![]() ![]() Fancy, is given a little more to play with this season, as his character locks horns both with Sipowicz and a black sergeant named Dornan (Richard Gant) over issues of race and alcoholism - two of the show's favorite topics. Nicholas Turturro and Gordon Clapp, as Detectives Martinez and Medavoy, perfect their Vladimir-and-Estragon-type shtick which had frequently fallen flat in the last season, delivering plenty of humorous asides and semi-naive commentary on the goings-on of the 15th Precinct. Jill Kirkendall, is alternately brassy and vulnerable as usual, while Delaney beautifully communicates her character's conflicting feelings about Bobby's death and the arrival of some baby-faced hunk in his place. Sharon Lawrence, as Sipowicz's wife Assistant District Attorney Sylvia Costas, gets bumped back up to the main cast from being a recurring character for about half of the season, during which her character tries to free a wrongly imprisoned man. The rest of the cast is in fine form, as well. The rapport between his character and Franz's is warm and likable, if a little more in the surrogate father-son vein than with previous partnerships. In the same regard, Schroder fits into the ensemble cast immediately, as though he had been there the whole time. Simone left some big shoes, but Sipowicz is quick to pick up that this overgrown Boy Scout with surprising street smarts will fill them just fine. With Simone gone, his place as second banana to the show's irascible lead character, Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz), is immediately filled by a fresh-faced kid named Danny Sorenson (Rick Schroder, looking only slightly older than he did on Silver Spoons). The concluding episode of this arc, the Emmy-winning "Hearts and Souls," sometimes slips into melodrama and sentimentality but, in doing so, it gives the audience, who have spent more than four years with this character, the catharsis it needs and the rare chance to properly say goodbye to a dying friend. The strength of this storyline is that the writing and acting tends toward muted realism, with Bobby stuck in a hospital - undergoing different treatments, waiting for a potential donor heart, reacting badly to surgery - in scenes that capture both the tedium and crushing inevitability of Bobby's fate. This is a particularly big bummer because the last time we saw Bobby, he was finally getting married to his colleague, Diane Russell (Kim Delaney). The season opens with a five-episode arc in which Detective Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) gets sick and eventually succumbs to a heart infection. (To the spoiler-averse: be aware that I will discuss the first two deaths, since they come fairly early in the season, but I will skip the specifics of the third.) To that end, three major characters die during this season. Once again, with season 6, Milch and his writers seem to be working out variations on a single theme, but this time, they explore trauma and the way that people cope (or don't cope) with the tragedies both in their pasts and in their presents. ![]() In my review of season 5, I commented that the show seemed to be consistently returning to the theme of parenthood and family during that season. Even though the series was not strictly serialized, showrunner David Milch (who co-created the series with Steven Bochco) frequently continues character arcs across several episodes or revisits incidents from previous episodes (occasionally from past seasons) that give the world of the show a verisimilitude and richness that rewards binge-watching. At this stage, the show is better characterized as a solid, interrogation-heavy police procedural, with slightly stylized dialogue and emotionally complex lead characters. While NYPD Blue might have initially made a splash for its gritty-for-TV use of profanity and partial nudity, by season 6, most of that stuff was on the back burner. (You can check out all of DVD Talk's NYPD Blue reviews right over here.) This means, yes, I am a season behind as of this date, but considering how much I've enjoyed seasons 5 and 6, I intend to get caught up soon. Shout! Factory continues to churn out complete-season sets for the classic cop show NYPD Blue, with the Season 7 box recently hitting shelves. ![]()
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