DATE: Tuesday, August 19, 1997              TAG: 9708190074

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Larry Bonko 

                                            LENGTH:  120 lines

"LOST" EPISODES OF NYPD BLUE" AND BEGINNINGS OF X-FILES TO AIR

REMEMBER 1993, when the puritanical general manager of WVEC refused to include ``NYPD Blue'' on Channel 13's Tuesday night schedule because of its subtle nudity, street language and a violent outburst or two?

It arrived five seasons ago as the best cop show on TV since ``Hill Street Blues.'' It would go on to win 10 Emmys with 62 nominations while achieving high ratings - No. 10 overall last season.

In the beginning, WVEC treated producer Steven Bochco's show as if it were a leper.

The WVEC general manager and his bosses at BeLo Broadcasting in Dallas decided ``NYPD Blue'' would offend the same viewers who were being fed tasteless talk shows and sexually exploitative soap operas on WVEC.

Do you believe it?

Here in Hampton Roads we missed the birth of ``NYPD Blue,'' missed the splendid early episodes when David Caruso gave a marvelous performance as a cool but troubled detective, John Kelly.

We missed a lot.

WTVZ in 1993 picked up ``NYPD Blue,'' censored the show without ABC's permission and thereby lost the right to show it. Narrow-minded executives twice shot down the series in this market.

Like I said. We missed a lot.

Tonight begins the catching up.

fX at 9 reels off ``NYPD Blue'' starting with episode No. 1 in which Dennis Franz as Detective Andy Sipowicz goes over the edge in chasing a mobster. He drinks too much. He patronizes a hooker. He gets shot in a hotel room with his pants down.

Come Wednesday at 9, the story continues. The 88 episodes will run Monday through Friday. If you have waited four long years for the ``lost'' episodes of ``NYPD Blue,'' your wait is over.

Rejoice. And rejoice again, because come September, WGNT will also carry the reruns.

There's more good news from fX this fine day in August. At 8, the Fox channel begins nightly reruns of ``The X-Files'' with episode No. 1 of 97, when Gillian Anderson as Agent Scully didn't have the slick cover-girl look we see in her today.

If you caught up with ``The X-Files'' in its second season or later and always wanted to know how agents Scully and Mulder (David Duchovny) became a team, tonight is the night to see how it all began. They shook hands all businesslike when they met.

Scully and Mulder - he's nicknamed ``Spooky'' in the premiere - investigate a case in which members of a high school graduating class in 1989 are dying under mysterious circumstances.

Mulder, said series creator Chris Carter, is named Mulder because that is the maiden name of Carter's mother. It's a tribute to her.

Scully, said Carter, was named in honor of Vince Scully, who has been the Los Angeles Dodgers' play-by-play broadcaster for decades. Carter grew up listening to Scully.

Starting with the pilot episode that's on tonight, ``The X-Files'' emerged as a primetime phenomenon - a cult favorite that evolved into a Top 20 show.

Tonight's episode brings on Cigarette-Smoking Man (also known as Cancer Man), played by William B. Davis. And Deep Throat - Jerry Hardin. We also hear Mulder talk about how his sister, Samantha, disappeared. Snatched by Extraterrestrial Biological Entities perhaps?

In 1993, Duchovny and Anderson were unknown actors who looked fresh and eager and charged with energy in episode No. 1. Today, millions of viewers here and abroad know who they are and appear to be keenly interested in them.

Five years ago, they were Gillian Who and David What's His Name. And today?

``It's, like, the viewers know everything about you and your character,'' Anderson said in Hollywood not long ago. ``They overwhelm you with minutiae.''

And fret about Scully's brain cancer.

Nowhere is the minutiae piled deeper than on the Internet, where ``The X-Files'' web pages take 10,000 to 20,000 hits a week.

``The success of this show has been unreal,'' said Carter. In case you've forgotten, episode No. 1 is about the Pentagon's ``capturing'' a UFO and then duplicating its design in ultra-secrecy.

As for the vintage ``NYPD Blue,'' it's a sofa spud's delight. Observe the following:

Sherry Stringfield, who has been nominated for an Emmy in her role as Dr. Susan Lewis on ``ER,'' has a big part in the first show as Kelly's estranged wife, Laura. She has the distinction of being the only actress to quit the cast of two Top 20 dramas in their prime.

Before David Schwimmer hit it big as gooey Ross on ``Friends,'' he was a forgettable character actor, as he proves in ``NYPD Blue'' No. 1. He's cast as a nerdy lawyer who takes to carrying a gun in his briefcase after he's mugged in the basement of his apartment building.

Watching this, who knew he could do comedy?

Sharon Lawrence appears briefly in the pilot as Assistant District Attorney Sylvia Costas, who is yelled at and insulted by the Sipowicz character. Who could guess that some day these two characters would grow close, marry and be parents?

Lawrence, who has been glamorized in her NBC sitcom, ``Fired Up,'' looks anything but glitzy here. Also worth noting is that Daniel Benzali, who went on to star in ``Murder One,'' plays a mob lawyer in tonight's show.

Speaking recently to TV reporters in Los Angeles where he was promoting his new CBS drama, ``Michael Hayes,'' Caruso said his conception of ``NYPD Blue'' was that it was built around his character - Detective Kelly.

He said the producers thought of killing off Sipowicz in the first show. ``And now he's the lead character. That's the metamorphosis of that show.''

Caruso said he left after one year not because movie offers came his way but because he was working too hard - filming as many as nine pages of dialogue in one day.

``It was nonstop,'' he said.

Caruso said the pressure made him angry, frustrated, bone-tired, unable to pace himself when he was in almost every scene. He blew up.

``I could have handled some situations in a more appropriate manner,'' he said.

His intensity is on the TV screen for all to see in the first season of ``NYPD Blue,'' which fX brings us starting tonight - the first 22 episodes of a show you deserved to see but didn't because some TV executives thought you couldn't handle it. How insulting.

fX said some episodes of both shows will be pre-empted for major league baseball. When the shows resume, they will continue in sequence.

And if you missed the 8 and 9 p.m. showings, no sweat. You can pick them up at 11 p.m. and midnight. Isn't cable great? ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

Dennis Franz

Gillian Anderson

Photo

ABC

David Caruso plays Detective John Kelly in ``NYPD Blue.''

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