Ken Tucker explains why Rick Schroder's first episode of 'NYPD Blue' did justice to the show.

I was as emotionally drained as you were two weeks ago, when Jimmy Smits' Bobby Simone finally succumbed to the bright white light beckoning him to heaven, but I was also ready for some things to change on "NYPD Blue." As good as the Simone story line was, I'd had it with the way Dennis Franz's Andy Sipowicz was venting his fear of losing Bobby by raging and humiliating everyone around him. The fact that the rest of the squad, particularly Gordon Clapp's halting, self-deprecating Greg Medavoy and Nicholas Turturro's hesitant James Martinez, were moping around taking all of Sipowicz's guff only made Andy the more reprehensible: Your friend was in need, pal -- pull yourself together.

Andy was still in a sour funk last night, so thanks all the more to Rick Schroder for showing up and instantly injecting this increasingly wayward series with new purpose and momentum. Schroder made a spectacular debut as the series' newest character, Danny Sorenson, a wised-up-beyond-his-years former narcotics-squad detective who can already match Dennis Franz's Andy Sipowicz for withering deadpan cracks.

Schroder's never quite shaken the image of child actor; he still has baby-face good looks, and his most prominent adult role, in the great TV movie "Lonesome Dove," was that of a callow young man. Cannily, "NYPD" producers David Milch and Steven Bochco are using what we know of Schroder's image -- playing off it -- to make Danny Sorenson a surprising, intriguing character.

The key moment in last night's episode was a deceptively throwaway scene -- when Danny suddenly stops a guy riding his bike on a New York City sidewalk. The biker had nearly knocked over a woman, and Sorenson told him to obey the law and ride in the street. The fellow looked shocked -- a cop taking the time to chastise someone for so minor an offense? But the gesture told us everything about Danny: that he's a decent young man who wants people to be civil to each other.

Andy Sipowicz, you can learn a lot from this kid.