesn't disappear from the show forever - his conversations with Andy were hysterical. One missed opportunity tonight came with the return of Mike Roberts. I was hoping that James would be the one to make the cracks about all of Roberts' dead clients after what happened the last time James worked for him. In fact, since Smits already had plenty to do with the Joyce story (and Franz with his conversations with the priest and with Sylvia), I think it would've been a good opportunity to maybe give Martinez and Medavoy the "A" murder case for once. One of these days I'll accept the fact that NYPD Blue isn't a pure ensemble show like Hill Street Blues, but in the meantime I can still bitch and moan about the supporting cast's lack of screen time, right? Then again, when you have stars as good as Smits and Franz, it's tough to give anyone else a piece of the action. Smits shone in the courtroom, and Franz did the same in the final scene with Sylvia. The story he told was somewhat familiar to me (I'd read a variant on it in a superb comic book by Alan Moore called "The Watchmen" about eight or nine years ago, where a vigilante went insane after investigating a case where a kidnapped child was butchered and fed to two dogs), but that didn't make it any less mesmerizing. I often find my faith in God tested just by reading in the newspapers about all of the horrors committed in New York (and around the world) - imagine how hard it must be for the cops who have to deal with them every day. And that final line was yet another classic example of Dennis Franz taking something that reads as unbelievably cheezy and making it sound beautiful. In all, an excellent episode. I have faith that the momentum will keep up for the final two shows of the season. And if they're as good as "Guns 'N' Rosaries" (Licalsi confesses to the murder of Marino) and "Rockin' Robin" (Sipowicz finds the missing Jenny Bucci after many years), I may finally get off my "the first season will never be equalled" pedestal. Shorter takes: -Once again, Andy lets Sylvia run the relationship by going to see her priest despite his obvious discomfort. Some may call it just being a nice guy and doing something to make his fiancee happy, but when was the last time that they did something Andy wanted to that made Sylvia uncomfortable? -The murder story wasn't anything special, but it was nice to see Grace Zabriskie (who played the chauffeur's mother) again. For you "Twin Peaks" fans out there, she played Laura Palmer's mother. -It wasn't especially bright of Fancy to ask Joyce if she was seeing a psychiatrist, was it? When you're trying to contain an unstable person, the last thing you want to do is antagonize them. -Speaking of Joyce, did anyone else find it ironic that one of her delusions - Bobby and Diane sleeping together - turned out to be true? I quote Catch-22: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." -The interview with the guy who owed the bookie the eleven grand that didn't lead the detectives anywhere was refreshing - precisely because it didn't lead them anywhere. -Can someone who knows a bit more about this sort of thing tell me if Bobby's sunglasses are as expensive as they look? I know Bobby's more of a fashion plate than Kelly was, but those things look like more than a guy on a detective's salary would be splurging on. -Alan Sepinwall -sepinwal@mail.sas.upenn.edu -http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~sepinwal/ RANDOM QUOTE: "Let me tell you what 'Like a Virgin' is about. It's all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The entire song's a metaphor for big dicks." -Quentin Tarantino, "Reservoir Dogs"