1995: David Caruso's first post-"NYPD" movie, "Kiss of Death," for which he was reportedly paid a salary of $1 million, is released. It is aptly named. 1996: "Jade." 1997: In an episode of Comedy Central's skewed cartoon show "South Park," one of the grade-school characters is trying to coax his baby brother into taking a nose dive from a high place. "Do your impression of David Caruso's career!" he yells. What did David Caruso do to deserve this? True, Caruso has a reputation in the industry for being difficult, but I never had to direct the guy in anything, so I don't know. What I do know is that when he walked out on Steven Bochco's "NYPD Blue" four episodes into the second season, it felt like a betrayal. Refresh your memory with FX's nightly "NYPD Blue" reruns and you'll feel it too. As Detective John Kelly, Caruso was the soul of the show, its moral authority. You trusted Kelly. You believed in Kelly. He was the ultimate stand-up guy, the peacemaker who defused "situations" with calm appeals to good sense, the caretaker who shouldered everyone's burdens. "Are we OK with this?" was one of his soothing phrases, delivered in a mellow voice scuffed up with a blue collar New York accent. Kelly had grown up hard -- his father, also a cop, was killed in the line of duty. And there was something fascinating about the way Kelly seemed to be unconsciously trying to both connect with him and erase his memory by playing father figure to a rookie or cleaning up after his partner's messes. Kelly was angry at Dad, but he wouldn't talk about it, couldn't even see it, and Caruso put that swallowed hurt into every frame of his performance. In his crisp shirtsleeves and tie, Kelly was a new breed of TV cop hero, a wounded-inner-child Clintonian mediator. In cop and courtroom dramas, integrity is often interpreted as sanctimony or stiffness -- think of Daniel J. Travanti in "Hill Street Blues," Edward James Olmos in "Miami Vice," Daniel Benzali in "Murder One." But Caruso, with his new-penny hair and boyish yet weary face, brought Kelly's integrity and anger home. He was just a good Catholic kid whose faith had taken a few knocks, trying to do the right thing in a system where the right thing was often not enough. All of Caruso's post-"NYPD Blue" characters to date -- a principled small-time thief trying to go straight in "Kiss of Death," a principled San Francisco homicide detective (named "David Carelli"!) in "Jade" and a principled U.S. attorney in his new CBS comeback series "Michael Hayes" -- are essentially the same character, a David Caruso Character, which is to say, a John Kelly type of character. Oddly, though, none of them generate Kelly's heat. And it's not entirely Caruso's fault. The movies were limp, with "Jade" an especially poor choice for an actor seeking to establish himself as a dynamic Hollywood leading man. Rancid does not even begin to describe this Joe Eszterhas groaner about, well, what all Joe Eszterhas movies are about -- a high-class woman on all fours. Badly lit, so he appeared even paler than usual next to dark-browed co-stars Chazz Palminteri and Linda Fiorentino, Caruso was an ineffectual bystander in his own star picture. Let's put it this way: Caruso's character was the only man in the movie who didn't get to screw the leading lady. Anyway, contrary to the jokesters who take Caruso's return to series TV as evidence of a fizzled movie career, Caruso has three more films awaiting release. And, on paper, "Michael Hayes" must have looked like a hot prospect. Nicholas Pileggi ("GoodFellas," "Casino") is one of the writer/producers and Hayes seems like a made-to-order Caruso role, perfect for an actor looking to rebuild a constituency. Michael Hayes is another fatherless Irish Catholic scrapper, a New York City cop who went to law school at night and is now apparently the only uncompromised federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office of the Southern District of New York. As Hayes, Caruso is once again the caretaker and the wise motivator; he refuses to play politics and dispenses hugs and sympathy like they're Pez. "Michael Hayes" is an old-fashioned -- bordering on creaky -- star vehicle; it's a one-man show, and while Caruso once again shows how deftly he can create an intimacy with viewers, he looks awfully lonely in there without any co-stars of the tangy Dennis Franz-Sherry Stringfield-Amy Brenneman variety. It's a curiously weightless show, devoid of humor or subtext. The two episodes made available to TV critics can pretty much be summed up this way: Somebody warns, "Don't make this personal, Michael!" and Michael, of course, does. Everything about "Michael Hayes" feels cautious and uncertain, as if none of its gaggle of producers (of which Caruso is one) was quite sure how to present Caruso to viewers who might still resent him for leaving TV. John Kelly was a good guy with some dark places inside him: He was bitterly sarcastic to his ex-wife Laurie (Stringfield) for leaving him, and he put screwed-up beat cop girlfriend Janice Licalsi (Brenneman) through the emotional wringer for not being a saint. But poor Michael Hayes has no such leeway to be similarly human. Hayes dutifully watches over his resentful, ne'er-do-well younger brother; he takes his brother's neglected kid fishing; he holds his sister-in-law when she sobs over her busted marriage; he enfolds a murder victim's mother in a bear hug when she thanks him for putting away the killer; he coaxes a brilliant, demoted investigator out of her funk; he burns his hands while pulling his boss from the wreckage of a bombed limo. Many shots of Hayes' hands, bandaged like a martyr or fingering rosary beads, follow. What the heck is this, "Jesus Christ, Federal Prosecutor"? At the 11th hour, "EZ Streets" creator Paul Haggis was brought aboard to produce and write a new opening episode. But while the "prequel" (as the network is calling it), which airs Sept. 15, better sets up the plot twists of the original pilot (which is now airing as the second episode on Sept. 23), it's not appreciably more compelling. Maybe Haggis can turn the show around in the coming weeks with some of that dark, provocative "EZ Streets" texture. But, first, please, give Michael Hayes a life. Ironically, Caruso gave his most commanding movie performance as a bad cop in Abel Ferrara's operatic 1990 thriller "The King of New York." In a 180-degree turn from the typical Caruso hero, Caruso played what could have been John Kelly's wild id, a New York Irish hothead whose despair over the cops being regularly humiliated by high-living drug lords leads him to plot a vigilante raid on the filthy bastards, with dire consequences for all. Caruso's hair is the most sharply colored thing in the movie; his bitter, cold-eyed, dimpled smile is unforgettably chilling. If only Caruso could take off the sandles and cassock and play Michael
Hayes with that kind of passion and obsessiveness. Let's see him straining
to keep the dirty dance of politics from stepping on his pursuit of
justice. Let the toll of the job come out in bursts of bad behavior. Get
him in a dysfunctional relationship with a real problem case (Amy
Brenneman, where are you?). I guess what I really want is for Hayes to
morph into John Kelly and resolve all that unfinished business from "NYPD
Blue." But, honestly, it would be enough if Caruso and his associates could
just make Michael Hayes interesting. At this point, though, we're
more likely to see him walk on water.
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"Michael Hayes"
(special preview 10 p.m. Monday, Sept. 15, CBS;
regular
time slot premiere 9 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 23)
"NYPD Blue" reruns
(9 p.m. Monday-Friday, FX).
ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLIE POWELL
