...and the ultimate imposter

Dennis Franz as Andy Sipowicz
Two experts we spoke to offered unsolicited criticisms of NYPD Blue’s lead character, Andy Sipowicz. After all, the tough-talking city cop had a flagrant Chicago accent. Says Michael Newman, an associate professor of linguistics at Queens College: "They should have had a back story on him coming from Chicago." And New York accent authority Bill Labov chimed in: Franz' character “has a completely different dialect from a completely different part of the country, and nobody ever asked how come he got to be a New York City policeman.”