It's some of the best plastic surgery this century. That or demonic possession: Surely age alone is insufficient to explain Rick(y) Schroder's transformation from hypersaccharine sitcom munchkin to tough-talking adult of no more than average munchkinliness. With his dreadful eighties spoiled-child incarnation still narcotizing third-world TV markets, he's stepped onto the streets of NYPD Blue and into the big, sexy shoes of Jimmy Smits. (Well, not sexy shoes per se, but you get the point.) Speaking as though raised by a pack of stray dogs in East New York, he now converses with Dennis Franz in a hard-bitten patter so complexly mannered it's practically Elizabethan. At the end of the next millennium, when all urban populations speak like Martha Stewart, some grad student's going to uncover the lost videocassettes. And little Rick(y) Schroder will be enshrined as the poet laureate of New Yorkese.

Related:

• Archive: “Gotham: Life in the New City”
• Table of Contents: Dec 14, 1998 issue of New York | Subscribe!