Big Apple: An underrated, underseen gem of a TV show from David Milch

In celebration of David Milch's announcement on Craig Ferguson that he's working on a new show, I'm going to look back at an old underrated gem he created and wrote all the way back in 2001 called Big Apple. Milch is the creator of brilliant HBO shows Deadwood and John From Cincinnati. He's the Shakespeare of TV, a mad genius and a completely original voice. You'll know you're watching a David Milch show just from the way the characters talk, in a dialogue style his fans have nicknamed "Milch-speak", which is "an idiosyncratic dialogue style" which is like "listening to a very profane Victorian Yoda from Brooklyn."

Big Apple was on CBS back in the Spring of 2001, between Milch's seven years running NYPD Blue and his renaissance period on HBO. As it only lasted 5 weeks on the air (though 8 episodes were filmed) and no DVD set is in sight, there's zero talk of the show online. Hence this blog entry will comprise approximately 99% of it's coverage on the Internet. Sure a Google search will bring up a few 2001-written reviews of its premier episodes and dead links for downloading the series' run, but there's nothing up 'til now examining the series as a whole. And, as I consider it a work of brilliance from a master of the form, I'm proud to at least give it some kind of coverage.

Big Apple was, like all Milch shows, a genre show with an existential bent. It was a police procedural drama that focused on a single homicide investigation, the murder of stripper-hooker Vicki Tomkins in a upscale New York apartment -- an inciting incident connecting three overlapping storylines. The series' focus was a slow unraveling of the investigation with each episodes taking place over roughly a single day. It was complex and required the audience to pay close attention to the details of the characters and the investigation (which, no doubt, is the reason it didn't find an audience). The three storylines included:

Storyline 1 -- The Police: Homicide cops Michael Mooney (Ed O'Neill) and Vincent Trout (Jeffrey Pierce) catch the case, and, despite all the other characters' conflicting actions and agengas, spend the series just simply wanting to solve it. Due to Tomkins' connections to a Russian-mob-owned strip club, they catch the attention of the characters from storyline 2.

Storyline 2 -- The FBI: The FBI's East-European Crime Task Force doesn't want Mooney and Trout to interfere with a case they're building against the Russian mob, so they deputize Mooney and Trout into the FBI for the duration of the case, despite Mooney having no tolerance for or trust in the Feds. Director William Preecher heads the New York division of the FBI and has long been building a case against Lawrence Stark, a Donald Trump-like billionaire who may have a connection to the Tomkins murder. Jimmy Flynn (Titus Welliver) is an FBI Special Agent whose storyline as a handler for his boyhood hero, a street-hood-turned-FBI-informant, is where storyline #3 starts. Also at the FBI is Sarah Day (Kim Dickens), a tech specialist who has been transferred to the New York FBI office as, much to her discomfort, an outsider who can look at the office with fresh eyes and spot any agent who have been "compromised."

Storyline 3 -- The Bad Guys: Terry Maddock is Flynn's informant, idolized by Flynn at childhood and now "organ grinder" to Flynn's "dancing monkey." Maddock is a Machiavellian street criminal who abuses his informant status to forward his own plans and goals. In the opening episode he's cleaning up after the Tomkins murder (why and for whom, at that point, we don't know). In his crew: Chris Scott (Donnie Wahlberg), a street hood who was dating Tomkins and resents and distrusts Maddock for whatever involvement he had in her murder. Maddock also has dealings with the Russian Mob who also figure into the show's storylines.

According to Milch, the series was about "how information does or does not become understanding." The name is both a reference to the city as well as the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Milch notes that "each of the characters has, in some way, been corrupted by information and is attempting to deal with the consequences." This is most apparent in the relationship between Mooney and the FBI (Mooney is kept in the dark about a lot of what the FBI knows, much to his very vocal anger and frustration) and the relationship between Flynn and Maddock. Informant Maddock is always feeding handler Flynn wrong information that Flynn believes unquestioningly and that often results in bloodshed. A great illustration of their complex relationship are the scenes of Maddock in his bar soliloquizing about his machinations while Flynn watches him on a secret surveillance camera. Maddock is manipulating Flynn, and has most of the control in the relationship, but also has no idea he's being watched so thoroughly by Flynn.

Michael Madsen as the manipulative Maddock is a stand-out in the cast. Madsen is watchable in almost anything, even the bad, direct-to-video movies he currently headlines. It's no secret that Madsen is a fan of Marlon Brando, and it's most evident in Big Apple in his swagger and his use of props. Madsen, like Ian McShane in Deadwood, was born to speak Milch-written dialogue.

Other stand-outs are series star Ed O'Neill (proving he really should be given more dramatic roles) and David Strathairn (who would later win acclaim and an Oscar nomination for his performance in Good Night and Good Luck). O'Neill is great as a workaholic cop who probably knows the least of what's going on than any other character in the show, but knows it and has the best bullshit detector out of any of them. His storyline over the 8 episodes, other than simply wanting to solve the Tomkins murder, concerns his dying-from-Lou-Gehrigs-disease sister and his sudden realization that he doesn't know "how to live." In the latter episodes he attempts to seek out a relationship with a US Attorney (played by Carey Lowell) because of his sister's deathbed wish that he try to live a more full life. Strathairn, on the other hand, is working through his own personal demons: an obsession with white-collar criminal Lawrence Stark in the wake of a family tragedy, something that has slowly begun to damage his career.

The series also has a great opening credits sequence:



My one misgiving with the series is that its run was cut too short. Episode 8 was a rush-job. The series was canceled early into its production and the last episode solves all of the lingering storylines in a rushed, jam-packed 38 minutes. Plot points that would have had breathing space to develop over another 5 episodes are resolved sometimes even in a simple exchange or two. I almost would have preferred they end the series with a standard, another-few-pieces-of-the-puzzle episode than pollute it's great run with a quick-n'-dirty wrap-up (although then I wouldn't get to know who the murderer was, what Maddock's motivations were, or what Preecher's whole deal was -- so, I dunno.)

Anyway. That's just the tip of the iceberg. The beauty of the series is the dialogue and the complex world it creates. For those of you looking for a good, quality mini-series or for those Milch fans who want something new to watch while waiting for his next project, I highly recommend checking it out. With no DVD set, however, you only have two options: watching a few episodes on YouTube or purchasing bootleg DVDs from the same place I was able to acquire them from.