The BEST episodes of NYPD Blue season 1
Every episode of NYPD Blue season 1, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of NYPD Blue season 1!
The gritty details of life as a member of a New York City police unit.
#1 - Guns 'n Rosaries
Season 1 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/10/1994
Medavoy tells Donna that he's caught his wife in the act of being unfaithful, so he is moving out. Racial hostilities flare up after Martinez shoots a belligerent black motorist who draws a gun on Medavoy, but the gun is missing. Distressed by recent events, Licalsi searches for direction, John points her to his friend, Father Downey. After talking with him, she then confesses to Fancy that she killed Angelo Marino and his chauffeur and then the circus begins. Sipowicz tries to attend an open meeting.
#2 - Rockin' Robin
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/17/1994
Kelly gets a high priced attorney to defend Janice and helps out with her bail. Andy tries to make amends with Sylvia who's been attending Alanon meetings. Kelly investigates the murder of a priest. While helping his son look for a car, Andy comes across a lead in the disappearance case that has frustrated him for 2 1/2 years. John and Robin meet for lunch and then again later that night.
#3 - Brown Appetit
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/5/1993
Janice's father comes to visit and warn her about his pending corruption indictment. Sipowicz makes some appearances at the hotel where Giardella is being held. Kelly and Martinez are assigned a case involving the robbery and brutal murder of a woman. 4B comes to the precinct in search of his gun. Fancy and Sipowicz meet man to man and air their differences. Kelly begins moonlighting as a security guard for a wealthy woman who's married to an abusive husband. Sipowicz is put back on the job and Janice's father takes the easy way out.
#4 - From Hare to Eternity
Season 1 - Episode 11 - Aired 12/14/1993
Borough Commander Haverill starts to come down on Fancy. Kelly and Sipowicz investigate the kidnapping of a doctor's daughter. A woman claims to have no knowledge of the robbery the man they were riding with committed in North Carolina. Janice must pass some more information to the mob, but wonders how she'll ever get out of this situation. Sipowicz threatens to reveal some incriminating evidence about Haverill to get him to lay off Fancy, he later plays Santa Claus to underprivileged children. Kelly stops to visit his mother in her rest home. Martinez receives his new badge, making him a detective.
#5 - NYPD Lou
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/2/1993
A man thinks he is a werewolf and demands to be locked into a cell before he kills someone. Sipowicz discovers that his estranged son's future wife has been sleeping around. A homeless man is suspected in the death of a nine-year-old. Giardella is killed before he can testify and Laura is the only witness to the crime.
#6 - Pilot
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/21/1993
Sipowicz's continual harassment of Giardella winds up getting him in trouble. Fancy tells Kelly it may be time for a new partner. Sipowicz is brought up before IAB. Laura wants to process their divorce and the neighbor in apartment 4B, where a mugging has recently happened, is doing the paperwork. Sipowicz gets drunk and meets his lady friend and is shot by Giardella in the process. Kelly begins to apply pressure on the local Mafia to try to get them to give Giardella up. Janice and John begin to have a relationship. "4B" is mugged in the laundry room. Marino wants Janice to kill Kelly.
#7 - True Confessions
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/12/1993
Kelly quits his security job and warns the abusive husband to watch out. A man is arrested for a robbery and double-homicide when Det. Walker is convinced he is guilty, though Sipowicz feels differently. Laura quits her job and plans to move into a position with the District Attorney's office, prosecuting narcotics. Kelly winds up at the scene of the abusive husband's murder. "4B" has Kelly come and appear before the tenant's readiness group, later the edgy "4B" is shot on a subway platform trying to save an elderly woman.
#8 - Up on the Roof
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/4/1994
Martinez works his first case, which involves a fake ATM. A foster child that Fancy and his wife had been caring for is ordered back into the custody of his real mother who's just been released from a detox program. Sipowicz and Kelly investigate a mob shooting that turns up the notebook that Marino kept Janice's name in. Later the triggerman who nailed Giardella, and that Laura can identify, is trapped on a roof with a hostage.
#9 - 4B or Not 4B
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/28/1993
Lastarza of the Organized Crime Unit tells Fancy & Kelly that they better stop applying pressure on the mob. Sipowicz regains consciousness but has no memory of the shooting. Laura and John become officially separated. "4B" begins to do his laundry every night with his gun in hopes of catching the attacker. Laura decides to join a private law firm. Angelo Marino puts pressure on Janice to kill Kelly; however, she kills him and his driver instead. Sipowicz returns to "active" desk duty and Lois turns up and helps to nail Giardella. Alfonse offers to give up all sorts of proof that will put him on easy street. A father takes a judge hostage, when he feels justice wasn't done for his dead son, Kelly talks him out of it. John and Janice talk about their relationship and Angelo Marino's death. "4B" shoots his mugger.
#10 - A Sudden Fish
Season 1 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/15/1994
Medavoy suffers a stress-related anxiety attack after making into the station. Sipowicz looks into the robbery of a Vietnam veteran, who's confined to a wheelchair. Andy rejects a gift from Sylvia. John starts moonlighting as a bodyguard for his rich friend's girlfriend, but he catches her in the act of being unfaithful. When he confronts her, she tells him that she's being blackmailed, so Kelly meets the blackmailer and advises him not to do it again. Medavoy doesn't want to tell his wife about his problem, which displeases Donna, and he thinks he still may want a divorce. The wheelchair-bound veteran takes his mugger's hostage. Laura invites John out to dinner and tells him about her serious relationship. John is best man at an impromptu wedding.
#11 - Black Men Can Jump
Season 1 - Episode 17 - Aired 3/1/1994
LaSalle has a chance to move out of the precinct and into a more regular routine of detective work. A thirteen-year-old boy is shot. Sipowicz suspects a private investigator of bilking a father, for the past six months, in a scheme to find the man's daughter. Andy's also was looking for her for the past 2 1/2 years. The father of the murdered boy apprehends the killer, after he discovers the killer (whose injured LaSalle) has escaped from the precinct.
#12 - Steroid Roy
Season 1 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/8/1994
Sylvia still has trouble-getting Andy to get their relationship going. One of Det. Roberts' snitches comes to the precinct and causes trouble for him, especially when she later turns up dead. Laura appeals to John to re-examine the alleged murder of the abusive man by his wife; Martinez and Medavoy take on the chore when Robert's snitch is found dead. Roy is sent to take a drug test that he fails, is fired and vows to not let it die. Sylvia makes it into Andy's apartment.
#13 - Zeppo Marks Brothers
Season 1 - Episode 18 - Aired 3/22/1994
Roberts meets with Kelly in search of getting some bodyguard work. A woman whose boyfriend was a material witness is afraid to identify the hit man because she's afraid she'll be next. Laura feels as though she's being stalked and while checking it out John gets to meet her new boyfriend. The hit man is identified, wired and sent to Riker's to get incriminating evidence against the brothers who hired him. While listening in, John hears that Laura was also an intended target. None of the detectives are too excited when Haverill sends them down to Times Square for uniform detail at a parade.
#14 - Good Time Charlie
Season 1 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/3/1994
Janice gets promoted and will be working with the other detectives until she can be transferred to the re-organizing intelligence division. Kelly suspects that his friend is being framed for the murder of his mistress, even after his behavior in the squad room. Arthur's wife lets him know she is pregnant again; he is less than enthusiastic considering the complications of her previous pregnancy. Andy takes a sip of a drink at a birthday party for Sylvia's father and later he has more and then he throws her out of his apartment.
#15 - Serge the Concierge
Season 1 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/29/1994
Robin's husband dies, later she is angry when her husband's will seems to stipulate that Kelly should resume his duties as her bodyguard. Sipowicz must clear his son of a drug pushing charge. The detectives check a garbage dump for a female body but turn up a male. Looking into the male body's murder, Kelly suspects a concierge and the hotelier of conspiring to murder the hotelier's husband.
#16 - Tempest in a C-Cup
Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/16/1993
Kelly suspects a man of murder but tries to get him to confess to the robbery of four taxicabs, so later they can link him to the murder. Sipowicz arrests a topless dancer for prostitution and she offers to help him get at the owner of the bar who is laundering money for the mob. Laura's partner has questionable ethics and she tries to protect her professional reputation. The squad room gets a new detective's administrative aide, named Miss Abandando. Sipowicz goes on a date with the ADA who he once called a "pissy little bitch."
#17 - Ice Follies
Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/30/1993
Janice is asked by the mob to start doing favors for them again or they will expose her past activities. James' father wants to kill the pusher who's responsible for his son's overdose. Medavoy celebrates his 40th birthday and later goes ice-skating with Donna.
#18 - Personal Foul
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/26/1993
A minor skirmish on the basketball court leaves one of Kelly's friends dead and the other in jail for murder. Laura feels as though she's being dangled in front of Giardella. John's buddy has trouble dealing with being locked up and makes the whole situation worse. Sipowicz is convinced that a man knows more about his wife's death than he is letting on so he stirs him up. Janice warns Kelly and saves his life during a drug raid and the event seems to bring them back together.
#19 - Oscar, Meyer, Weiner
Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 12/7/1993
The detectives investigate the brutal murder of an upper class family. Lastarza orders Janice to cooperate with the mob though it results in the death of the person whose plates she ran through the computer. Kelly deals with his relationship with Janice as she tries to keep him out of her current situation. Sipowicz takes the statement of a gay writer whose Academy Award was stolen.
#20 - Emission Accomplished
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/19/1993
James goes to visit his brother but finds the super at the building is a cop who is on the take and slowly forcing tenants out. Det. Stillwell's pranks become a nuisance for everyone. Martinez's brother's building is the scene of an "accidental" death that convinces him the cop is bad. James' father comes down on him for not keeping an eye on his brother. John contacts an old friend who's in IAB about Martinez's theories, but to protect Martinez from IAB, John takes a tape recorder in and gets Hanlon to talk. Laura's new job as an ADA takes a twist as she is assigned a case that involves Giardella.
#21 - Jumpin' Jack Fleishman
Season 1 - Episode 14 - Aired 1/18/1994
Medavoy and Martinez work a strangulation murder case that appears to be the work of a cross-dresser. Andy has a bad tooth, hates needles, and tries to prevent a dentist from jumping off a 28th floor ledge; he fails. LaSalle's first case involves a woman who was raped and she, John, Andy, Janice and Licalsi's hot-headed new partner try to catch the most probable suspect; however the hot-head blows the bust. Lois tries to reconcile her relationship with Andy.
#22 - Abandando Abandoned
Season 1 - Episode 13 - Aired 1/11/1994
Medavoy leaves his wife and tells Donna about his feelings for her, which it turns out are mutual. An academy classmate of Kelly's joins the squad; then Sipowicz and Kelly investigate the death of her husband, whom was an ex-cop trying to stop a robbery on her first day at the 15th precinct. An alcoholic woman keeps lodging complaints with Kelly against her husband that she never follows through with, later she confesses to killing him.