NYPD Blue, Season 2, Episode 18, "Innuendo" Story by Walon Green & David Mills Teleplay by David Mills Directed by Mark Tinker PLOT ONE: CHAOS Andy and Bobby are in the stationhouse whena 911 shooting call comes in. They head out to investigate, but on their way to their car hear that it's a police-involved shooting. That gets them moving. When they arrive at the scene, they find something resembling a war zone, with wounded people and dead bodies strewn everywhere for a couple of blocks. In addition, while the patrolmen who are already there think they have the shooter responsible for all of this cornered in a garage, he somehow manages to disappear. Bobby manages to piece everything together: a man walked into a restaurant called Bellisario's, shot a waitress, and ran out. A rookie cop named Piccone who was out getting sandwiches for his precinct-mates heard the shots and began chasing on foot, though he didn't discharge his weapon at first for fear of hitting someone. The shooter had no such problems and began firing away. Eventually, a radio car pulled up and began giving chase as well, but both of those cops got shot. At that point, Picone opened fire and (as ballistics finds out later) killed a civillian with a stray shot. The whole thing is a nightmare, and the situation is not improved by the presence of a pushy city councilman who witnessed the first shooting and believes that the cops let the waitress bleed to death. Bobby eventually shuts him up after realizing that the councilman was hiding under his table during the whole incident and threatens to release that info to the press. Meanwhile, Andy is interviewing the owner of Mr. Bellisario, the owner of the restaurant where the whole thing started. He says he hired the waitress because he's a fan of her jazz musician husband. Andy keeps asking him questions about drugs, and Mr. Bellisario, a Colombian, walks out indignantly. He returns later, still furious with Sipowicz, with a piece of news: the husband of the dead waitress missed a very important audition that afternoon. With no other leads (Medavoy did get a composite drawing based on the description of a vagrant, though), they decide to check it out. When they arrive at the man's apartment, they find him dead on his living room floor. They also find out that the man's next door neighbor has been barricaded into her closet by the killer, who turns out to have been the previous owner of the apartment now belonging to the dead waitress and her husband. The building landlord reveals that the guy was evicted because he couldn't pay the rent, but that he was also crazy; a fact that the notebooks the landlord confiscated (for failure to pay back rent) should attest to. The landlord's only brought a few of them to the stationhouse, and agrees to show the rest to Andy and Bobby. When they arrive back at the apartment, Andy walks into the dead man's apartment to relieve himself (see Plot Three for more of Andy's urinary situation) without noticing that the killer is standing in the living room with a gun in his hand. Bobby does notice, races in, and shoots the man before he can shoot Andy. Back at the stationhouse, both of them are shaken up - Bobby because he just killed a man, and Andy because he nearly got shot again. He thanks Bobby, saying that this sort of thing never came up "with the other guy" and invites him to dinner, but Bobby decides to stay at the office and do paperwork. He seems calm when Andy leaves, but as he sits down to start typing, it becomes fairly clear that he's not okay. PLOT TWO: BROTHER'S KEEPER Fancy gets a visit from a police buddy of his, who informs him that Fancy's brother Reggie, a patrolman, is having serious problems with his sergeant and may get kicked off the force if he keeps it up. Arthur calls up Reggie, who comes over the 15 very reluctantly. The two are obviously not close, as evidenced by the fact that Reggie still hasn't been by to see Art, Jr. Reggie claims that his sergeant, a guy named McNamara who went through the academy with Arthur, is a racist and the real cause of any problems. Arthur tells Reggie to cool it until he can talk to McNamara. One problem: according to Fancy's source, McNamara is planning to take some kind of action against Reggie very soon, and Fancy is busy with this multiple shootings case. Fortunately, Captain Bass is understanding enough to let him go for a couple of hours, saying that "everybody has a family." As it turns out, Reggie's claims may not be totally unfounded - Fancy is noticeably uncomfortable around his "old buddy" - but Art instructs his brother that "just because some jackass is braying, doesn't mean you gotta bray back." Reggie agrees to keep his mouth shut more often, and even offers to come by and see the baby, but Art gets the feeling that neither promise will be carried out. PLOT THREE: PROSTRATE VERSUS PROSTATE In the middle of all the events of the day, Andy has to take time out to have his prostate examined, as he's been having regular pains whenever nature calls. As expected, his condition has him in a foul mood, and he chooses to take out a lot of his agression on John Irwin (the gay secretary filling in for Donna). However, John gives as good as he gets - after noting that Sip keeps referring to his ailing organ as his "prostrate", he leaves a copy of the dictionary on Andy's desk, with a bookmark pointing to the definition for prostrate (look it up and imagine Andy's reaction). One side effect of Andy's condition (which the doctor tells him is very easily treatable) is that he's been reluctant to have sex with Sylvia. Unfortunately, since he hasn't told her about his problem out of embarrassment, she thinks he's uncomfortable with her because of her revelation about her rape in law school. The misunderstanding gets sorted out, and Andy agrees not to keep things from her in the future. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've finally figured it out: I can tell how good an episode is by how much detail I feel the need to go into in the summaries. This is the longest summary I've done in a while (at least since "Vishy Vashy Vinnie"), and I felt I had to write that much, not just because the stories were complicated, but because they were *good*. This is easily the best show since the Webster/Vinny/Haverill two-parter, and one of the few episodes of the season where I went "wow" at the end. I do have a couple of small gripes, which I'll get out of the way before moving onto the praise. For starters, the ending was *very* abrupt - they probably could have stretched out the story for another episode or two. In addition, they still have Andy referring to John Kelly as "the other guy", which stands out far more than if he just mentioned him by name. In addition, the final scene in Fancy's office where Bobby wraps up all the loose ends (how the shooter got out of the garage, why the councilman's 911 call wasn't answered, etc.) seemed really forced and unnecessary. Now for the good stuff. The opening teaser before the credits may be the best one the show's ever done. Fast-paced, tense, and completely surprising (I kept asking, "Another gunshot victim? What is this, a Schwarzenegger movie?"), it kept me riveted. I think I probably would've loved the episode even if the rest of it was subpar, based solely on the teaser. Fortunately, the rest of the show wasn't. The investigation into the "shooting gallery" moved logically from point A to point B to point C. *And at not point in the episode was anything useful gained from bringing a suspect into interrogation.* Are the writers allowed to do that? :) The writers also gave everyone something to do. Even a minor scene like Martinez advising Picone not to submit a written statement was much appreciated - especially since it showed how far James has come since the beginning of the series. Medavoy's bit with the crazy homeless guy was also very good. And it seems the writers have been listening to James McDaniel's complaints about lack of screen-time, because Fancy got some major league material this week! First, we had the scene where he warned Picone about what was going to happen to him when news of the accidental shooting of a civilian leaked out. More importantly, we had the whole story with his brother (which, btw, made writing the summary complicated - I just don't feel comfortable referring to Lt. Fancy as "Arthur"). Not only did it reveal more about Fancy's ever-elusive background, but the way he handled the situation - telling Reggie to shut up and take the abuse from the higher-ups - was perfectly in character. Fancy's situation also gave us a very nice look at Captain Clifford Bass. Particularly nice was the scene where Fancy returned from talking to McNamara and Bass had to tell him what he'd missed, and suddenly Inspector Aiello came in and Bass said, "Lt. Fancy was just getting me up to speed." I laughed out loud at that one - you'd never have seen Haverill doing something like that, that's for damn sure. Andy's "prostrate" trouble wasn't incredibly exciting in and of itself - the scene with Sylvia was pretty standard material for the two of them - but the opportunities it provided for interaction between Andy and John were very nice. I particularly appreciated how John didn't behave in stereotypical Hollywood fashion and take the abuse like a "good little sissy" should. Instead, he decided to fight back and make fun of Andy's intellect just the same way that Andy was mocking his sexuality. The bit with the dictionary on Andy's desk was priceless. One final note before wrapping things up: while I disliked the dialogue of the final scene between Bobby and Fancy, Jimmy Smits' acting in it was marvelous. I remember a bunch of times on LA Law when he had to play Victor Sifuentes as grief-stricken, and I never quite bought it. Here I did - and the best part about it was that nobody had to say why Bobby was so upset, because Smits' performance told you plain as day. Shorter takes: -Michael Jai-White, who played Reggie Fancy, is due to appear in an HBO TV-movie about Mike Tyson in which he plays Tyson. Do you think he's up for it? Personally, I think his voice is much too deep for the part. :) -They've gotta do a better job of dressing the backlot sets; the facade of the dead couple's apartment building looked so phony that I couldn't help but laugh. -Can any New Yorker identify which precincthouse was used as the exterior for Fancy's visit to see McNamara? -Line of the Week: "So, do you want me to wash your car for a year?" - Sip, trying to figure out how repay Bobby for saving his life -Alan Sepinwall -sepinwal@mail.sas.upenn.edu -http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~sepinwal/ RANDOM QUOTE: "What an ass kicking that 1984 election was. I don't remember the final vote tally, but when I went to sleep that night, Mondale had three electoral votes. That's only three more than I had, and I didn't even run. The guy spends millions of dollars and I almost tied him." -Dennis Miller