NYPD Blue
Waking Up is Hard to Do
TV Flash files “Waking Up is Hard to Do” as hour 156 of 261 in the TV Flash guide — NYPD Blue (1993–2005) on ABC, season 8, episode 2, aired 2001-01-16, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S08E02: listed hour 156 of 261 in the NYPD Blue guide, hour 2 of 20 in season 8. It aired 2001-01-16 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Daveless in New York” (S08E01). Next is “Franco, My Dear, I Don't Give a Damn” (S08E03).
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Andy's mood turns dramatically when he gets the news on Theo, but he keeps his game face on to help Greg and Baldwin solve a case involving a series of cab-driver homicides connected to a gun broker. Diane spars against with Harry to ward off an IAB avalanche over the Don Kirkendall case, and while Harry's information is useless (as is the "help" from the late Bobby Simone's sleazebag friend Ray DiSalvo), Don's enemies list ironically puts the detectives and Harry all in the clear.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Waking Up is Hard to Do sit in the NYPD Blue guide?
S08E02 is listed hour 156 of 261 — hour 2 of 20 in season 8, season 8 episode 2.
When did NYPD Blue S08E02 air?
Waking Up is Hard to Do aired 2001-01-16 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…