After 12 years, this is it — the final episode of NYPD Blue. It's been a good run that certainly ended up in a different place than anyone could have imagined back in October 1993.
The show started out with David Caruso as the star. His popularity rocketed (not least of which, in his own head), so he wanted to change the game, which the production company refused, so he left. This started the slow grind of Dennis Franz, in the role of Andy Sipowicz, to the top of the heap. NYPD Blue is Andy Sipowicz.
Or, it was.
As in real life, some people seemed to just be there, while others come and go. In the end, the only faces present at the end of the run that were there from the beginning were Sipowicz's and Greg Medavoy's, played by Gordon Clapp. Medavoy's bumbling, stammering, uncertain insecurity consigned him to a perpetual backup part, but Andy Sipowicz was the heart and soul of the 15th Precinct.
And in a fitting finale, so painful in its farewell, so comforting in its rightness, NYPD Blue fades into history, focused on Detective Sergeant Andy Sipowicz, Commander of Detectives, 15th Precinct. But he, too, fades.
And how fitting. Because, as you know, Andy was the 15th Precinct. Andy was NYPD Blue. And now they're both history.
