What would a Steven Bochco police series be without controversy? And the upcoming "Brooklyn South" fits the pattern of "NYPD Blue" and "Public Morals" - there are already protests months before the show goes on the air.
But this time around, the issue is not nudity or crudeness or adult language (although the language is somewhat salty)."Brooklyn South" is controversial because of admitted violence and questions about racism.
What has drawn all the attention is the first 10 minutes of the show's pilot episode. In it, a black man with guns blazing shoots his way to the front of a police station, killing civilians and cops along the way. There's one particularly shocking moment when a sniper fires at an already-wounded cop, taking off the top of his head.
And everyone involved knows that sequence is going to be controversial.
"We're going to take a lot of heat. It's unrealistic to expect that we won't," said executive producer/writer David Milch. "But no one was looking to create controversy for controversy's sake."
"The violence is extreme," said CBS Entertainment President Leslie Moonves. "It is done for a reason. It's trying to show that violence is not pretty."
That's for sure. If this doesn't make you gasp and cringe, nothing on television will.
All that said, Milch - the man largely responsible for the writing on the Emmy Award-winning "NYPD Blue" - makes a strong case for opening "Brooklyn South" the way he did.
Milch said that opening sequence "had to do with our intention of establishing an atmosphere once. And I think it may be fair to say that, if the show runs as long as we all hope it does, there may not be that much violence again in a whole other season."
What Milch and the other "Brooklyn South" writers and producers wanted to accomplish was to make the audience experience the emotions their cop characters are experiencing - the disbelief, horror and anger they felt as the perpetrator tried to kill as many of them as possible.
"The violence of it is shocking," said Gary Basaraba, one of the show's stars. "The importance in that is you have to experience the same thing that the characters are going to experience."
"What we were trying to do was to expose the audience to once source of reality in a cop's life, which would prepare the audience to understand a moment which came later - and the full resonance of which will take an entire year to live into," Milch said. "That is the death in custody of the perpetrator of the violence, (which) occurs in circumstances which have yet fully to be disclosed."
He added that the hope was that viewers would have a "visceral" reaction to what happened - and it works. Milch recalled a moment when one of the surviving cops learned the perpetrator had died in custody, and the officer's immediate reaction was "Good!"
"What that sequence is intended to do is to bring the viewer first to that kind of emotional complicity in the act of vigilantism - of taking that guy off the street and doing whatever the hell is necessary to him," Milch said. "And then to live in the consequences of what foul dust kind of floats in vigilantism's wake."
"We want the audience to have an emotional connection with that expression, which, ultimately, is contradicted by their more rational understanding of the consequences of that kind of response. That's what we were going for, I promise,"
A case can also be made that portraying violence as something horrific and shocking is better than the sort of cartoonish TV violence in which people are shot but no one bleeds - where violent death is neat a clean.
"I think they made the choice to spend 10 intense minutes to grab you dramatically and emotionally, so that the rest of the show we can start concentrating on the repercussions of what happens to these people," said Dylan Walsh, another of the show's stars. "And I think that's a pretty honorable way to go about it. It's responsible. . . . I think violence should be off-putting as opposed to being made palatable. I think that's a mistake.
"I think, instead of criticizing Bochco and Milch, you have to say that they're going about it in a responsible way. They're making violence unpalatable. They're making violence what it is. I think that should be allowed on TV."
Milch had a much harder time explaining why there were no prominent African-Americans in the "Brooklyn South" cast. Not only is it a bit difficult to believe that a Brooklyn police precinct could have so few minorities, but the fact that the gunman who dies in custody is black - and his death sets off a civil rights protest - turns the show polemic.
The executive producer professes to have been unaware of how few African-Americans were in the cast until after the pilot was shot.
"I won't count votes that way," Milch said. "I just won't write that way.
"But, having said that, I think it was an error of writing - not an error of politics or an error of corporate policy or anything else. But it produced an ineffective dramatic impression not to have any male African Americans, and we're going to reshoot and add that character."
He insisted that he had "always intended" to add a black male cast member in the second episode, and that he's just pushing that up by one installment of "Brooklyn South."
"The reason that we're doing that, again, is not for any idea of balance but rather because you wind up seeming to make a thematic point, which, in fact, we're not making," he said.
WEAK WOMEN: Although it didn't elicit questions like the racial issue did, "Brooklyn South" proves once again that Milch and his team have difficulty writing for women.
Just look at "NYPD Blue," which has never done a particularly good job of developing female characters as anything more than adjuncts to its male characters.
The three most prominent female characters in the "Brooklyn South" pilot are a supportive sister; a shrewish wife with loose morals; and a female police officer who spends much of the episode in tears.
Not particularly promising.
STRONG WARNING: CBS chief Moonves said the premiere of "Brooklyn South" will be clearly labeled so that viewers are aware of its violent content.
"Clearly, there will be plenty of warnings. There'll be 400 letters in front of that show when it's on the air," he said, referring to the S, V and L letters that will soon accompany the age-based rating system. (The episode has not yet been rated, but Moonves has not ruled out the possibility that it will receive the strongest rating - TV-MA, for mature audiences only.)
"If anybody in America does not know that `Brooklyn South' is a very violent show, they're not living here," Moonves said.
NO NUDES IS GOOD NUDES: Unlike their counterparts at "NYPD Blue," members of the "Brooklyn South" were not asked to sign contracts that included so-called nudity clauses - agreements that, if called upon to do so, they would shed their clothing for the cameras.
PRO-POLICE: Whether you like "NYPD Blue" or "Brooklyn South" or not, the fact is that the shows come down on the side of the police.
Bill Clark - supervising producer of "Brooklyn" and co-executive producer of "Blue" - was a New York City cop himself for a quarter of a century. And his friendship with Milch has brought the writer around to his way of thinking.
Milch talked about spending more than a year doing research before "NYPD Blue" went on the air, and the conclusion he came to about police officers.
"The simplest way to put it is - cops want to help," Milch said. "There is no reason in the world to do that job unless you want to help people."
Which is not to say that police officers are any different from the population at large.
"Obviously, there are bad cops," Milch said. "But they're a small minority."
RATHER TROUBLING: On the other hand, Milch and Clark's views are more than a bit troubling to anyone who believes in the guarantees provided in the U.S. Constitution. Clark spoke of doing whatever it took to get his job done, no matter what.
"The cop understands that, because we live in a democracy, the illusion must be maintained that everyone gets their rights," Milch said. "People don't really want that to happen with criminals, but we have to maintain that illusion.
"That's why cops learn how to lie. It's called `testi-lying.' I have had a cop tell me that, `When I'm up on the stand and I'm lying about what I did to get the confession, I look right at the (expletive) that I did it to. Because I want him to know that even though I'm lying about what I did to get the confession that he did what he's accused of and he's going away."
" `And I'm not ashamed of myself,' " added executive producer William Finkelstein.
"Yeah, and that cop who is willing to take that upon himself must also understand that if he's caught, the same society which approves of him for protecting them is going to lock him up," Milch said. "Which is one reason why cops tend only to trust other cops."
ALL WET: Now that he's a star, Ray Romano of "Everybody Loves Raymond" is being offered other jobs. But he doesn't accept all of them.
"They offered me the Sea World special and I thought it might be too silly. And then (co-star) Brad (Garrett) proved that point," Romano said.
Yes, Garrett - who plays Ray's brother on "Everybody Loves Raymond" - did take the gig. And he credits it with helping him to shed more than a few pounds recently.
"That's when I really started losing the weight because I remember the director actually said, `Brad, can you move to the right - we can't see the whale," Garrett said.
PROUD FATHER: "Everybody Loves Raymond" is more-or-less based on Romano's real life. And, in real life, the actor's father is just as outgoing and off-center as is the fictional father, who's played by Peter Boyle.
Which is why his real father doesn't object to the not-so-flattering portrayal of himself on TV.
"Because he is that character, would that character care about being portrayed like he is?" Romano said.
And the sitcom has made his father a big man in his Long Island neighborhood.
"He's like the king of the Elks," Romano said. "And the guys down at the Elks think (the show) is a documentary."