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Title: "Pilot" Season: 1 Episode: 1 First Air Date: March 1, 2001 TV Ratings: 8.5/14 (Overnight) (36 overall) Writer: David Milch & Anthony Yerkovich Director: Charles Haid Guest Stars:
Our Rating: 8/10
Fan Rating: 10/10 (Average of all fan submitted ratings)
Review/Synopsis: A stripper is murdered in a ritzy apartment and two cops analyze the scene. A grizzled handsome type informs a baby-faced thug that his girl is dead. While an FBI agent watches from a well-placed surveillance system, he gets an eyeful of the bloody doorman who happened to be the only witness. The new blonde gal at the Bureau had a bumpy welcome as her helicopter nearly crashes. Got all that? Now for the title sequence. The head-on collision commences when the FBI warns Det. Mike Mooney and his trusty Robin, Det. Vincent Trout to keep their hands off. Naturally that doesn’t sit well and they ‘accidentally’ end up at the Russian owned Paradise club where the deceased used to dance. Her sweetheart Chris Scott (baby-face) made a hasty exit despite looking for the killer himself. Informant and grizzled surveillance star Terry Maddock sets a frame-up in motion on a bouncer and bald-faced denies to Agent Jimmy Flynn any knowledge of a dead doorman. Not only does Flynn have to let Mooney in on his baby but also his grasp on Terry isn’t as strong as he figured on, having known the guy since hero-worshipping him back in the day. To make a bad day worse, Jimmy had to sidestep new tech specialist Sarah Day on her pesky inventory requests, since he kinda, sorta, has an illegal camera focused on Maddock. Sarah herself was having a tough time unsettling in, since her old pal Teddy Olsen suggested that her sneaky assignment could break her more easily than it makes her. Meanwhile Mooney, in his ‘mouth needs a good cleansing’ way, brought news that Howard Klein had the apartment lease. Bureau big boys William Preecher and Teddy Olsen have been on this guy for two years and they can practically taste it. Over in the criminal sector (always the docks) Chris played Irish arbitrator among the Italian and Russian heavies while engaging in some sort of shady green card deal. The thing is that Chris deep down isn’t so shady, practically everything makes him antsy, the little things like watching the bouncer get offed (Maddock paid mobster Mitya to get the job done). You get the feeling he’s going to screw up Terry’s plans just a bit. The body is found (suicide) in a sunken car with the doorman gift-wrapped in the trunk, and for extra effect, there’s a pair of blood soaked female undies in the guy’s shack. Clean and simple, yes, but you can’t pull the wool over that Mooney’s eyes and he certainly won’t stand for bureaucratic claptrap so he popped Flynn in the jaw. Sipowicz would be so proud. Like novice criminal Chris, Agent Flynn is drowning in Maddock’s machinations, and the one man army all but confessed to Preecher about rigging the extra wiring with his own two straight-laced hands. And, despite his protests it looks like Det. Mooney secretly takes a fancy to all this high-feluting FBI stuff. Just think, Oscar and Felix attempt to polish up the Big Apple, this ought to be some of the most interesting, well-acted, massively confusing stuff ever.
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