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Dennis Franz has shown his nipples -- and plenty more during the past 12 years. Which makes his retirement on Tuesday with the series finale of NYPD Blue a pertinent reminder of how far he took us, and how far we've retreated since Janet Jackson's areola ushered in a new era of broadcast censorship.
Franz's Andy Sipowicz is a relic from another era when it seemed that Steven Bochco's boundaries-shattering police saga was going to change the face of television. A decade later, Nicolette Sheridan's towel drops and the world seizes to a stop. So much for progress.
This isn't to suggest NYPD Blue, when it debuted in 1993, was greeted with open arms. Advertisers balked. People wondered if viewers would too. This was a show, after all, replete with nudity (no bare breasts, but plenty of buttocks) and foul language unheard of before on primetime. At the time, Bochco argued correctly, that networks would have to edge into risque, racy territory in order to compete both with R-rated films and the impending explosion of speciality cable programming. With Blue, Bochco hoped to keep viewers watching the big three networks by giving them adult content they'd never seen before (or really since). A decade later, his reasoning seems more prescient than ever, given the enormous success HBO has enjoyed in the time since with such R-rated series as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Oz. (It's commonly known any show on HBO is required to include nudity, sex, swearing and violence you wouldn't see on CBS or ABC.) HBO's success, in turn, has sparked such other cablers as Showtime (The L Word) and FX (The Shield, Nip/Tuck) to venture places the small screen has never ventured before -- to the acclaim of both critics and audiences. Yet who knows if we would have ever met Vic Mackey or Tony Soprano had it not been for Sipowicz, a crass, racist alcoholic New York cop tormented by inner demons?
But Blue was more than just shock value. The multiple Emmy winner, especially in its early seasons under the direction of David Milch (who now oversees the western Deadwood on -- where else? -- HBO) was as gritty and corrosive as Sipowicz himself.
In this hard-boiled cop who clawed his way out of the bottle, Milch found a vessel through which he could expose society's raw nerves. At its peak, it was as well written (it's razor-honed dialogue recalled the best of David Mamet) and superbly performed as anything on television had been. Ever.
Off screen, the drama was nearly as compelling. David Caruso, Franz's first partner, left during the second season in a media firestorm, looking to cash in his sudden TV fame with a big-screen career. In the wake of Caruso's exit, stories of his prima donna behaviour abounded. Maybe Caruso had just realized what viewers already knew -- that the star and soul of the show wasn't him (or his replacements Jimmy Smits, Rick Schroder and Mark-Paul Gosselaar) but middle-aged Franz.
Of course, nothing lasts forever and the show has waned in its later years, both in terms of quality and viewers. Fittingly then, Bochco has said fans should expect a low-key denouement for his signature series. No shootouts or deaths en masse.
With Blue behind him, the prolific producer is preparing for the future -- namely in the form of Blind Justice, which premieres March 8 in Blue's old timeslot. And yet, he says, things feel a lot like life pre-Blue. "Same time slot, same genre, same attention to grittiness and detail, and yet the battles I'm fighting with broadcast standards are totally retro," he told the Associated Press.
And after a decade as Sipowicz, Franz is looking at new horizons too. "It was wonderful, but it's time to move on now."
-- with files from AP