Andy Sipowicz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Andy Sipowicz was a fictional character on the very popular ABC television series NYPD Blue. He was played for the entire run of the show by Dennis Franz.

Sipowicz is a New York City police detective working in a fictionalized 15th Precinct placed on the lower east side of Manhattan. He was the central character of the show during its twelve year run, and the only one to have been in every episode. (Detective Greg Medavoy (Gordon Clapp) did not appear until Episode 3 of the first season.)

According to a second season episode aired in 1995, Sipowicz was about to celebrate his 47th birthday on April 7, implying he was born in 1948. (This would make the character three and a half years younger than the actor.) His place of birth was New York City (although is not clear where in the City's five Boroughs). Both his mother and father were of Polish origin and had blue-collar backgrounds. Andy's father had problems with alcoholism; once while drunk in a fight with a black man, he lost his eye. That event later fueled his strong racism. Andy inherited his father's alcoholic and racist tendencies.

Before becoming a policeman, Sipowicz served in the United States Army, doing an 18-month tour in Vietnam. Although it is unclear at what point he joined the NYPD, it had to be somewhere in the early 1970s. One of his early police assignments was infiltrating the Black Panthers and posing as a leftist radical. These events raised his already intense dislike of black people.

At some point in his police career, Sipowicz worked in Robbery Squad, but he transferred to the 15th by the mid-1980s, since he was already well established there in 1993 when NYPD Blue began to air. He received the gold shield of Detective Third Grade(the "beginning" rank) in 1978.

Andy was married to Katie Sipowicz for twelve years and they had a son, Andy Jr. (born 1973). However, by 1993 both his ex-wife and son were generally estranged from him, due to Andy's heavy drinking. After being shot six times in an ambush by a mobster named Alphonse Giardella and almost dying, Sipowicz decided to change his life. He stopped drinking, focused on the job, and rebuilt his relationship with his son.

When NYPD Blue premiered, Sipowicz's partner was John Kelly, who left the force in 1994 after withholding evidence in a murder investigation of his lover Janice Licalsi. After Kelly's resignation, Bobby Simone became Sipowicz's partner. They soon became best friends; Andy was devastated when Simone died in 1998. In 1994, Andy began to date Assistant District Attorney Sylvia Costas, with whom he previously clashed due to professional differences (Andy called her a "pissy little bitch" in the premiere episode). They were married in 1995 and had a son Theo in 1996.

On his route to becoming a better man, Sipowicz struggled with bigotry with help of his black precinct chief, Lt. Arthur Fancy. He also came to terms with his dislike of homosexuals due to his grudging friendship with precinct receptionist John Irvin. A few months after the birth of his second son, Sipowicz's life seemed to be going well. Then came an event that triggered a series of tragedies that occurred to him in next few years. Andy Jr., who was planning on entering the police academy, was shot and killed while trying to stop a robbery. In 1998, Bobby Simone died of a heart infection, and in 1999 Sylvia was killed by a mad gunman in a courtroom.

Sipowicz came out of these tragedies stronger than ever, and continued to be a decent man and police officer. In 2003 he married for the third time, a fellow detective named Connie McDowell who had joined the squad. In 2004 Connie's sister was killed while pregnant by her abusive husband. The baby survived, so Connie and Andy took custody of this child, naming her Michelle after her mother. Soon after, Connie -- who had believed she could not have children due to scarring of her Fallopian Tubes -- became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy named Matthew. With two infants to raise, Connie resigned from the police force to be a stay-at-home mother(However, even if she had not done so, it is likely that she would have been forced to resign, as NYPD regulations prohibit spouses from serving in the same precinct). Later that year, Sipowicz was promoted to the rank of sergeant and became the squad commander at the 15th.

Sipowicz's blue-collar conservativism never changed, leading him to often mock President Bill Clinton, of whom he once said, "A guy gets over like that on your daughter, you'd give him the beating of his life. Here we got him running the country!" He called New York Governor George Pataki "my hero" because of his support for capital punishment. It's not clear whether Pataki's social liberalism, which angered many New York conservatives, changed Sipowicz's opinion of him. Sipowicz's flawed everyman, a basically decent person with all his faults, appealled to the viewers of the show throughout it's 12 year run.

NYPD Blue
Characters	Andy Sipowicz | John Kelly | Bobby Simone | Danny Sorensen | Sylvia Costas | Diane Russell
Actors	Dennis Franz | David Caruso | Jimmy Smits | Rick Schroder | Mark-Paul Gosselaar James McDaniel | Gordon Clapp | Nicholas Turturro | Sharon Lawrence | Kim Delaney | Sherry Stringfield Gail O'Grady | Andrea Thompson | Bill Brochtrup | Henry Simmons | Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon | Charlotte Ross Esai Morales | Jacqueline Obradors | John F. O'Donohue | Currie Graham | Bonnie Somerville
Creators	Steven Bochco | David Milch
Episodes	Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 Season 6 | Season 7 | Season 8 | Season 9 Season 10 | Season 11 | Season 12