All episodes Season 9 S09E08 2001-12-18 60 min 1990s ABC

NYPD Blue

Puppy Love

TV Flash files “Puppy Love” as hour 182 of 261 in the TV Flash guide — NYPD Blue (1993–2005) on ABC, season 9, episode 8, aired 2001-12-18, 60 min.

From the desk

How this hour is filed

This leaf is S09E08: listed hour 182 of 261 in the NYPD Blue guide, hour 8 of 23 in season 9. It aired 2001-12-18 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “Mom's Away” (S09E07). Next is “Here Comes the Son” (S09E09).

NYPD Blue — Puppy Love (S09E08)

Catalog log

Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.

Sipowicz moonlights as a guard for an eccentric woman who drinks and who sings show tunes. When new Detective Rita Ortiz joins the squad, Sipowicz thinks she's unqualified. Meanwhile, Medavoy and Jones investigate the theft of purebred puppies from a pet store, and Sipowicz and Clark investigate the case of a murdered man accused of child molestation.

Viewer FAQ

Where does Puppy Love sit in the NYPD Blue guide?

S09E08 is listed hour 182 of 261 — hour 8 of 23 in season 9, season 9 episode 8.

When did NYPD Blue S09E08 air?

Puppy Love aired 2001-12-18 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…

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