Regular Rick boosts Blue

But there's conclusive proof that TV really does suck

by Robert David Sullivan

Rick Schroder

Rick Schroder's first nude scene on NYPD Blue could only be topped by an X-rated Leave It to Beaver reunion special. The former juvenile star of Silver Spoons is, to be blunt, a pasty white guy with skinny legs and the beginnings of a paunch around his middle, and he'll never be confused with Jimmy Smits in a locker room.

As someone with a similar physique, I'm not complaining about Schroder's southern exposure. After all, stocky bald guys already have a role model in Dennis Franz, who's been promoted to first billing on NYPD Blue. And I'm happy that Schroeder's character, Detective Danny Sorenson, is such a contrast from Smits's impeccably dressed and unflappable Bobby Simone -- who was a great character but couldn't have been representative of that many members of the NYPD.

To judge from his first few episodes, Schroder is playing someone who's great on intuition but doesn't seem to have a deep intellect. Back when Smits joined the series, his character bonded with Franz's Andy Sipowicz over their respective hobbies -- Simone's homing pigeons and Sipowicz's tropical fish. But when Sipowicz showed off his fish tank to his new partner last week, Sorenson reacted with polite but minimal interest. (What's with all the "S" names on this show? Is it a coincidence that Detectives Martinez and Medavoy are also matched for alliterative effect? Or that Detectives Russell and Kirkendall nearly rhyme?) And unlike his predecessor, Sorenson isn't inclined to let Sipowicz get the last word in any exchange. Where Simone would opt for silent bemusement at the tactless remarks of his fat friend (just trying to avoid another "s" here), Sorenson is more likely to keep picking at things. "Sorry, Andy, I just meant . . . " may become as strongly identified with Schroeder's character as "Sorry about that, Chief" was with Maxwell Smart.

Sorenson's regular-guy friendliness is actually a tonic for NYPD Blue, which was getting into a rut last year. The contrast between the volatile Sipowicz and the enigmatic Simone was pretty much played out, and the scenes in which they interrogated suspects began to blur together. Schroeder is everything you could hope for in a new cast member, but it would be nice to see NYPD Blue become more of an ensemble show. James McDaniel (Lieutenant Fancy) has always been underused, and Nicholas Turturro (Martinez) has faded into the woodwork in recent seasons. It was odd that both characters had such low profiles in Smits's farewell episode, given that one of the most poignant moments was Bobby Simone saying to his wife, "I wanted to make a family with you." A reminder that Fancy and Martinez do have wives and kids would have given us a tiny bit of optimism, and it would have underscored Simone's pride in getting a fair number of predators off the streets during his short lifetime. (And there were several references to Sipowicz's dead son, but I didn't catch any mention of the one who's still around.)

The biggest opportunity for growth, however, is in Andrea Thompson's Detective Kirkendall. With Simone gone, Kirkendall becomes the squad room's pillar of quiet strength, and an effective counterweight to Kim Delaney's grieving Russell.

Then there's Gordon Clapp (Detective Medavoy), surely one of the least-written-about Emmy winners in television history. Yes, he won a Best Supporting Actor award for NYPD Blue just three months ago. But when I got on the Web to verify this fact, the closest match my search engine found for " `Clapp' and `Emmy' " was a German Web site with the "Gordon Clapp Filmographie & Suchmöglichkeiten." He doesn't get cover stories in TV Guide, and I know several NYPD Blue fans who say they hate his character.

Perhaps that's because the chatty Medavoy is too real for comfort. He comes closer than any other character to speaking the way most people do in real life -- with awkward pauses and imprecise language but without Sipowicz's colorful colloquialisms. He's a clever creation, because he often underlines the show's themes or reminds us of plot points without making the scriptwriters look heavy-handed. It's entirely in character for Medavoy to sum up the situation after an anguished Sipowicz revives a suspect who has tried to hang himself. "He'll be fine," he says bitterly to the squad room at large. "Yeah, Andy saved this guy while Bobby needs a new heart . . . er, not that you shouldn't have, Andy."

I wouldn't want to ride in a squad car with this guy, but he's great company for a few minutes a week.

IT'S BECOME A RITUAL of fall to say that TV is worse than ever, in much the same way it's become an American tradition to say that political candidates are getting slimier with each election, and that they don't make fill-in-the-blanks the way they used to. Nostalgia often clouds our judgment, so I decided to conduct a reality check by looking at the prime-time schedules of past seasons. And I have to report in all honesty that TV does suck in 1998.

I can even give an exact time for the beginning of the current slump in quality: January 11, 1995, at 8 p.m. That's when the WB network aired its first program, The Wayans Brothers -- an insipid sit-com that is still on the schedule. Five days later, UPN became the sixth broadcast network when it premiered Star Trek: Voyager, which is also still around.

The circumstantial evidence against WB and UPN is overwhelming. The 1994-'95 season, the last one to begin with only four networks, stands out as having one of the best line-ups of programs in television history. It greatly bolstered the idea that American television series were more literate and provocative than American films (at least the ones from the major studios). The networks' output that season was so strong that many of the best series are still in production, and almost all of them are being rerun every day on some cable channel. Since then, however, prime-time TV has been more disappointing with each new season, and the networks have been steadily losing viewers and the respect of critics. The 1994-'95 dramas included ER (in its first year), Chicago Hope (also in its first year, when David E. Kelley provided it with interesting ethical dilemmas rather than the silly stories it has now), NYPD Blue (when Jimmy Smits joined the cast), Homicide: Life on the Street (in its first full season), Law & Order (the first year with Sam Waterston), The X-Files (its second season), My So-Called Life (in its only year, a rare example of a teen drama with three-dimensional adult characters), Due South (a tongue-in-cheek Canadian cop show with a cult following), Party of Five (its first year), Northern Exposure, and Picket Fences. Most of these shows are still on, but only NYPD Blue hasn't been coasting this season. Among newer dramas, only The Practice and Ally McBeal are generating comparable excitement among adult viewers.

In the comedy department, the 1994-'95 season brought us Friends (in its first year), Frasier (hitting its stride in its second season), NewsRadio (its first season, before it became a scattered collection of sight gags), Mad About You (long before the damned baby), Seinfeld (with the Soup Nazi, the fusilli Jerry, and George's first year with the Yankees), Roseanne (before it got too bizarre), Murphy Brown (when it still bore some resemblance to an actual newsroom), The John Larroquette Show (unusually edgy for network TV, set in a bus station with hookers and homeless people among the regulars), and Ellen (admittedly, its best days were yet to come). Only Friends is still on and is still mildly interesting, thanks to a reconfiguration of its characters' relationships this year. Everybody Loves Raymond and Sports Night are relatively new and worthwhile, but in general the word "sit-com" has never had a worse connotation -- thanks in large part to NBC and its parade of Caroline in the City clones.

Some critics have said that creative talent has been spread too thinly among six networks, but the 84 regular comedies and dramas on the fall 1998 schedule don't represent a huge jump from the 72 series in fall 1994. The new shows on WB and UPN are almost balanced by the other networks' increasing reliance on newsmagazines and "reality" shows. The bigger problem is that three of the six networks are on the air only between 8 and 10 p.m., when programming is geared more toward families and teenagers. The audience is so splintered during most of the eight hours that all six networks are on the air (Monday through Thursday) that a show like WB's Dawson's Creek can be considered a major success when it gets about one-fourth the viewers that ER draws. Meanwhile, the number of dramas at 10 p.m., traditionally the time period for top-shelf programs, has actually dropped, from 14 in 1987 (the year that the Fox network came on line) to 10 this fall. There's a vicious circle here. The networks are afraid to spend any money developing new dramas to compete against established shows like ER and NYPD Blue, so they instead load their schedules with newsmagazines. And because there aren't many alternatives, ER and NYPD Blue continue to attract strong enough ratings to dissuade the networks from developing any new dramas to compete against ER and . . . you get the idea.

The most charitable thing you can say about this season so far is that it's stale rather than awful. But four years after The Wayans Brothers started up, it's pretty hard to make the case that viewers are well served by more broadcast networks. Dan Tobin can be reached at dtobin[a]phx.com.