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'Blue''s Clues

''NYPD Blue'' will wrap with little fanfare on March 1. The series finale will not tie up loose ends for the 12-year-old drama, creator Steven Bochco says

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By Gary Susman

Like Everybody Loves Raymond over on CBS, ABC's NYPD Blue will end its lengthy run this spring with a no-frills finale. Addressing the Television Critics Association's winter conclave in Los Angeles, Blue creator Steven Bochco said that the March 1 finale would not tie up loose ends for the 12-year-old drama, nor would it feature a reunion of cast members past and present. (Actually, Charlotte Ross, who played the wife of Dennis Franz's Det. Andy Sipowicz, was invited to appear but declined.) Life at the fictional 15th Precinct will continue unchanged, Bochco said, except that ''you just won't get to visit it every week.''

It was ABC's decision to pull the plug on Blue, but Bochco said he agreed that the time was right for the show to bow out. ''I'd rather leave the party an hour early than an hour late,'' he said. He observed that, in the post-Janet TV landscape, he was having to fight network censors over language and glimpses of skin that wouldn't have been challenged five years ago. ''The medium has become increasingly conservative,'' he said. ''I don't think today we could launch or sell a show like NYPD Blue.'' (His upcoming police drama, Blind Justice, which premieres on ABC a week after Blue leaves the air, appears much less likely to break content taboos.) Still, he said, network TV drama would eventually become more envelope-pushing and adult-oriented again. ''You're never going to put the genie back in the bottle,'' he said. ''We're never going to see television go back to what it was 20 years ago.''