The Milch Studies: LUCK

Five years passed between the fast death of John from Cincinnati and Milch landing another show on HBO.  In the meantime, he did produce his ‘70s New York cop drama Last of the Ninth pilot, but couldn’t convince the network to commit to the series.  (Some databases say it aired once as a movie, but I can’t find any confirmation of this.)  Last of the Ninth was based on Bill Clark’s earliest days on the police force and would’ve been the closest to NYPD Blue Milch had gotten since arriving at HBO.  The network vetoed what would seem to be an easily sellable premise, and instead gave Milch permission to go to work on another dream project.

This one was about horse racing.  And it turned out to be just as commercially viable as a surfing series concerned with the spiritual state of the nation.

The Milch Studies: John from Cincinnati - “I Don’t Know, Butchie Instead”

The official description of John from Cincinnati reads: “In Imperial Beach, California, the dysfunctional Yost family intersects with two new arrivals to the community: a dim-but-wealthy surfing enthusiast and (a) man spurned by the Yosts years ago.”

It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?  A family drama set against the backdrop of the professional surfboarding scene, introducing viewers to the characters from the perspective of two outsiders -- one they grow to love, one they already hate.  If you’re a TV exec convinced that young people want a sexier Six Feet Under meets X-Games at the Beach, and this guy all the critics love is going to be running the series, of course you’re going to pick this up.

The Milch Studies: John from Cincinnati - “Some Things I Know…”

John from Cincinnati, created by David Milch and “surf noir” novelist Kem Nunn, is the oddest series in Milch’s biography.  The only Milch series to feature supernatural elements, the show was conceived at the behest of HBO’s new management, who viewed Deadwood as too expensive to continue.  They also wanted a show that could attract a young audience, and apparently because Milch was already in the room with them (and maybe they felt bad about canceling his show), the execs asked if he had any thoughts on a show based in the world of surfing.

Even though he’s lived there since the early 1980s, nothing in Milch’s work communicates any affection for southern California.  Milch later implied in a talk that his interest in surfing begins and ends with old Annette Funicello movies, and that he views surfers as the dumbest people in America.

The Milch Studies: DEADWOOD, Season Three. “Something Pretty.”

People familiar with the actual history of Deadwood have criticized these final episodes for the purely malevolent portrayal of George Hearst, while the show continues to evolve Al Swearengen into a sympathetic man with his own moral code.  Apparently, the reverse was true, with Al as an even nastier figure than we’ve seen on the series (this is a man who recruited prostitutes from orphanages), and George Hearst as a positive influence on the development of the Deadwood community.

The Milch Studies: DEADWOOD, Season Three. “Didn’t I Tell You How Well It Wafted?”

Although some claim that any talk of a four season plan for Deadwood only occurred after the show’s cancellation, it’s become accepted lore that the series was always intended to run this length.  The original Deadwood camp existed for four years before it was consumed by fire, and Deadwood the TV series, we’re now told, was conceived to have each season represent one year of the camp, before ending the show with the eradicating fire.

An Unoffical Guide to NYPD Blue

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The Milch Studies - DEADWOOD Season Two

Deadwood was never a media darling in the same vein as The Sopranos, but its debut season did have respectable ratings, and with HBO eager to maintain its reputation as the place for literate, adult dramas, the series was able to enjoy a boost in its budget for the second season.  The money is clearly put on the screen, as the sets grow more elaborate, the thoroughfare becomes increasingly crowded with extras, and the number of featured players multiplies. 

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue Season 12, The Final Wrap-Up

As recently as Season Ten, I was remarking on the show’s continued ability to create strong hooks for episodes, and consistently discover some new angle to make the aging show interesting in some way.  Then, Season Eleven happened.  That year did have some solid episodes, but overall, it’s hard to deny a sense of exhaustion.  Looking back on the later days of NYPD Blue, I can pinpoint two moments the series never recovered from. 

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue Season 12, Stars & Guest Stars

Once it was obvious that NYPD Blue would be on the air for a very long time, Dennis Franz made it known that he’d like the series to end with Season Twelve, thinking it a nice, even number.  The show was nearly clipped in Season Eleven, given the incredible cost of keeping such a long-running drama in the air.  (Typically, a series becomes more expensive to produce each year it’s on, if only due to the yearly raises that are expected.)

The Milch Studies: DEADWOOD Season One - “Suppose the Foot Says…”

As unbelievable as this might seem, the starting place for Deadwood can be found in the book of 1^st Corinthians, Chapter 12:  Suppose the foot says, “I am not a hand. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. And suppose the ear says, “I am not an eye. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, how could it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it smell? God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be. If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body? As it is, there are many parts. But there is only one body.

The Milch Studies: DEADWOOD Season One - “Okay, What If We Do It As A Western?”

Following the fast cancellation of Big Apple, David Milch spent the next three years without a show on the air.  Still wanting to create something out of Steven Bochco’s shadow, most likely burned out on NYPD Blue scripts, and with a post 9-11 resolve to “never” write about contemporary America again (he’d later renege), Milch found himself pitching a new series to HBO.

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue, Season Eleven, The Wrap-Up

Entering what could've been its final season, NYPD Blue seemed willing to go in a direction it's stubbornly avoided for years -- extended story arcs in favor of done-in-one, easily solved cases.  Not that there aren't one-episode plots, of course, and plenty of cases starring the B-Team that just come across as filler, but for the first time the series splits the season up into numerous story arcs.  There's the Captain Fraker trial, the serial killer case that brings Det. Russell back into the squad, the drama between Baldwin and a killer named Craig Woodruff, the disruption caused by the amoral Det. Stan Hatcher, and finally, the reopening of the case of twelve-year-old Cindy Clifton, Sipowicz's first murder investigation.

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue - Season 11, The Cast & Guest Stars

Season Eleven was potentially the last season of NYPD Blue, even though the series remained ABC's highest-rated drama at the time.  The cost of the show had ballooned over the years, while ABC was suffering from some rather pathetic ratings, overall.  A deal was struck to keep the series alive for one more year at a reduced budget, however, which meant massive changes to the cast list at the end of the season.

Were those departures handled with tact and respect for the characters?  Or did half the characters go out like Adrienne Lesniak?

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue, Season Ten, The Wrap-Up

The tenth season of Blue sticks to the revised formula Steven Bochco developed for the series.  Two cases per episode (Sipowicz and Clark alternate between using McDowell and Ortiz or Medavoy and Jones as back-up on the main case), a culprit who isn’t obvious until the last act of the episode, and closing personal life scenes to round out the show.  Individually, most of the episodes remain entertaining, and there is a sense that the detectives are putting more work into the cases than we’ve seen in previous years.  You see more locations in each episode, and more scenes of detectives interviewing suspects that aren’t obviously guilty or innocent than in the Milch years, which tended to dwell on the interrogations.

I’ve mentioned earlier that making the least likely suspect the perpetrator just creates its own formula, but I can understand the argument that it’s more entertaining to watch the detectives running around than staying in the same room for most of the episode.  And, admittedly, I didn’t see one or two of these twists coming, even though I knew I should’ve been watching for them.

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue, Season Ten - The Cast & Guest Stars

Season Ten, and the show still has over forty episodes to go.  Honestly, I'm not sure who was even running the series at this point.  Reports had Steven Bochco moving away from his daily duties on the show, which I suppose left Mark Tinker as the man in charge.  Matt Olmstead and Nicholas Wootton also have co-executive producer credits, so perhaps they were the daily showrunners.  Nicholas Wootton has been a writer on the show for years, and his scripts tend to stand out as the strongest ones of the year.  Matt Olmstead, conversely, tends to write lighter episodes, and his name is on the script with the horrendous Grease seduction scene from last year, so I'm probably carrying at least a slight bias towards his work...

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue, Season Nine - The Wrap-Up

One hallmark of the David Milch era is the extended suspect interview, which had the detectives searching for whatever angle that could convince a criminal to put down on paper two things -- I was there, and I did it.  All of the "get your side of the story out there" or "we'll get you a good deal with the DA" talk is merely a ploy to get those two facts down on paper.  This is largely inspired by Bill Clark's true tales of The Job, and Milch certainly seemed to enjoy writing these extended dialogue sequences.  The fact that they only required one set was also, I'm going to assume, a benefit for a man who liked to write the scripts on the day they were actually filmed.

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue, Season Nine - The Stars & Guest Stars

Season Nine saw David Milch without even a token credit on the show, and to be honest, I initially planned on handling the post-Milch years with maybe a brief overview of each season and simply moving on.  However, there's plenty to write about this year -- not only are these the episodes that aired immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, but they also see the introduction of Mark-Paul Gosselaar as the series' new co-star.  And with Steven Bochco inserting even more of his influence over the series, there is a noticeable change in the structure of the stories.  All of this is worthy of discussion, so no quickie wrap-up this time.

The Milch Studies - Big Apple

After acknowledging in an interview that he felt a need to move out of Steven Bochco's shadow, David Milch exited NYPD Blue to create the generically titled drama Big Apple.  His co-creator was Anthony Yerkovich, the creator of Miami Vice and a former Hill Street Blues writer.  (Reportedly, Yerkovich conceived Miami Vice as a serious drama, and not the fashion showcase that Michael Mann envisioned.)  CBS was enthusiastic about the series, positioning Big Apple as its adult drama for Thursday nights, a night the network felt it could own with Survivor and CSI at 8:00 and 9:00 respectively.

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue, Season Eight - The Wrap-Up

I can remember actually being relieved when I discovered David Milch wasn’t going to be running Blue for its eighth season.  At the time, the archly constructed, idiosyncratic dialogue was getting on my nerves, and I figured giving the characters more realistic speech patterns would be a welcome relief.  (I didn’t know at this point that the dialogue was at least partially inspired by retired detective Bill Clark.)

Now, re-watching the episodes, I find myself missing Milch’s scripts.  I appreciate the poetry in those uniquely crafted sentences a lot more today, and recognize the amount of work Milch was putting into those words.  A character couldn’t just say, “Are you nuts?”, he had to respond “You think I been occupied by some strange spirit?”  (Sipowicz’s answer when Diane asked him once if he’d like a carton of yogurt.)  This year, the characters do speak as real people, but many of their lines are simply bland.  Milch dialogue, as cumbersome as it might’ve been at times, brought an identity to the show and a demand of the audience to pay attention to each riddle of a sentence.

The Milch Studies: NYPD Blue, Season Eight - The Cast & Guest Stars

Before the launch of the seventh season of NYPD Blue, David Milch announced he’d be stepping back from the show.  Few believed him, and with good reason.  Even though Mark Tinker was added as an executive producer to help with the burden, Milch stuck around for the entire year as showrunner and has a writing credit on most of the episodes.  Milch was intrinsically linked to the show, and the idea of him casually walking away seemed unlikely.

Milch made the same announcement before the start of Season Eight.  And he meant it this time.  (This makes the Season Seven finale more poignant, especially in regards to Sipowicz and the crisis of faith displayed in the episode.)  With the nebulous credit of “Executive Consultant,” Milch still had an official title on the show, but the majority of his time was spent developing his new CBS series Big Apple.  What exactly Milch contributed to this year remains unclear.  The dialogue clearly isn’t his -- as Steven Bochco declared when he returned to daily duties on the show this season, “That's Milch-speak… We don't know how to do Milch-speak, so we have to do some other kind of speak. There's no question the tone of the show is altered because of that.”