NYPD Blue
Hammer Time
TV Flash files “Hammer Time” as hour 108 of 261 in the TV Flash guide — NYPD Blue (1993–2005) on ABC, season 5, episode 20, aired 1998-05-05, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S05E20: listed hour 108 of 261 in the NYPD Blue guide, hour 20 of 22 in season 5. It aired 1998-05-05 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Prostrate Before the Law” (S05E19). Next is “Seminal Thinking” (S05E21).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Andy is still in pain when he returns to work on a case involving the missing daughter of a crack addict. Andy clashes with ADA Cohen over an immunity plan and later has to use creativity when the girl is found dead. Sylvia shows up to help Andy as well as salvage a criminal case. Bobby learns an elderly tenant at his building is missing and speculation falls on Henry Coffield. Bobby does not think Henry's guilty and follows up on another lead when the elderly tenant's fate is revealed.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Hammer Time sit in the NYPD Blue guide?
S05E20 is listed hour 108 of 261 — hour 20 of 22 in season 5, season 5 episode 20.
When did NYPD Blue S05E20 air?
Hammer Time aired 1998-05-05 and is listed at 60 minutes.
Why was it controversial?
It pushed mid-1990s network limits on profanity, partial nudity, and adult subject matter — the standards-and-practices war was weekly news.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Butts, badges, and Sipowicz — Bochco and Milch teaching broadcast how to be adult out loud. Dennis Franz's alcoholic detective is the decade's great network antihero badge: bigoted, broken, still the moral furnace. Twelve seasons of language fights, cast shakeups, and precinct grit that primed living rooms for flawed cops before cable took the patent.
Flash: September 21, 1993, ABC, Manhattan South. Butts, badges, and a language fight already in the EPK. Steven Bochco and David Milch did not ask the museum guard whether broadcast was allowed to be adult out loud. They put detectives on a shift where alcoholism, divorce, and precinct politics bleed into the case. Dennis Franz's Andy Sipowicz is the decade's great network antihero badge — bigoted, broken, still the moral furnace. Sources close to Standards & Practices were *unavailable for comment*. They were…
Filed against
- Dennis Franz as Andy Sipowicz
Dennis Franz’s Andy Sipowicz made NYPD Blue the decade’s great network antihero badge — bigoted, broken, still the moral furnace, Bochco and Milch teaching broadcast how to be adult out loud. Butts, badges, twelve seasons of language…
- David Caruso as John Kelly
David Caruso’s John Kelly made NYPD Blue’s first climb a redhead with a bruise — Bochco and Milch teaching broadcast how to be adult out loud, butts, badges, language fights. Dennis Franz’s Sipowicz is the long furnace; Caruso is the…
- Jimmy Smits as Bobby Simone
Jimmy Smits’s Victor Sifuentes made L.A. Law a Latino lead in Bochco gloss — 1980s catalog elevator-sex water-cooler firm, then NYPD Blue stretching the steel into butts, badges, and Sipowicz weather. TV Flash files him as the associate…
- Kim Delaney as Diane Russell
Kim Delaney's Diane Russell brought NYPD Blue a detective pulse beside Sipowicz — Bochco and Milch teaching broadcast how to be adult out loud, precinct grit, language fights, twelve seasons of badge weather. The desk files her as 1990s…
- Gordon Clapp as Greg Medavoy
Gordon Clapp's Greg Medavoy survived NYPD Blue's precinct grind — Bochco and Milch teaching broadcast how to be adult out loud, Sipowicz as the moral furnace, twelve seasons of language fights and cast shakeups. TV Flash files him as…