I suppose an extra-long (and, some would say, extra-good) episode of NYPD 
Blue deserves some extra-long thoughts, so I'll be dispensing with the 
quick hits format for one week with my thoughts on "Lost Israel, Part 2," 
the December 9 episode, after, of course, a quick summary: 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Simone and Russell split up to bond with Mr. and Mrs. Egan, respectively, 
to try to implicate Mr. Egan in the murder of his son; Andy tries to 
decipher the Bible passages of the silent vagrant Israel; James, Greg and 
Jill uncover a bizarre insurance fraud scheme. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------

As regular readers of these reviews are no doubt aware, I'm always 
clamoring for NYPD Blue to try something different from time to time, to 
do some shows that alter the usual formula. And the "Lost Israel" 
two-parter did that in a few ways -- the very fact that it was told in 
two parts being the most notable deviation from the usual lineup. The 
shows also featured superb performances by Jimmy Smits and guest stars 
Brian Markinson (Steven Egan) and Thom Gossom Jr. (Israel) and featured a 
lot of gripping scenes along the way.

But while I thought really liked the overall story, I'm not sure it lived 
up to all the "event" hype. In fact, I'm not so sure that, if threatened 
with a telephone book-thwacking, I wouldn't still cite "It Takes a 
Village" as my favorite season five episode. 

Since there was so much that was right with these episodes, I may as well 
get through what was wrong first. I had two major problems with Part 2. 
First, there was the 90-minute length. Maybe this isn't fair of me, but I 
think if you extend the usual length of a TV episode by a half-hour and 
promise an epic, then you'd better deliver an epic for 90 minutes. 
Instead, what we got was a little over an hour of said epic (the Brian 
Egan murder), and about twenty minutes of the M&M boys and Kirkendall 
on the trail of a bizarre insurance scam.

Now, as comic relief B-stories go, this was actually one of the better 
ones I've seen in a while -- James' put-downs of Greg didn't seem 
obnoxious for once, the wacky doctor was amusing and there was some great 
timing involved in the interview with the live amputee -- but in this 
show, it was a distraction. Yes, the scene where Andy used the live amputee 
to help close the Egan case was essential to the episode, but overall, 
the subplot was a big distraction from the main story. Everytime I 
started to get really engrossed in Diane's attempts to reach out to Mrs. 
Egan or Bobby's disgust at his "friendship" with Mr. Egan, we'd cut to 
the B-story and it would throw me right out of the episode.

In order to accomodate the resolution of the Egan case, I think Milch 
would have been better off if he'd cut out all the amputation story 
except a line or two establishing that Jill and the guys were working on 
another case so it wouldn't seem completely deus ex machina that there 
would be a vagrant handy in an interview room. Because I think the 
episode would have worked much better if we'd stayed with the Egan story 
from beginning to end, with no breathing room. 

The other problem I had with the episode was Steven Egan's superhuman 
tracking ability. Him finding Diane and Sherrie at the diner, I'll buy, 
because she told him that's where she was going. But his appearance at 
the spot where Brian's shirt was found was a bit too much to swallow. She 
called Diane only minutes after Steven had left the stationhouse, and 
considering Sherrie's mindset at that point, I seriously doubt she left 
her husband a note saying, "I'm going to look at where you found our 
murdered son's bloody shirt. Pick up milk if you get the chance."

Still, that's a more minor quibble than the subplot issue, and I'll look 
past it since most of the rest of the Egan story was brilliantly 
executed.

I commented in my review of the first part that Dennis Franz was getting 
so much flashy work to do that Smits would never have a prayer of an Emmy 
win. Well, the Simone material this time around was just as subtle as 
before, but with Sipowicz pushed to the fringes of the storyline (more on 
him in a few moments), Smits' nuanced work got pushed into the 
spotlight. For me, the highlight of the show was Egan's confession about 
summer camp molestation, because as he unburdened himself, Bobby had to 
sit there, appear sympathetic, and God help him, literally reach out and 
offer comfort to this evil bastard. When he finally did put his hand on 
Egan, it was like an electrical charge went through Bobby's body, but he 
couldn't let anyone see it. 

The Diane/Sherrie scenes weren't quite as riveting -- the role of detective 
turned psychoanalyst doesn't play to Kim Delaney's strengths -- but her 
confrontation with Mr. Egan ("Do you have murder in you?") by the limo was 
another corker. And one of the best things about the two-part format was 
how we got to see Diane create a trusting relationship with Sherrie over 
time, starting with gestures as little as patiently explaining what a 
canvass is. I just wish that Milch would allow Diane to appear this 
competent and in command when she's dealing with a case without this sort 
of personal connection. 

As for Andy, a lot of people have been speculating that he's headed for 
some kind of breakdown because of how emotional he's gotten over this 
case. I don't see it that way. Andy has always been written as a man with 
a few major hot buttons. One of them is crimes against children, even before
Andy Jr's murder. The best example that comes to mind is "NYPD Lou" from 
the first season, which had Andy going ballistic over the rape and murder of 
another young boy. When they found the boy's battered and broken body 
lying within viewing distance of his house, Andy sounded like he was 
ready to beat the murderer to death; as it turned out, he managed to 
control his rage long enough to get his statement, after which he broke a 
door in two with his fists. 

Another big hot button for him is seeing innocent guys take a screwing 
(think Walter Hoyt the painter, for instance). So here he's got a man 
who he knows -- he KNOWS -- molested and murdered his son, then framed 
this helpless soul Israel for it, and what does he get to do? Does he get 
to put Steven Egan in the interview room to get him to confess to this 
horrible crime? No. He has to play along with the frame on Israel, which 
eventually leads the poor guy to kill himself. So between Andy's 
oversensitivity to child murders (note his comment early in part 1 about 
how he's sick of these types of cases) and his guilt over Israel's death, 
I found Andy's bottled anger through these two episodes as in 
character rather than signs of an impending meltdown. 

And I was so glad to see that the passage that Israel opened his Bible to 
before committing suicide had absolutely no bearing on the solving of the 
case. That would have been too trite, and having it instead be about how 
he was set up and betrayed by men in power drove home the double tragedy 
of this case: Steven Egan didn't just murder his son, he murdered Israel, 
too.

So, boys and girls, what did we learn from this ambitious and mostly 
successful two-parter? This fan picked up the following lessons:

1)Milch and Company are not married to the formula, after all, nor should 
they be; 

2)Stretching investigations over more than one episode gives us a closer 
and more interesting glimpse into both the killer's mind and the 
detectives' different strategies;

3)Jimmy Smits can carry a big episode by himself; 

4)Medavoy can be written as the butt of jokes and a competent detective 
at the same time; 

5)I was right to keep asking out of summer camp. :)

A few other random thoughts:

	-Israel joined the long and illustrious ranks of characters 
	 introduced in previous episodes who were found dead by the
	 opening credits of a later episode (others include James'
	 brother Roberto, Diane's dad, and, of course, Andy Jr.).

	-As I was in the middle of this review, that Braun Thermoscan ear 
	 thermometer came on the TV, with Andrea Thompson's familiar
	 deep voice providing narration. Mere moments later, Justine 
	 Miceli popped up in a nicotine patch commercial. It's appropos of 
	 nothing, but since I'm writing a bit longer than usual, I felt I 
	 would throw these dual ad sightings in. :)

	-Someone else pointed this out, but I laughed so much at it that 
	 it bears repeating: this week's Brooklyn South featured a cameo
	 by Scott "Agent Kriegel" Jaeck as an unnamed (and presumably, he 
	 was playing Kriegel) FBI agent assisting the Bklyn South cops in 
	 a bank robbery investigation. Between that and Stu Morrissey's
	 appearance the week before, how long before we see Medavoy
	 trip over the handicapped access ramp?

By the way, over the year and a half since I've been a professional 
newspaper type, people have been asking me if they can find my stuff 
on-line. It turns out that the Star-Ledger finally has a WWW edition, 
though the bugs are still being worked out and not all the stories make 
it from the printed page to cyberspace. Still, if you want to take a 
look-see from time to time (I write anywhere from three to five stories a 
week, though a lot of them are fairly dry news pieces, in addition to 
reviews and features), the URL is

http://www.nj.com/features/ledger/

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:

"That's what I love about these high school girls, man: I get older,
 they stay the same age!"
	-Matthew McConnaughey, "Dazed and Confused"