`Big Apple' falls too far from `NYPD Blue' tree

Midway through Big Apple, which manages to morph Married With Children's Al Bundy into a deliciously cynical cop with the face of a well-traveled tire, you might begin to wonder if the pervasiveness of series like NYPD Blue has made it virtually impossible to mount a fresh cops-and-robbers tale.

Try as it might to seem fresh and edgy and gutsy, the pilot of this CBS drama with Ed O'Neill as its front man seems unexpectedly predictable, thin and hollow.

Just as the failed undercover mob drama Falcone proved too tame in contrast to the darkly funny and profane The Sopranos, so Big Apple feels pale even when placed against a currently emaciated Blue. This is certainly ironic considering that `Big Apple' is David Milch's first solo gig since exiting the Steven Bochco partnership.

For years Milch was the nuts-and-bolts guy to Bochco's big vision on NYPD Blue and other cop series like Brooklyn South. But, as with any tag team, there comes a time when enough is enough with collaborations, particularly when striking out on your own yields higher dividends.

Milch has said he is eager to get far away from Blue's portrait of urban chaos. So the dialogue here isn't coarse, and the participants, at least in the pilot, keep their clothes on. Big Apple follows seasoned detective Mike Mooney (O'Neill) and his young partner, Vincent Trout (Jeffrey Pierce). In the pilot, Mooney and Trout begin to investigate the murder of a young woman found in a Park Avenue penthouse only to find their investigation overlapping with an undercover FBI operation at a Russian mob-controlled strip club.

In order to keep their sting intact, the feds try to pull the jurisdictional rank thing, but it doesn't fly with Mooney.

"To me, the most dangerous person I will deal with today," Mooney tells an FBI agent who looks just as disgusted to be facing him, "is sitting across the table from me."

Apparently Mooney has dealt with these guys before, and the police never come out of it unscathed.

He's asked by the feds to back off, told that this is their thing. Of course, he doesn't, which ticks off the feds, who soon learn that not only does Mooney fail to back down, but he's also getting too many things right. William Preecher (David Strathairn) and Jimmy Flynn (Titus Welliver) are top-level feds who decide it's better to join than fight, so they deputize Mooney and Trout.

Take it or leave it, that's the setup for Big Apple. By the end of the episode, the two cops have moved into the FBI offices. For the duration of the investigation, they will work on the case and, I'd assume for premise purposes, a number of others as their relationships warm. It's a regular love-fest when Jimmy says of Mooney, "That loudmouth's pretty smart."

One of the problems is that where Big Apple is trying to be complex, it's merely confusing. The dealings of the three entities (organized crime, cops, FBI) may take awhile to put in place. It took some time to learn whether Michael Madsen's Terry Maddock was an undercover FBI agent or an informant, especially after watching as he coldly supervises a murder where a man is first beaten and then shot in the face.

In any case, O'Neill is his usual likable, dopey self, which works quite well here. His Mooney is obviously a capable, caring cop but with a respectable seen-it-all weariness. Strathairn is shifty enough as the FBI signal caller, and Welliver is becoming the new Dennis Franz -- someone who merely plays variations of the same character.

Milch obviously likes the lizard-eyed Welliver, but so far the actor has had little luck. Welliver was in Falcone and Brooklyn South and had recurring roles in High Incident and Murder One. None of them lasted more than a season.

Based on this show's slow start -- and that it's going head-to-head with ER -- Welliver's streak doesn't look likely to end soon.