Woo hoo! Nudity and adult language! And it isn't even my birthday!
Previously on the show, JB rats his fellow skels out to further his singing career (Ricky says he sings doo-wop like Dion), but goes back on heroin for whatever reason and gets tossed on his ear by Ricky. "Beat it," he says. I say, that's a Michael Jackson song, not Dion.
The funky keyboards start, and we arrive at a fancy apartment with lamps the size of Barbie Dream Houses. They're almost as pretty, too. Sip and Ricky cruise in and get the lowdown from the uniforms: "Home invasion." It seems the husband was kidnapped and, later, three black men used his keys to get in and locked his old lady in a closet. Now her speech is slurry and the daughter's having a conniption fit. There's an old guy in his faux Resevoir Dogs getup (black suit white shirt black tie whoa-oh) on the phone; he's the seventy-year-old home security guy hired by the daughter. Sip wonders if he can get off the phone anytime soon. He obliges and says he used to be on the job too: "Twenty-two years, in traffic duty in Brooklyn." Sip gives Ricky a look that says, that is SO not gritty, NOR critically acclaimed. The fiftysomething redheaded daughter appears, and excuse me, isn't this just like last week's episode, with the snooty rich art people and the redheaded beeotch? I though so. Do you think the writers are trying to draw a line between hard-working, honest cops and other working people and the mean, manipulative rich people of the world? A big, thick, giant line? Me too. At least we all know whose side we're supposed to be on. So the older redheaded daughter claims that an Avery Birch is responsible for the abduction of her father, and asks whether they're looking for him yet, and adds that she's not taking her mom to a hospital. "You'll have to talk to her later," she snoots. But her speech is slurry, they say. I gave her a Valium, she snoots. And she's scared: "What if I take her in and she doesn't come out?" It's not like a hospital is a labyrinth, or a glue factory, lady. You'll get her back one way or another. Sip says there has to be an EMS transfer for the slurry-voiced mom. She asks her security dude if this is true. Those seem to be "the current regs," he says. The redheaded beeotch (RHB, for short) says, "Do you think this Avery Birch did it?" No, but you sure do, RHB. It's too early to tell, says Ricky. The RHB goes to get her mom and Sip looks all owly. Yup, more rich snoots to put up with! Enjoy!
Woosh! The subway arrives with the credits! Join the love train that is NYPD Blue!
Inside the station, John is showing Medavoy his brand-new Zen rock garden. I'm laughing too. Should they be wearing kimono as they do this? Where are the subtitles? I love when actors in foreign films move their mouths a lot but only a little speech comes out. How do they do that? John says, "Use the tiny rake. Here. Try," but his mouth moves as if he is saying, "Your rock garden skills are good, but mine are better!" John reads from a book and says, "The way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing," but when his lips move they say "fishcakes." Mr. Maguchi comes in asks Medavoy to wash his car...wax on, wax...no, it's another snooty broad that walks in and asks to speak to a detective. She is not wearing kimono. Medavoy drops the tiny rake really fast, and the camera moves around it like some effect from The Matrix. John karate-chops her. Hai-YAH! Baldwin comes over and the snooty broad (SB from now on) practically licks him hello. Hey, get in line, honey.
So, Greg and Baldwin take the SB over to their desk and she starts dishing on Rafaela, who is a woman that she and her husband have "tried to help over the years." Rafaela gave birth four months ago and then said the baby had fallen ill and died. The SB said "naturally (she) was devastated..." and the fact that there was no burial service seemed "strange." Baldwin asks how they tried to help Rafaela over the years and the SB gives up that she was their housekeeper. Oh, so their employment of her is considered "help." That's real magnanimous. It's not like WORK or anything. No, and the SB and her husband feel a "certain obligations for the care and welfare" of their servants. Baldwin, who totally has her number, says, "Like family?" The SB says, "EXTENDED family." Mmm-hmm. Baldwin then asks, "Have you had a falling out, like family members of a kind do?" Sure, the SB thinks Rafaela was stealing from her, and an "atmosphere of mistrust" was created. Is that anything like a theater of pain? Yes. So, would Rafaela think this inquiry to be some kind of payback? The SB says, "She might, but she'd be wrong." Mmm-hmm. Anyway, the SB has been VERY happy to meet Baldwin, and he says he feels that they may have met before, and she trills, "In another life!" After she's gone, Greg asks where that may have been and Baldwin says, "It's kind of hazy, but I do make out whole bunches of cotton." Mmm-hmm.
Sip and Ricky come into Fancy's office and offer the gruesome knowledge that Avery Birch is laid up in the hospital with hepatitis-C, awaiting a liver transplant. So, he might not be in the proper abducting spirit. John pokes his head in and says there's a guy on the phone (waving his hands behind him at his phone) with some info and do they want the call in here (waving his hands to illustrate "here")? Sip snaps into Giant Mean Het mode and yells, "What are you flailing your arms around for?" John recoils and asks if they want the call in here. Sip says, "Tell him to mind his own business," and Ricky goes, are you crazy? How else do we get cases solved around here if not by people walking in off the street and telling us what's up? We should BEG people to call us. John goes off to transfer the call, and he is SO sick of Sip's shit. Oh wait, that was me. Ricky takes it. Fancy asks Sip what the "bee in his bonnet" is. Hee hee, I'm picturing Sip in a bonnet. Sip mimics John saying 'do we want the call,' and Ricky is like, that's not what he said, you big fat bully. Then Sip says the bee in his bonnet is the security guy hired off the job. Apparently, when your boss is a real "Eve Arden type...you have your thumb up your butt" and are too intimidated to do a good job. Okay, was Eve Arden in Bewitched? Sip, please join us in a more current decade. But that's what RHB will now be called: Eve. Ricky gets off the phone with some lame info about the break-in, with the anonymous caller saying "three or four black or Hispanic guys did it." Fancy wonders if that's one of the perps calling "to see where we're at." At this point, I don't know who abducted Eve's old man and I DON'T CARE. Where's Baldwin or Theo when you need them? John buzzes on the intercom and Sip, center of the universe, says "That's to rebuke me for speaking harshly." Sip loves to feel bad so much, I'm giving him a hair shirt for the holidays. But, John's a bigger person than that and has just relayed the info that uniforms have found a Cutlass. The car, not pirate gear. Sip and Ricky exit, with Sip repeating the thing about working for Eve Arden causing thumb-up-the-butt-itis. Thumbs up!
Ricky and Sip roll up on the uniforms guarding the Cutlass (Supreme!) and oh no! Security guy is there. How'd he know? Police scanner, yo. They pop the trunk on the Cutlass and see blood and a pair of eyeglasses. The security guy confirms the glasses are the old man's. Sip theorizes that the old man must be dead. Uh-oh, here comes Eve! Does she have a police scanner too? Sip holds her back from the Cutlass and she yells at him to let her go. Sip is -- intimidated? And lets her approach the Cutlass. She gets a little misty mixed in with her usual bossiness when she sees the blood and the eyeglasses. Then she rushes to blame Avery Birch and they tell her about his sickly status. Sniffling, she goes to get her own mom from the hospital and the cops and the security guy breathe a sigh of relief. Whew, the bossy Lady Eve is gone.
Di and Kirky are interviewing Rafaela, SB's maid, with Greg and Baldwin hovering in the background. Rafaela says that the husband stole the stuff and sold it for his gambling, and that he touched her inappropriately and that the wife saw him doing that. "Then she says I have to leave. Out! Like you say to a dog." And the baby? It got sick and died. "Friends buried him in the country." And that's all she knows. Di asks whether she gave the baby away, or even if she sold the baby, but Rafaela isn't giving up anything else. Baldwin says they're going to have to ask Rafaela's husband about this. She tells them where he works washing dishes and slumps deeper into her chair.
JB dances in and STUBS HIS CIGARETTE OUT IN JOHN'S ROCK GARDEN! John does not turn into a dragon, or whip out a samurai sword, or do some cool flippy-martial-art-move like in The Matrix, but -- hold on -- looks horrified, and -- are you sitting down? -- gasps loudly. Anyways, Ricky asks JB what he wants, and he answers, "To be like Mike!" and makes the "swish" noise. I bet JB could do a riff on The Beastie Boys song "So Whatcha Want," but we don't have all day. Ricky tells JB to beat it because he's high, again. JB says, "I am an addict with information -- do you tell the handicapped not to come in here crippled?" Hee hee, that's like that joke that goes, coughing around smokers is like dancing around people in wheelchairs, c'mon Ironsides, what's the problem? Ricky says the handicapped can't choose how they come in, and JB says he didn't know this would be a Moral Majority pep rally. So, Sip asks JB what he knows, and JB says what kind of reward will he get. It's $200. JB is psyched, and tells them about the guy that abducted the old man and stole his car and broke into his apartment and rattles the old lady. Then, triumphant, he says, "$200 to the stinky, skelly, strung-out junkie who delivered your case on a sliver platter." The camera waves over to show John using the tiny rake to lift JB's cigarette out of his Zen rock garden. Poor John.
Sip's on the phone with the security guy, and gives him the brush-off: "I'm not telling him we have a lead." He sees Ricky's sad-looking, wrinkly face and says, "What are you all moped out for?" Ricky takes umbrage at the remark and says, "Does 'moped out' mean 'disappointed'? I'm disappointed that JB's using again." Sip snarks, "Are you also taken unawares when the sun sets?" Yeah, junkies are junkies, and don't forget that water is wet! JB calls and says he's got the old-man-killer guy, and that they have to go get him now. They rush out, with Sip yelling at John about his Zen rock garden: "Look at this, now I don't have to visit Stonehenge." Hey, you don't have to do anything but listen to your Connie Francis records, you old coot.
JB is on the street, badgering a fruit-truck driver: "Do you know what Aikido is? This is the crane attack position of advanced Aikido!" Okay, first: The check to the Japanese is in the mail; your culture is totally being plundered in this episode. Second: Aikido is a DEFENSIVE martial art. The crane pose you're doing is from karate/The Karate Kid, so quit it, you freak. Sip pops open the fruit truck and arrests the guy. Ricky throws JB on the ground and arrests him for the heroin he's got, cracking, "Lucky I got you down so you can't go into crane attack mode." The fruit truck guy asks to go because he fruit will spoil if he doesn't. Fine, go haul your peaches, Peaches.
Rafaela's husband's in being interviewed, reluctantly: "I don't like it here in America." Hey, that's not how the song goes! Haven't you seen those fucking Gap ads they run every five minutes? So, the husband went away for a while and when he came back, his wife was pregnant with her boss's baby. He didn't like that. "She doesn't believe in the operation. I won't take care of another man's baby!" So she took the baby, was gone for two days, and came back without the baby. Didn't he ask what happened? Didn't he care at all? He yells, "It's not my baby!" All the Blue cops look bummed and Kirky slips out.
Kirky comes into the pokey and tells Di and Rafaela what her husband just said. Rafaela moves into confessin' mode: "I had nothing to help Miguel, nothing to protect him." Di reaches out to touch her but she draws back. Di gets all weepy, as if that helps people to confess, or as if we need to know how sad this scene is by checking Di's eyes for tears. So, Rafaela says, "I took him to the country. I gave him his pacifier. I gave him back to God...I left him with his pacifier and sat on the hill...I waited through the night. In the morning he was almost gone. A sweet breeze blew...he was gone. I hope before God sends me to hell, he lets me see my baby once in heaven." And I hope that the stigma of abortion goes away fast, like SOON if not NOW, because I am pretty fucking horrified by these terrible, true stories of parents killing their newly-born children. A simple surgical procedure could prevent these kinds of murders! And it's LEGAL.
Ricky and Sip are talking to the guy they got out of a fruit truck. He smells delicious. He's trying to say that he called in trying to HELP about the case, but no one believes him. So, after a second of protest, he confesses: He and some of his friends robbed the old man, made him give up his address, and took him for a ride in the trunk of his Cutlass. When they popped the trunk, he was dead. Another senseless crime with no real meaning, solved by a rat's tip. The end.
Fancy's on the phone with someone about the dead-baby-raped-maid-snooty rich people thing. Everyone looks like they just drank pickle juice. Fancy says, "The baby's buried at a park up in Rye...there's no way to go at the husband?" He hangs up disgustedly. Greg says, "He'll just say the sex was consensual." Baldwin, who must be new to life's great injustices, gets upset: "Those rich people did their part!" Everyone just looks at him with that pickle-juice-drinking look on their face and he goes (everybody now!), "ANYWAYS." Kirky unpurses her lips for a second to say, "I don't care what's in your culture about adoption. You don't do that to your child." Well excuse me, Miss I Never-Killed-My-Baby!
Sip and Ricky are at their desks when the security guy comes in. He's meeting the Bossy Eve here. Oh, and can you guys tell her about her dad being killed? Thanks: "She gets disagreeable." Sip comes over, shoos John away from his desk and asks the security guy, "You were a cop -- how many time you notify the of kin?" But this lady is different, he says: "This woman intimidated the hell out of me. I'm frightened from the moment I get up until I'm home again at night." I've had bosses like that. Sip, all putting the hammer down, says, "You're telling her and your making the ID on the body." Here she comes! The security guy takes her into the hall and tells her. She cries, he comforts her. Sip says, "Sorry for your loss," and the Lady Eve, softened, says, "Thank you." Aww, she's nice now! And it only took the death of her father to do it. Yikes.
Ricky goes into the holding cell where they've got JB. JB's mad: "Let me live my life like a free-choosing adult! [Getting high] is my free-choosing choice!" Hee. Ricky yells, JB, you're dying, and JB yells, then let me die! And Ricky goes, I'm not gonna let you die! And makes JB come home with him that night.
In Ricky's apartment, Mary is barefoot and chained to the hot stove, where she's been slaving away all day, frying the bacon up in the pan, and later she's never gonna let Ricky forget he's a man! But who's that? JB? A stinky junkie? Mary folds her arms (!) and asks to talk to Ricky for a sec. What is he doing here? JB says, "I hope you're not bickering about me." Ricky explains that JB has "done him some solids" and that JB is staying the night. He makes JB get into the shower and says to Mary, "Look, if you wanna go, I understand." I think he's already mentally broken up with her (crossing my fingers as I type that). Mary's like, "Do you want me to leave?" and Ricky says, "Hell no. Unless you wanna." JB comes out of the shower and we get to see his lovely ass. Mary gets the full-frontal view. I'm jealous. Mary retreats to the bedroom and says of JB, "He sings doo-wop like Dion." Mary says, "I love you." Ricky says, "Thank you." and goes to check on JB. Mary cries and looks at Ricky's little-kid art on the wall. Mary, RUN NOW. Ricky has hard-core issues.
It's night, and Baldwin's preparing to go on his run. Greg is tagging along. "This is going to be a debacle. I'm an albatross. I express reluctance." Oy, Suck it up, Medavoy. Baldwin says of their case that he thinks he owes Kirky an apology: "I wasn't defending what Rafaela did, but rich people do whatever they want to keep living their lives." Greg says, "You can't change the world." God, that's depressing. Baldwin says he's like to "get a nod from the conductor," though, and Greg continues and says, "A toot from the train whistle." They go out, and bump into the SB who ratted out Rafaela. Baldwin asks super-politely, "How can we help you?" She says she's surprised she hasn't heard anything from them. Snoot. Baldwin says it does seem that Rafaela was instrumental in the death of her baby. The SB says, "So the baby is, in fact, dead." Yup. Baldwin says, "And if I were you, that's all I'd ask about this case." Dripping contempt, the SB says, "REALLY, detective. And what in your own experience makes you feel remotely competent to put me in my place?" Oh, something to do with the fact that his eyes and ears work. Baldwin says he notices "the comfort and relief in [her] voice to learn that the baby is, in fact, dead." Greg says, "Oh boy," and the SB gasps dramatically, "How dare you? Why would I take comfort in the death of that child?" Baldwin says, "Your maid told us your husband was forcing himself on her." SB: "That little slatternly thief would tell any lie." Baldwin: "If that baby was born and was being raised somewhere with your husband's support, it would confirm your fears. After the autopsy, we're going to have that baby's DNA. If you didn't feel Rafaela is a lying, thieving slut, all you'd have to do would be to ask your husband for a sample of his DNA. Are you going to do that? If not, now that you've completed your dirty little fact-finding mission, why on earth are you standing here being a hypocrite?" The SB slaps Baldwin's sweet face. He pauses and continues: "You just assaulted a police officer. But if you turn and go before I count to three, I'm not going to charge you with that, because I don't want to miss my evening run. One. Two." She skedaddles. Baldwin's face looks sad, especially his lips. Greg says, "Hey partner. Woo woo!" Baldwin still looks sad and they slowly trudge off together.