![]() ![]() Throughout “Hill Street Station,” Captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Most importantly, both shows’ first episodes were genuinely surprising, setting up many, many hours of stories to come. NYPD Blue was looking to draw people away from cable TV, which at the time was luring viewers with the promise of nudity and profanity, even though its original programming wasn’t yet up to the networks’ best standards. Hill Street Blues looked to be as sophisticated and adult as contemporary cinema, which was in the middle of a heyday of R-rated maturity. Throughout their respective runs-1981-87 for Hill Street Blues on NBC, 1993-2005 for NYPD Blue on ABC-both shows explored the edges of what broadcast censors and the FCC would allow, in an overt attempt to compete with other media. Both then expand out to include glimpses of the cops’ complicated home lives, while still finding time to show the police interfacing with the other side of the criminal justice system, where state’s attorneys and defense lawyers are slugging it out. Both shows’ first episodes are immersive experiences, thrusting audiences directly into fast-paced, dangerous, at times blackly comic worlds, populated by so many jaded lawmen and vicious criminals that at first, it’s hard to keep track of who’s who. Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue were credited for revolutionizing television in their respective decades, and for similar reasons. Because while Bochco was never a journalist, somewhere along the line, he seems to have learned the first rule of the news business: If it bleeds, it leads. So right up to the final scene, where a comatose Sipowicz squeezes Kelly’s hand in intensive care, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Bochco could kill off Franz’s character. Unlike Warren and Haid, Franz was a fairly well-known actor before NYPD Blue premièred-he’d been on Hill Street Blues for years, as well as its spin-off series Beverly Hills Buntz-but in its first episode, NYPD Blue focused more on Sipowicz’s partner, John Kelly, played by David Caruso. Dennis Franz’s alcoholic, combative Detective Andy Sipowicz walks out of the squad room after getting suspended for beating up a mobster, and heads straight into a bar, where he picks up a prostitute, who lures Sipowicz to a hotel room where that mobster is waiting, with vengeance in mind. Twelve years later, Hill Street Blues producer Steven Bochco debuted another cop show, NYPD Blue, and about halfway through its pilot episode, another major character gets gunned down.
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