Some thoughts on "Weaver of Hate," the Feb. 17 episode of NYPD Blue, 
after a quick summary:

------------------------------------------------------
When the father of a murder victim starts tossing around racial epithets, 
Fancy loses his cool and nearly jeopardizes the investigation; Jill and 
Greg investigate an immigrant bigamist who slaughtered one wife and 
stuffed her into a fridge; Diane miscarries the baby she and Bobby made
-------------------------------------------------------

Of all the various recurring themes of NYPD Blue, racism has always been 
the show's automatic slam dunk. No matter how big a creative slump the show 
may be in, all the writers usually need to pull out of it is get 
Fancy and Sipowicz nose-to-nose over a slur or perceived slur. 

"Weaver of Hate" had that kind of conflict in spades, as well as a 
devastating loss for Bobby and Diane and a solid secondary case to keep 
Greg and Jill busy. Instant classic, right? 

Maybe, maybe not. 

For me, all the superlative acting by James McDaniel, Jimmy Smits, Dennis 
Franz and Kim Delaney -- not to mention the usual brilliance of secret 
weapon Paris Barclay's -- gets muddled by my opinion of Fancy's actions. 
Specifically, I'm not sure that the guy we've been exposed to for the 
past four and a half years would have flown that far off the handle over 
this incident. If I buy that premise, then this hour clicks on all 
cylinders; if I don't, nearly all of the main story falls apart. 

What do we know about Arthur Fancy? He's a pro, a consumate pro. He runs 
the squad efficiently, but without micromanaging. He's advanced through 
the ranks of a department where he's been exposed to racism on a regular 
basis, and part of that advancement has come through his ability to keep 
his cool when bigoted jerks start spouting off around him because he 
knows he can't change the world and has to look out for himself. (There's an 
episode from the second season called "Innuendo" where Fancy gives his 
kid brother, a uniform cop with a chip on his shoulder about white 
people, a lengthy lesson on when to speak and when to keep your mouth 
shut that illustrates this point better than I can here, and it's due up 
in the FX rotation in a few days.) 

Now, he's flown off the handle before when confronted with racism, 
notably in last year's "Taillight's Last Gleaming," and I can understand 
him being visibly upset by Weaver's comments, and maybe even can buy him 
yelling at Weaver the first time, but bringing the guy back in just to 
humiliate him? Especially when it could (and did) jeopardize the case? 
That doesn't seem like the Fancy we've gotten to know over the years, and 
it distracted me throughout much of the show.

Which is a shame, because so many of the other elements were working 
perfectly. 

The miscarriage subplot, in addition to bringing an annoying thread to an 
end (more on that in a minute), worked a neat trick: because Bobby was so 
distracted by Diane's stomach pains, there was no way he was going to say 
a word about Fancy's behavior, leaving that job up to Andy, who is about 
the last man on Earth whom Fancy wants to be lectured by on this subject. 
In seasons past, when these two proud men would butt heads over race, 
Fancy would almost always be arguing from a higher moral ground. Here, 
not so much; yes, Weaver's comments were vile and his parenting probably 
got his kid killed, but he was also a grieving father venting. And from a 
pragmatic standpoint, Andy had the right idea: cringe inwardly if you're 
offended, but otherwise shut up and try to get any useful information out 
of the guy that you can. It gave a new twist and a new urgency to the 
familiar Sipowicz/Fancy dynamic, and made each of their confrontations a 
scorcher -- except, of course, that in the back of my head I was 
thinking, 'What's the matter with Fancy?' 

A while back, I said that "It Takes A Village" looked like a good bet to 
be Jimmy Smits' Emmy submission tape. Not anymore. If he can't get an 
award for this show, I doubt he ever will. I can think of few people in 
the business who can convey the pain of loss with no dialogue better than 
Mr. Smits, and this may be the best I've ever seen him. I've never been a 
fan of the Diane pregnancy saga, and when she first told Bobby that she 
had lost the baby, I maliciously snickered, "About damn time." Then I 
looked at Smits, and I stopped laughing. The man is good. The man is very 
good. 

He was even better in the locker room at the end, which is the kind of 
scene we used to see regularly -- two disasters converging instead of the 
usual one -- but which has become an unfortunate rarity as the series has 
moved on. The way the scene was choreographed was brilliant, with 
Sipowicz and Fancy each unwittingly blocking one of the two exits so that 
Bobby had to stay there and listen to their sniping, until finally he had 
had so much that he just exploded -- which, conveniently, provided him a 
path to the door. Slam-bang-pow; it doesn't get much better than that. 

With all the other sturm und drang of the episode, Greg and Jill's case 
mostly slipped under the radar, but it was a rare instance where the 
B-case had some kind of thematic tie to the A-case. Where Fancy's 
humiliation of Weaver nearly killed that investigation, Jill hit  
her perp right where he lived, fanning the flames of his own sexism until 
he lost his temper and confessed. And this Kirkendall/Medavoy partnership 
is working so well -- Medavoy never seems more competent than when these 
two team up -- that I hope it becomes permanent when Martinez comes back 
(see below). Of course, the idea of a Russell/Martinez team doesn't 
really excite me -- they're the two characters the writers have the least 
idea of what to do with as cops -- but if it means the end of the 
stupefying M&M team, I'll take it. 

So, to wrap up this longer-than-usual review of a much-better-than-usual 
episode, I reiterate my main point: if I buy Fancy's behavior as in 
character, this episode goes down as a truly great one. But I'm not sure 
I do. 

Some quick hits:

	-A bunch of people have asked me this in e-mail, and since the latest
	 FAQ update is a few days away, minimum, here's the quickest answer
	 possible: Nick Turturro has not left the show. He's taken a few weeks
	 off to play Sammy "The Bull" Gravano in an NBC miniseries that will
	 air in May. He'll be back eventually, and in the meantime, Martinez
	 is recuperating at home from a bad back.

	-Looks like all the drama of the hour cut into the planned time to
	 reintroduce Bill Brochtrup as Upstairs John. Let's see how his
	 presence is handled in coming weeks (i.e., do they reshoot his return
	 scenes? Do they splice in whatever got cut into a future 
	 episode? Do they just assume the viewers can envision a better
	 return scene than the one they shot, and go from there?) Dolores
	 the Chain-Smoker barely appeared this week, much to my liking. 
 
	-Andy seemed in much better spirits this week, with nary a mention
	 of his prostrate difficulties. Hmm...

	-Speaking of health, since Andy knew Diane was feeling some 
	 discomfort in her stomach, would zinc cough drops be the 
	 way to go?

	-The return of the Line of the Week!: 
		"Now's not the time to be breaking Fancy's shoes."
		"That was equivalent shoe-breaking."
			-Simone & Sipowicz

Apologies for the lateness of this review, but I've been watching the 
Olympics all day, every day, for the last two weeks. It's killin' me...

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:

"As my old Pappy used to say, if the Lord had more respect for 
 money, he'd have given it to a better class of people."
	-James Garner, "Maverick" (the TV series)