Steven Bochco Reflects on "NYPD Blue"

"I don't think today we could launch or sell 'NYPD Blue' in the form that it launched 12 years ago."

A minor miracle will occur next Tuesday night. ABC's "NYPD Blue," one of the finest dramas in the history of television, will conclude its twelfth and final season with its signature style, intelligence and integrity intact. Its storytelling over the years may have grown a bit tired from time to time, but the show always righted itself and quickly returned to form. "Blue" never once "jumped the shark," resorted to uncharacteristic sweeps stunts or lost its creative focus, as do so many long-running series.

"Most of the shows you're ending are failures," "NYPD Blue" executive producer Steven Bochco recently told Jack Myers Entertainment Report. "That's why you're ending them." He was speaking about the sorry state of most series at their conclusion, a fate his show has skillfully avoided. "I'm pleased we're stopping when we're stopping," he said, adding that as of the finale he will have produced 262 hours of "NYPD Blue."

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"To walk away thinking we haven't done all we could would be crazy," Bochco asserted. Maybe so, but the remarkable ability he and his colleagues at "NYPD Blue" have shown over the years to integrate new characters onto the canvas of the show suggests that it could continue indefinitely for many years to come.

Cast of "NYPD Blue"

Sipowicz Goes Out on Top

Next week's series finale was not made available for preview, but the episode that aired this past Tuesday could have served as a quiet, dignified farewell. The concluding sequence was particularly pleasing, with the primary characters gathered at a retirement dinner for Detective Medavoy, uncommonly dressed in their best, smiling, toasting and expressing their heartfelt feelings for each other. It was during this same sequence that Andy Sipowicz, who was only recently promoted from detective to sergeant, was given full authority over his cherished colleagues.

This moment of professional reward marked an incredible personal accomplishment for Sipowicz, one of the most fully realized and deeply developed characters ever brought to life in a broadcast television drama. When we first met him, way back in 1993, he was a tired, alcoholic, homophobic bigot plodding through an unpleasant existence as an ill-tempered, downtrodden detective. Sipowicz was in fact shot several times in the premiere episode; he narrowly escaped death and, in hindsight, literally began life anew from that moment forward. Dennis Franz has inhabited this role with a fierce complexity and an emotional depth not often seen in series television. (Has there has ever been a scene in a broadcast drama more moving than Sipowicz's farewell to dying partner Bobby Simone back in 1998?) Sipowicz's saga, which has taken him through three marriages; the births of three children; the deaths of one son, one wife and two partners; harrowing ordeals with alcoholism and prostate cancer, and life-changing relationships with minorities and homosexuals, has been one of redemption laid bare. That Sipowicz will forever be referred to as one of the most extraordinary characters in television history is a tribute to be shared by Franz, executive producer Steven Bochco (who has remained with the show since its inception) and his many talented writers and co-stars over the years.

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Ending the Show Wasn't Bochco's Idea

During a press conference at the Winter Television Critics Association tour, Bochco recalled that it was not his idea to end the show. "Toward the end of last year, [ABC] really came to us," he explained. "For them, the show wasn't performing at a level they would have wished it would. It was a very expensive show. I certainly felt that after 12 years it wasn't as if there was unfinished business. I also felt that, notwithstanding the fact that I think the show could go a 13th or 14th season I have no problem leaving the party an hour early. I'd rather leave an hour early than an hour late."

"NYPD Blue" will always be remembered as the first broadcast series to regularly include nudity and adult language in its storytelling. Its content generated much controversy at the time of its September 1993 premiere. The fuss actually began in May of that year when ABC screened clips of the show for advertisers and journalists at its upfront presentation. There were audible gasps and there was much nervous laughter throughout Carnegie Hall as a nude scene with former series stars David Caruso and Sherry Stringfield flashed on screen. (The show's liberal use of hand held cameras was also groundbreaking though far less startling.)

Cast of "NYPD Blue" 1993

"ABC was Anxious"

"There was so much controversy surrounding the show [and] so little support," Bochco recalled. "ABC was so anxious about what was going to happen [with] advertisers and affiliates. It was a storm. I knew that the only way for us to survive past three, four weeks, if that, was if we jumped out and were perceived as a hit from the very beginning."

Asked about the show's influence on prime time programming, Bochco replied, "I had hoped, and I think probably everybody in television had hoped, that 'NYPD Blue' would sort of pave the way for a more open approach to programming, a more adult 10 o'clock kind of programming. But there is no question in my mind that over the course of the last ten years, [especially] the last five years or so, the medium has become increasingly conservative. I don't think today we could launch or sell 'NYPD Blue' in the form that it launched 12 years ago."

The controversy surrounding Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl only exacerbated this trend, Bochco noted, explaining that the nude scenes "Blue" had been known for during the previous decade suddenly had to go last year. But all is not lost, he cautioned, in the fight for intelligent adult content. "It's a long-term battle," he explained. "It's not that the clock has been turned back. It's a setback. I've been working in television long enough over the course of almost 40 years to know that you're never going to put the genie back in the bottle. Television programming just keeps getting more realistic and more sophisticated as time goes by. There are bumps along the road and you back up a step or two and then you make another leap forward as people kind of relax. We're never going to see television going back to what it was 20 years ago."