I've enjoyed reading some of the TV threads here, so I thought I'd post one on perhaps my all-time favorite shows.

NYPD Blue was probably my favorite "cop" show, but after re-watching it recently, on one of our local "dash channels", I've decided it may be my favorite show of any genre.

What made it so good, in my view, was the character development of the leading characters. First and foremost - Andy Sipowicz. The route Dennis Franz's character took from the first episode until the last, is really a credit to Franz and the writers.

Anyone else care to comment?

I was in junior high. Remember the show but never watched it. One of the detectives is/was on Blue Bloods

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I have been re watching it too. I always look at the original airing of the episode and it brings me back to what I was doing at that time. I really love the cinematography as well. Great show.


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I watched the show when it first aired, videotaping the episodes to skip thru the commercials ( hi-tech stuff back then ).

I too enjoyed the show immensely. It was time for it to go when it ended, but I don't think it went years too long - as some shows did.

"Lost", for instance.

I used to enjoy Franz's character, Lt. Buntz, on Hill Street Blues.

Just got a shock when I looked up the date's that Hill Street ran and saw that the series ended thirty years ago.

Before he was Buntz, he played a rogue cop named Sal Benedetto on the show. They later brought him back as Buntz. The rest is history.

ETA: The evil Benedetto had an epic fight with Bobby Hill that was a memorable moment on the show.

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642-1, M&P15 TS

Which one?

He killed himself, didn't he - before he was "reincarnated" as Buntz?

I read somewhere that Franz had played something like 38 cop roles in his career and when he was approached for the role as Sipowicz, he originally wasn't interested. I'm glad he changed his mind. He has pretty much retired since NYPD Blue - residuals must be treating him well.

Nicholas Turturro

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I enjoyed the first four seasons of NYPD Blue very much. Not so much after that but continued to watch. I didn't like the softening of Sipowicz. Good show though.

I have become a Blue Heelers fan but even they ran out of gas.

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Mike
S&WCA #3065

Oh, that's right - "Det. Martinez".

From Wikipedia:

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642-1, M&P15 TS

I enjoyed Hill Street Blues more than NYPD Blue

Great casting for the diverse characters

Remember:
Capt Frank Furillo
ADA Joyce Davenport,the girlfriend
Sgt Esterhaus
Det. Blelker

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NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUN

I've mentioned on here before that I thought NYPD Blue was the best of the cop shows, followed by Police Story. Some of the realism in these shows may have been a bit too real.

Anyone remember "Beverly Hills Buntz" with Dennis Franz? Didn't last but a few episodes as I recall.

Loved Hill Street Blues.

Hill Street Blues + NYPD Blues. 2 great shows.
I need more of this type. The Wire was good.
tb

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frontsightnsqueaz

I guess it was entertaining. Not very realistic. Worst part in my opinion was how wrapped-up in the cases they got. Just about every caper was a huge deal, caused them all kinds of angst at work and at home...... No way. ESPECIALLY Sipowicz. WAY too intense. He would have stroked out or been locked up in prison before he had ten years on the job.

Barney Miller was much more realistic.

I did enjoy "The Wire". The bad guys were well-done. Also liked "Cop Rock". Remember THAT one?!?!?

I met Franz in DC about 20 years ago during Police Week at an awards banquet for the "Top Cops" awards where he was the emcee. Really nice guy. I thought he was a more realistic "cop" as Dennis Franz than Sipowicz.

"Crime Story" with Dennis Farina was pretty good for a "period" show.

The wire was awesome but then again it was my era. I gotta re watch that again. So was Breaking Bad. NYPD Blue was simply too early for me. When it started in 93 I was only 13. It ended in 05....I was 25 and more concerned with chasing other things

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Just remembered one of the more ridiculous Hill Street Blues characters: David Caruso as Shamrock the Irish Gangster. Bwaaa haaa haaaa! A little person dressed as a leprechaun would have been more believable.

I imagine David Caruso and Jimmy Smits are both kicking themselves for leaving NYPD Blue.

David Franz really stepped up and made the series his own.

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Tony

Grace was a fine addition to the Hill St. station, while it lasted.

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America First

I worked in West Baltimore for the majority of my career. I tell people I've never seen The Wire, and I don't need to see it...I lived it.

Franz was brilliant as Sipowicz; and as a sober drunk, I particularly appreciated the handling of his alcoholism. The same was true of the Larue and Furillo characters in "Hill Street" and Sharon Gless's shattering portrayal of Detective Cagney's finally hitting bottom in her drinking. I was sober by then, as was my wife, but that one was tough to watch.

Kiel Martin ("Larue") actually was a sober alcoholic; and not long after the Cagney breakdown scene, Sharon Gless entered treatment herself.

Generally I think the writing of "Blue" was far ahead of nearly everything on standard broadcast TV at the time, with "Hill Street" not far behind.

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Oh well, what the hell.

My dad and his buddies used to say the same thing. We did enjoy watching the first couple of seasons of NYPD Blue though. I have the first season on dvd, haven't watched it for a while. DirectTv runs the show without commercials on the Audience Channel-and HD too. Still get weak in the knees whenever I see "Donna Abondando"-wowza!

I truly enjoyed Dennis Franz's acting, I also enjoyed his small role in the film "City of Angels"-actually he was the only thing I enjoyed in that film lol. Forced to watch by the girlfriend at the time.

Now that I'm 50, she looks a lot less old than she did when the show was on....

I think the ghetto dynamic is fairly universal. I liked the way they developed the dope dealer characters. Reminded me of Detroit in the 80's with multiple warring factions of dopers. Suppliers, enforcers, street dealers, stash houses..... The Chambers Brothers, Pony Down, Young Boys Incorporated, Frank Nitty, Best Friends, White Boy Rick, Harry Kalasho, Kenny High..... Now most of they big weight dealers and even some of the hit men are out of prison! Back then, as probably now, half the car washes were owned by the dope man. They took their money laundering literally. Every little dope runner you caught owned a "landscaping business", 15 year-olds driving around in brand new Jeeps they just bought from the car dealer with no driver license and a garbage bag full of cash. And the favorite mode of transportation for the street corner 14 year-old dealer: The Honda Spree..... Those were the days.....

Best character on The Wire was Senator Clay Davis. You can buy a talking Clay Davis bobblehead that says "Sheeeeeeeeeit!"

But for those who haven't lived it from the LE point of view it is worth watching. In many ways I found it to be the best LE series in terms of its fidelity to much of what goes on from multiple points of view...especially the highs and lows of complex investigations.

"The Wire" took a unique approach to police / crime dramas and was best of breed on many levels imho.

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642-1, M&P15 TS

I agree. Still watch both on the nostalgia cable channels. The opening of Hill Street, door goes up and three squad cars tear out, lights & siren, still gets to me. Every now & then, I wish I was with them, just one more run. Then reality sets back in.

NYPD Blue was/is my favorite, but only on Hill St Blues would you hear a line like,
'Ohhh Lordy, it's Christmas Eve, and I'm gonna get shot dead in a moose suit?"

At Christmastime in Detroit, the cops at the 13th precinct (kind of a red light district/city college precinct, would arrest all the whores whose pimps were mean enough to make them work Christmas, take them to get hamburgers and drinks and let them sit around in the lock-up area watching TV and and carrying on, then let them go later.... I could see that on a NYPD Blue..... Art imitating life for a change.... (the hoes paid for the food and drinks...)

Nowadays,Amazon's Bosch tops my list of good police dramas.

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NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUN

Dennis Farina was w/ Chicago PD for 18 years before he began his acting career.

Hills Street Blues was first...and IMO, the best. Belcher was awesome!

I will share with you just one story from my career that illustrates the point I was making...I will apologize in advance for the graphic description and the length of the story.

On a beautiful afternoon in the spring of 2003, my engine and a medic unit responded to a reported shooting in the 1600 block of North Smallwood Street in West Baltimore. That particular block was normally very quiet, a community of older folks who'd owned their homes for years...the address surprised us when we got the call.

When we arrived on scene, we had four victims, all young men. One was on the sidewalk in front of the house with a single bullet wound to the leg. A second was on the front steps with five bullet wounds to the chest, conscious, but with blood pumping out of his left subclavian artery. The third was on the front porch with 12 bullet wounds to his chest and abdomen, barely alive. Lying under him was the fourth victim, face-up with the back of his head blown off, his cell phone ringing and his pager beeping. Blood and shell casings were everywhere.

I reported our situation, and requested three more medic units and another suppression unit to assist. I then tended to the guy on the steps. I grabbed a handful of 4x4 gauze pads and jammed them against his left upper chest to stop the arterial bleeding.

My two firefighter/paramedics began working on the guy who'd been shot a dozen times. When they picked him up, his S&W Model 10 revolver -- a surplus Baltimore Police Department gun -- fell out of his coat pocket. Despite our best efforts, that patient went into cardiac arrest in the medic unit on the way to the Shock-Trauma Center downtown, and they were unable to revive him. My patient and the fourth guy lived.

An hour later, we got another call to the same address, this time for a 62 year old woman having chest pains. Because the dead guy was still on the front porch -- with his phone still ringing and his pager beeping -- while the police did their thing, we had to go in the back door.

The little old lady who owned the home was sitting in the kitchen, with three dirtbags standing there...gold teeth, baseball hats on backwards, the permanent sneer, etc. She was just upset, not having a heart attack, and told us that the dead guy on her porch was a friend of her grandson -- gesturing toward one of the dirtbags -- and had grown up calling her "Momma" and now he's lying on her porch dead, and it's just so sad...

While my FF/PMs looked after her, I walked to the front of the house, where two Western District cops were in the vestibule making sure nobody disturbed the crime scene on the porch. Referencing our patient, I said I felt sorry for the old folks who were affected by this violence.

One of the cops immediately uttered a two-word expression (which I cannot repeat here) of utter contempt for the homeowner. I was shocked, and he then repeated it. When I asked why he felt that way, he told me to take note of the house, and how nice it was, the furnishings, etc. He then told me that when the police had asked the woman why this gunfight had taken place on her front porch, she told them she knew her grandson and his friends were selling drugs out of her house; she just didn't know they had guns...

And that, friends, is why I don't need to watch The Wire...

Beemer, respectfully, The Wire was a lot more than just corner boys, street violence and slinging dope. But it's your time to invest in the show or not.

I think you'd enjoy it. Nobody needs to watch any of these shows. Cops don't need to watch NYPD Blue or Hill St. Blues. Doctors don't need to watch ER. Firefighters and paramedics don't need to watch Third Watch and sheriff's deputies and jailers don't need to watch Oz.

I grew up in NYC. Not much I didn't see there over the years. I can still enjoy something that depicts the reality I had known.

Anyway, that's my perspective on the matter. I fully support your choice either way and that'll be my last word on the matter.

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642-1, M&P15 TS

We watched both Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue and enjoyed both. ..Police Story was great, and probably more realistic than either. We are fans of Joseph Wambaugh's books, but his writing seemed to get seamier as time went by. As a young man, my friends and I thoroughly enjoyed The Choir Boys, although reading it again in my 50s, I found it less amusing when I considered what cops deal with on a regular basis. Immense respect for LEO, but glad I steered clear of that career path.

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Robert
SWCA #2906, SWHF #760

I liked the sergeant who said at the end of each muster...."Ya"ll be safe out there!"


........Liked Barney Miller too............

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S&W Accumulator

Here's a universal ghetto story: Got a run at 7:45am of a shooting in a crappier part of the precinct. When we got there, we saw a guy in his underwear on the living room couch, eating a plate of cold fried chicken, one guy with half of his hip and butt blown off, kneeling in front of a console TV (funny what you remember 30 years later) as if it were the pew in front of him at church. He was shaking and going into shock.

Underwear guy says: "There's two more upstairs". I went up the stairs to the second floor of the 1920's bungalow and on the way up saw at least 10 spent 12 gauge hulls on the stairs. At the top of the stairs was a dead guy, shot in the back. I thought "hmmm, that's just one guy. Underwear guy said there should be another one...." Started checking the rooms upstairs and couldn't get the bathroom door open. Finally shoved the dead weight aside with the door and found dead guy number 2 on his back in the bathroom dead right there, with his eyes open.

Back then, a supervisor wouldn't even bother going to that kind of scene (they probably didn't want to have to go to court). You would call homicide and tell them the basics and they would either send someone out (they didn't even do that all the time because all of their guys may have been in court or busy on other shootings) or tell you who to bring downtown (illegally if they didn't want to go....that as part of the federal consent decree problem they had....arrests without probable cause...)

The thing that was a little surreal was underwear guy sitting there eating cold chicken like nothing happened. We figured it was a dope hit, set up by underwear guy. His story was that four or five guys came up to his house to see him. After they got into the house, another guy on the porch handed the fourth guy a shotgun through the door and he opened up on the other three.

Guy shot in the hip lived and I saw him in court. He refused to talk to me. I never did have to testify.

Another time we got a run to what we thought was a dope house. Found scales and guns in a closet. There was a man and a woman there and her 14 year-old son. Upstairs, there was about an 18 month old or maybe two year-old kid in blue footie pajamas with white rubber soles on the footies. He was on his back with about 50% of his head blown all over the wall. I could see down his esophagus like an anatomy lesson.

The 14 year old was disciplined for something by his mother. He went upstairs to the second floor, angry. His little brother went upstairs to keep him company. The 14 year-old got the shotgun out of the closet and blew his head off. Then he told us the baby did it by himself.

The mother wasn't crying or anything and out on the street as we got ready to take the 14 year old down to homicide, he kept telling his mother: "Don't worry, it will be alright, it will be alright." Then when we got to juvenile court for the hearing later, she was looking at me like it was my fault. Bet that kid killed again after he got out of the system the first time.....

Nowadays, with those kinds of runs, they go all "tactical" with ten cops running around the house yelling "clear!". They'd have 3 Sergeants, 2 Lieutenants and probably some upper command staff guy who's thinking of running for mayor. For sure a few guys from Homicide wearing fashionable overcoats and hats from Henry the Hatter. Maybe even a SWAT team. Back then, it was just you and your partner taking care of business.

I still enjoy a well-done cop show though. "LA Confidential" was probably my favorite cop corruption movie.

One time when I was new on the job we went to a regular old "natural causes" death scene. Even for natural causes, you'd have to call homicide and make the notification and get a name for your report. Usually the conversation would go: "Got a 90 year old woman, dead in bed, wearing bedclothes, nothing disturbed in the house, she has a history of heart trouble, Dr. Jones said he'd sign the death certificate." Then the working the phone at the homicide office would say "Put my name on it" and hang up.

This time I called and gave him the old lady dead in bed scenario and the guy at homicide (I was really new on the job and he could tell) said: "Was she raped?" I'm trying to think of what to say....family is standing around the bed.... I said; "Uh....I don't think so...." He says: "Well, you have to determine if she was raped. Pull her nightgown up and see if she was raped....." Family is standing around and can only hear one side of the conversation..... There was a "pregnant pause" and the homicide guy laughs and says: "Put my name on it!" and hung up.....

Another one: Back then there were no cell phones or in-car computers. You had to do all of your "secondary communications" on a car-to-car channel on the radio. If you had to run a plate that wasn't an emergency, you didn't do it over the primary channel. You would get on the car-to-car channel and talk to a guy at your own precinct desk. The guy working that job was the "LEIN Operator" and they would generally have about 130 years on the job to qualify for this "inside job". The "Day Lords" on the day shift even MORE time on.

He would be sitting at the front desk entering stuff into the computer and was also responsible for monitoring the car-to-car channel on a small hand-held radio that sat forever it its charger at the front desk.

So the conversation would be: "Ten two to ten desk...." And then you'd wait for him to answer...... "Ten two to ten desk...." More waiting..... "Ten two to ten desk..." And if you were lucky you'd get a response, in a supremely annoyed voice: "WHAT?" "I have a plate in need you to run....." And then...... "WHO CARES!.......Go ahead with your PLATE, ten two!" Then he'd make you wait while he finished his coffee before you got your info back. Then laugh at you when you showed up with your prisoner...... maybe say something like: "You only have 24 more years to go, kid!" And I'd say: "And my johnson still works whenever I want it to, Bill!" And then he'd shut up because they didn't have Viagra back then either!

Hill Street Blues was My favorite Police Drama.
The Police were shown as Human instead of the Bruce Willis die hard type of Cop and You could relate to their problems.

I don't recall regularly watching the cop shows, but did occasionally watch and enjoy an episode that featured a mixture of humor, boredom, irony, and sometimes sudden violence. It could even be an average sunny day, with not much happening at all. Then suddenly, things get real serious, real fast. That is more how it actually is.

Don't even get me started on nights with a Full Moon

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NRA Life, COTEP 640

Oh, Bobby Hill, I think I done refractured my snooter.

Where else but Hill Street Blues could you get a line like that?

Loved the entire series. Watch it occasionally re-runs of course, when the are on sometimes on cable TV.

Once they got rid of David Caruso and Jimmy Smits, the show got legs!
Caruso and Smits about drove the audience away.

I feel the same way about NCIS. All those seasons with only a few weak shows and it never jumped the shark.

I didn't watch NYPD Blue but I see it was on for a LONG time, too.

I'm glad this is narrowed to cop shows...



I think 'Columbo' was about the best DETECTIVE show, along with 'Perry Mason'. Another that I enjoyed for a for years before it got tiresome was 'Monk".

Comedy cops - 'Andy Griffith'

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

As a partner, Smits was far better than the others.

He made a video with The Dixie Chicks, he played Earl, for the song Goodbye Earl. Then pretty much dropped out of sight, I thought he died, but wikepedia says he is still alive.

I really enjoyed the show. I thought the best episodes were when Ricky Shroder, and Mark Goseller, were Andy's partners. Both were grown up child actors, so it was neat to see them grown up.

On a side note, David Caruso was the Red Haired cop in the first Rambo movie "First Blood".

Jimmy Smits was Don Johnson's first partner in Miami Vice. He dies in the pilot episode. That would be my luck get a role on a great show, but my character dies in the first episode.

I was being a little tongue-in-cheek and smart-alecky in my response...I'm sorry you didn't pick up on that.

No worries, brother.

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642-1, M&P15 TS

Amen blues, 805 Taylor Ave, Bronx NY James Monroe Housing Projects.

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Sure you did

Obviously a Renko quote.