Some thoughts on "Lost Israel," the November 25 episode of NYPD Blue, after, of course, a quick summary: -------------------------------- Andy's inability to hide his suspicion that a father raped and killed his eight-year-old son may compromise the case; Greg's amateur knowledge of Judaism comes in handy while investigating a Hasidic woman's murder. --------------------------------- I should start off with a hearty welcome back to Ted Mann, a member of the first-season writing staff (he penned one of my all-time favorite episodes, "Emission Accomplished"). Along with a seemingly reinvigorated David Milch (who also co-wrote this week's surprisingly good Brooklyn South), they produced a bit of vintage Blue here. I only found one note that seemed to ring really false during the hour, and it turned out that that scene (Diane blowing off a seemingly clueless Greg on the bridge) was just setting us up for a wonderful payoff. After an episode where I was so bored I stopped paying attention 20 minutes in (which is why there was no review last week), it's nice to be reminded why I started watching this show in the first place. A damn fine episode all around, and I am breathless with anticipation for the 90-minute finale in two weeks. Getting to specifics: 1)As I alluded to above, I was ready to throw a brick at the screen when Idiot Greg turned up on the bridge, but it turned out that Greg was the wise one after all, not only providing a small piece of comfort to the victim's father, but helping coax the perp into confessing. This is how Greg should be written most of the time: he's overenthusiastic and a bit inept socially, but he usually knows what he's doing and he always means well. After what seems like an eternity of both the writers and the characters rolling their eyes at every word out of our red-haired detective's mouth, it's about damn time they all realized he's not such a schmuck, after all. The only thing that Milch and Mann got wrong was that Diane was Greg's partner during the torah theft case where he learned all of this in the first place (in season three's "Torah! Torah! Torah!"), and probably shouldn't have gotten quite so annoyed with him here. 2)What is there to say about Dennis Franz at this point? For a genial guy who digs Martha Stewart, he sure can get nasty very easily. I'm not sure which was more gripping to watch: Andy trying to hold his temper during the second interview with the Egans, or Andy trying not to hate himself during the mock interrogation of Israel. At this rate, Milch is going to have to write the Hamlet of cop show scripts if Smits is going to have a prayer at Emmy time. (Which is not to say that Smits wasn't also brilliant -- the bit where he found the boy's shirt was gut-wrenching -- but once again, he gets the subtler stuff while Franz gets the showy stuff that attracts the voters.) 3)A couple of weeks ago, I took a shot at Milch and Bochco for showing less respect for the audience's intelligence than usual thanks to all the overexposition in their two cop shows, but Milch showed admirable restraint tonight. He could've bludgeoned us with the expository two-by-four (to quote noted Usenet crank James Lloyd Hill) about the parallels between Diane and Mrs. Egan; instead, he just let Diane start talking in that final scene and let all of us fill in the gaps. I only wish there had been some mention over the last couple of seasons about whether or not Andy was still Russell's AA sponsor, because knowing that affects my interpretation of the final scene. If he still is, then he probably knows about Diane's childhood traumas, and gets where she's going. If he isn't, then I wonder why he's not showing any surprise to Russell suddenly having much more insight than usual. 4)Big kudos to the actor who played Israel. It's a tough challenge to act completely without words, but every one of his experessions said a thousand words. I even think I understood a few more of the Bible passages than Andy did. I don't have much else to say. The truly great episodes generally say everything for me. A quick reminder, to everyone who wasn't paying attention earlier: ABC in their infinite foolishness, is pre-empting Blue next week for a Barbara Walters special. Not only that, but the concluding chapter to "Lost Israel" will start a half-hour earlier than usual because Milch wrote long and decided he didn't want to cut anything. The fact that ABC let him get away with that suggests either A)It's really brilliant, B)They're trying to suck up to Bochco after cancelling Total Secuirty, or C)All of the above. I'm hoping for A or C, myself. See ya in the funny papers... Alan Sepinwall * e-mail: sepinwal@force.stwing.upenn.edu NYPD Blue page: http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~sepinwal/nypd.html RANDOM QUOTE: "The only people to ever call me Randy were my wife and my basketball coach. I can still hear it ringing in my ears: 'Go backdoor, Randy!'" "I'm assuming that was your coach." -Barry Bostwick & Michael J. Fox, "Spin City"