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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 13 |
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The BIZARRE Legacy of ANDY SIPOWICZ |
 DENNIS FRANZ ...as Andy Sipowicz |
Drunk, racist, hothead--
an unusual TV folk hero
of TheColumnists.com
When first we met Detective Andy Sipowicz in the premiere episode of ABC's "NYPD Blue" back in 1993, he seemed destined to be a burden other characters in the show were going to have to bear--that is, if he even survived until episode two.
For instance, Andy's arrest of a gangster was thrown out of court when the defense attorney--played by Daniel Benzali, later the star of ABC's "Murder One"--pretty well established Andy had pounded nails into a tire on the suspect's car to give him probable cause to discover the loot in the car's trunk.
On his way out of the courthouse,
Andy then incurs the wrath of prosecutor Sylvia Costas (Sharon
Lawrence) by grabbing his crotch and telling her, "Ipso
this, you pissy little bitch!"
After tossing down several straight shots of Scotch in a neighborhood
bar and telling his partner, Detective John Kelly (David Caruso),
to buzz off, Sipowicz then goes after the gangster whose prosecution
was dropped, roughs him up and even pulls his gun in front of
several witnesses. Result: Internal Affairs lands on him with
both feet, he's put on suspension and he faces severe penalties
that could end his career.
And that's all before he takes a hooker up to her room, starts taking out his various frustrations on her naked body and is surprised by the aggrieved gangster, who pumps several bullets into Andy at extreme close range.
With Sipowicz clinging tenaciously to life--he manages to squeeze his partner's hand, a sure sign he hasn't given up yet--the first episode of "NYPD Blue" ended with Detective Kelly hell-bent on revenge for what had befallen poor Andy.
If there was anybody watching who sincerely believed Andy Sipowicz would not only still be a part of "NYPD Blue" 12 years later, but would wind up being the star of the show, that person should report for duty tomorrow morning at the Psychics Network. Virtually everybody else has been flummoxed by the long, slow metamorphosis of Andy Sipowicz from twisted, self-destructive cop into respected commander of the homicide squad--and a celebrated 21st century television cult-hero.
As we all eventually discovered, there was a lot more grit in that balding and bitter, lard-assed excuse for a cop than anybody ever imagined--including even the guys who created him: Writers Steven Bochco and David Milch and character actor Dennis Franz.
Consider how it all turned out: When "NYPD Blue" ended its long ABC run on March 1, 2005, Andy Sipowicz was the sole survivor from the original cast.
Andy had endured that near-fatal shooting, several bouts with acute alcoholism, a divorce, the shooting death of his second wife, the murder of his first-born son, the coming and going of several new partners, a demotion in rank and everything else that could possibly happen to any poor sod in 261 episodes of "NYPD Blue."
As the cameras of "NYPD Blue" pulled away from him in the program's final shot, Andy was up to his neck in deep doo-doo for ignoring the direct order of his superior officer to lay off a well-to-do and influential murder suspect. Andy disobeyed in order to bring a killer to justice. He looked worried abot what he'd done--strung out and badly beaten down by the events of a harrowing day.
Yet Andy Sipowicz was going to survive. And what's more, he was going to survive in style, having the last laugh on everybody as the new commander of the NYPD detective squad he was about to be thrown out of back in 1993 when our long association with him first began.
Well, let me amend that slightly. I feel I knew Andy Sipowicz long before there was an "NYPD Blue." He grew out of the curious persona of actor Dennis Franz, who had worked in several TV shows created by writer-producer Steven Bochco. He even had a regular role in two of them--NBC's "Bay City Blues," in which he played a coach in a grim drama about a minor league baseball team. It lasted only a few episodes in the fall of 1983. The other show was NBC's renowned "Hill Street Blues," the best police drama of the 1980s.
They brought Franz in midway through the run of "Hill Street Blues," playing a dark new force in the department--a mean-spirited, vicious police detective who seemed to embody all the bad things about modern police work. He was there to shake up the order of things and provoke action. His mission accomplished, the character was killed off and that was, theoretically, that.
But Franz had proved so charismatic in his short-term tour of duty as the house bad guy that the critics, the viewers and the show's own writers longed to have him back. So, in 1985, just two years before "Hill Street" ended its run on NBC, the writers created Lt. Norman Buntz for Franz to play. He was a decent-enough cop, but with all the hard edges of the bad guy he'd played so well earlier. He was, in fact, the pilot version of Andy Sipowicz.
Franz was so compelling
as Norm Buntz that he just couldn't come to an end when "Hill
Street" closed down. So, NBC did something rare and special
for him: They gave him his own weekly series: "Beverly Hills
Buntz," a half-hour "dramedy" in which Buntz,
no longer a cop, opens his own private eye business in Beverly
Hills, working closely with his old sidekick from "Hill
Street," Sid the Snitch (Peter Jurasik).
It debuted in November of 1987, but was gone by April of 1988.
Neither pure drama nor comedy, it confused viewers and never
caught on.
But Franz caught on with Bochco and fellow writer-producer David Milch when they signed a new multi-show contract wiht ABC and sat down to concoct a new, cutting-edge police show that became "NYPD Blue." They didn't want to just re-do "Hill Street," but instead wanted to take the genre of police drama to the far frontiers of the "envelope" that defined what you could do on commercial broadcast networks.
Milch was the principal architect of the Sipowicz character, who was there to offer stark contrast to the traditionally heroic leading character, Detective John Kelly, and keep him immeshed in an ongoing set of moral and ethical dilemmas provoked by Andy's rule-busting way of conducting himself.
The program debuted on Sept. 21, 1993, in the center of a media frenzy over its cutting edge elements--profane language of a sort never heard on prime time broadcast television before and an unprecedented display of both male and female nudity. A large number of ABC affiliate stations refused to air the opening episode, but it became an overnight hit anyway and eventually nearly all the stations rejoined the ranks of those showing "NYPD Blue."
Once "NYPD Blue" was estabished as a hit, it's widely believed the plan was for Sipowicz to self-destruct somewhere along the way, probably in a ratings-heavy "sweeps" period for maximum impact. Instead, actor David Caruso pre-empted the field of self-destruction by deciding to break his contract, so he could take advantage of his new-found stardom and become a star of major feature films.
Though the producers could have done something to keep Caruso on board, they knew it would mean letting him design his own work schedule while being paid millions more than he originally was paid. That's when Dennis Franz--and Andy Sipowicz--got the biggest break of their respective lives: Caruso was released after filming a few episodes of the second season, so his character could be written out of the show. (Caruso made two flop movies, then came skulking back to TV, where he finally restored his reputation nearly a decade later as the star of CBS' "CSI Miami.")
While they searched for a new partner for Andy, Detective Sipowicz moved up to become the primary focus of "NYPD Blue" It was a wild and crazy gamble for ABC, Bochco and Milch that paid off. Franz' unsavory Andy character was adopted by millions of viewers, who began to root for him to overcome his personal issues. By the time Jimmy Smits was brought in as new partner Bobby Simone, Franz had grabbed a fistful of storyline equality that he never gave up.
Franz' popularity was never in question after that. He won three Emmys in his first four seasons in the Sipowicz role, all for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. He devoted all his energy to making this embittered and volatile man into one of the most enduringly interesting TV characters of the 1990s.
Behind the cameras, hundreds of people who had worked with Dennis Franz over the years were cheering. As I discovered when I first met him in his "Hill Street" period, Dennis is a genuinely loveable guy--a serious enough professional, but a regular guy who fully understood the dynamic of what was happening to him and didn't want to waste a single minute of it.
In our conversations, whether one on one or in a group setting, Dennis always assured me that he knew how lucky he was to have some of television's finest dramatic writers writing some of their best lines for him. He knew how rare it is for a man who looks like the "before" side of a diet ad to land not only a starring role in a hit series, but the chance to grow a character through many years of storyline.
I have my own theory about why the Sipowicz character caught on so quickly with America's TV audience. He's a man who starts with big checkmarks on the debit side. Nobody is giving him any breaks he doesn't earn, so we root for him as we do for any "little man" with the moxy to fight his way up from nowhere. He's also a man whose basic concept of right and wrong is in tune with most of us. His racism, which has moderated greatly over his dozen years in "NYPD Blue," always was rooted in his frustration from dealing with the scum of New York's crime-filled ghetto neighborhoods. When you see nothing but vicious black and Latino hoods, it may be almost automatic to show hostility every time you see any African-Americans or Latinos. Mostly, though, his violence and antagonism comes from his pent-up anger at seeing criminals despoil and dehumanize his little corner of society.
Ultimately, he came to love his Puerto Rican partner, Bobby Simone. When Simone finally died, Andy's profound grief over his loss of a dear and trusted friend may have been the most moving part of that whole episode. Later, when the writers wanted to show the final struggle of Andy with the demons that had so often ruled him, they brought back Jimmy Smits to play the spirit of Bobby Simone, once more tendering him the quiet, but reliable advice that had guided Sipowicz so often in the past.
Dennis Franz' ability to play these ultra-dramatic scenes through the troubled-plagued events of Andy's career may have earned him his collection of awards. But I also believe the offbeat and sometimes warped sense of humor Sipowicz brought to the precinct may have endeared him to viewers even more.
Even back in that first episode, the humor was there. As Sipowicz stood before the gangster who intended to kill him, his pants down, but his spirit defiant, he found time to needle the gangster about his awful "rug" of a toupee before the bullets slammed into him.
My all-time favorite moment came a few seasons later when the fully-recovered Andy is angered to discover the same gangster has agreed to inform on his mob colleagues and, as a result, is being protected around the clock by NYPD cops. The gangster continues to berate Sipowicz, knowing the deal he cut with the d.a.'s office means he'll never do time for trying to kill Andy. But Andy plots his revenge, knowing that whatever he does, it can't jeopardize the case the gangster is helping them prosecute.
Sipowicz learns the gangster has demanded his favorite gourmet pasta dish, cooked for him on a regular basis and delivered to his guarded hotel room. Andy seeks the help of the kitchen staff and manages to stir a copious quanity of doggie poo into the gangster's marinara sauce. Fans of "NYPD Blue" will never forget the bellow that came from that hotel room after the hood found something funny in his dinner and decided to examine it a little more closely.
Maybe it wasn't exactly the vengeance Andy would have preferred, but it resulted in one of the funniest moments in the history of the series.
For several seasons, I used to tease Dennis Franz about the fact he had to sign a "nudity clause" in his acting contract, just like all the other cast members, agreeing to perform in the nude if the writers so intended. I think he always figured he'd be excused from nude scenes on the grounds people would turn their sets off if they heard he was taking off his clothes.
But the first Sipowicz nude scene also turned out to be one of the immortal moments in "NYPD Blue" history.
Remember Sylvia Costas, that "pissy bitch" prosecutor Sipowicz antagonized in the very first episode? She was played by lovely Sharon Lawrence, a former dancer who had, arguably, the best figure of any actress who ever worked on the series. One of the bizarre twists of the "NYPD Blue" saga was the romance that flowered between divorced Andy and single Sylvia. Andy had cleaned up his act a good deal and had developed a warm relationship with the prosecutor he once scorned.
But once the romance started to point toward marriage, the speculation began: Was Dennis' "nudity clause" finally going to be invoked? We had seen all the other "couples" in the nude together, starting with David Caruso and Amy Brenneman (later the star of CBS' "Judging Amy"). When it finally came--in a tasteful sequence where Andy and Sylvia take a shower together--millions of eyes shifted from the luscious contours of Sharon Lawrence to the ungainly bulk of Franz' butt, most assuredly because everybody wanted to know if his ass was as big as they thought it would be. (No comment.)
In the final seasons of "NYPD Blue," Sipowicz continued to get into trouble with criminals, lawyers and his superior officers, but a fundamental change was taking place. When young detectives Danny Sorenson (Rick Schroder) and, finally, John Clark Jr. (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) became his partners, Sipowicz gradually found himself morphing from menace to mentor. Always a veteran cop with a solid record of arrests and courage in the line of duty, he finally added some new wrinkles: Thoughtfulness, reflection, wisdom and the willingness to set aside his personal likes and dislikes for the good of the relationship.
In the final episode, where new commander Andy has to cope with superior officers who threaten his new position and challenge his concept of what's right and wrong, Sipowicz swallows more bile in the space of an hour than he may have taken in over the previous 12 seasons. He had, in fact, matured into a respected leader.
The Sipowicz legacy now seems quite clear. He will be remembered as one of the darkest characters ever to grow into hero status in a TV drama, thanks to the devotion of the talented writers and the distinguished actor who gave him life. He reflects their abiding faith that even the worst of us can turn his life around and achieve the respect of his fellow man if he really wants to make the effort to do so.
©2005 by Ron Miller.
This column first posted March 7, 2005.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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