DRAMA CAUGHT IMPERSONATING AN EMERGENCY
Date: 01-23-2000, Sunday

Fire engines. Rescue trucks. Police cars. Sirens. Crowds. Action.
Is it real or is it Memorex?
Lately, it's hard to tell a genuine New York City emergency from the kind that's regularly being staged for NBC's "Third Watch."
On a street corner in Harlem one recent day, gawkers -- gathered across from a building where a severely obese woman was being lowered from a fifth-story window -- were clearly confused about what they were watching.
About the only hints that this was a fictional scene were the makeup artists doing touch-ups on a handful of uncommonly handsome people in uniform, the microphones dangling from the roof, and the
presence of entertainment reporters -- including a guy from CNN who noticed yet another telltale sign.
"In real emergencies, you don't have caterers coming around with trays of food," he quipped.
Such frills aside, "Third Watch" -- NBC's freshman drama about some brave and dedicated New York City cops, paramedics, and firefighters -- is the most realistic-looking series around.
"There are certain times when you take a dramatic license here and there, mainly in compressing stories, but beyond that, it's very real," says co-creator Ed Bernero, who spent a decade as a Chicago cop. "It feels real to me, and I'm a pretty harsh judge."
Most of the actors, in fact, have at least one tale about having been mistaken for the real deal.
"If people ask me for directions, and I know, I'll pretend to be a cop and give them directions," says Molly Price, the North Plainfield native and Rutgers grad who plays dedicated police officer Faith Yokas. "If it's not a life-threatening situation, I'll play along."
The NBC drama -- which sports a large, attractive ensemble cast -- is doing quite well for a newcomer. (The Jan. 10 episode, its first outing on Monday nights at 10, finished a respectable No. 43 in the Nielsens.)
Shot mostly out on the streets, "Third Watch" spotlights parts of New York City (the Bronx, Queens, Harlem) that television rarely visits. "In the pilot, we shot in four of the five boroughs," Bernero says. "This is more Archie Bunker's New York than [Andy] Sipowicz' New York."
And the show is -- as its actors repeatedly put it -- an unusually "physical" one to make.
"We're out in the elements all the time, whether it rains, snows, is sunny, whatever, and I'm wearing a bulletproof vest, a shirt, a sweater, a coat, a holster, polyester pants, boots, a hat," says Price.
As hunky firefighter Jimmy Doherty, Eddie Cibrian bears an even heavier load.
"We have 70 pounds of gear that we have to put on, and we have to run in and out of buildings, carry people out, work with the hoses, break down stuff," he says. "It's grueling, but fun. I'm a kid again."
Writer-producer Bernero, who co-created the series with John Wells ("ER"), prides himself on the show's realism. "Our firemen -- in the firehouse and at the fires -- are almost always real fireman, except for Eddie [Cibrian]," says Bernero. (Off-duty police officers are used as uniformed extras as often as possible, too.)
At times, "Third Watch" seems a bit too realistic. You might see a paramedic reaching, elbow-deep, into a victim's chest cavity, or -- as in last week's episode -- a woman, trying to escape a fire, jumping to her death.
The show relies heavily on technical advisers -- John Hanchar (paramedic), Brian Dixon (fire), Mike Keenan (police) -- and Dr. Lance Gentile, a physician who had previously worked on "ER" and
"Providence," is on the "Third Watch" writing staff.
"We've all spent time with our technical advisers," says Anthony Ruivivar, who plays paramedic Carlos Nieto. "Basically, they threw jackets on us, and we were running around the streets with them, seeing what they see, going through what they go through.
"And we constantly have the tech advisers around if we have any questions, 'cause a lot of times, you're saying things -- really technical names of medications -- and you're not even sure what they mean."
Researchers spend hours making sure that scenarios are technically correct. For a recent story line about a building that collapsed, trapping victims inside -- a spectacularly complicated sequence, filmed in an abandoned building in Queens, that involved stunt work, pyrotechnics, collapsed beams, and more than 100 extras -- the researchers consulted with civil engineers on all the details.
"Whether it's likely to happen is sometimes not as important to us," Bernero says.
But the heart of "Third Watch" -- a term referring to the shift (3 to 11 p.m.) the characters work -- is its people, who have professional and personal dilemmas.
Kim Raver and Bobby Cannavale -- who worked together in Wells' short-lived "Trinity" and were the first actors to be hired for "Third Watch" -- play Kim Zambrano and Bobby Caffey, a dedicated paramedic team who also appear to be destined for romance.
The other paramedics are veteran Monte "Doc" Parker (Michael Beach) and his younger partner, Nieto.
Beside's Cibrian's firefighting Doherty (Zambrano's risk-taking ex-husband), there are two pairs of police partners: Hotshot Maurice "Bosco" Boscorelli (Jason Wiles), a ladies' man, is paired with Price's long-suffering Yokas, a wife and mother whose marriage is troubled.
Then there's streetwise John "Sully" Sullivan, a middle-aged loner, who tries to mentor his rookie partner Ty Davis, who happens to be the son of Sully's late (as in, killed in the line of duty) partner. They're played by Skipp Sudduth and Coby Bell -- who share a terrific chemistry off camera, too.
"They give us a lot of banter that doesn't have anything to do with the story line," says Sudduth. "I think we really have a good rhythm doing that, so they give us more of that."
Sudduth is struck by how strongly viewers connect to the "Third Watch" characters.
"We were shooting one night up in East Harlem, and this woman popped out from behind a wall, and was suddenly in Coby's face, `Why did you run out on that roof? You crazy? You gotta listen to your partner.'"
The series grew out of Bernero's experience as a cop in his hometown, Chicago. People often told him he should write a book, and he did, but found that that format was not his forte. "I wrote a really, really bad-grade American novel," Bernero says with a laugh. "I found that I sort of rambled."
A fellow cop, who moonlighted as an actor, gave him a book about writing screenplays -- a rigid structure that proved to be "perfect for my type of dysfunction," Bernero says.
After moving to Los Angeles in 1996, Bernero wrote a couple of episodes of the series "FX," then met Steven Bochco and wrote an episode of "NYPD Blue." From that, he landed a job on the writing staff of Bochco's "Brooklyn South," then moved on to Wells' short-lived "Trinity."
"When `Trinity' was canceled, John called me in and said, `Would you like to create a show with me?'" he recalls. "John wanted to do a paramedic show, and I wanted to do a cop show. We combined them and ended up with `Third Watch.'"
Still "very prejudiced towards" his hometown -- the "watch" in the show's title is, in fact, a Chicago term, equivalent to "platoon" in New York City -- Bernero always knew that the series would have to be made in either Los Angeles or New York. "Because of the nature of the show, we
cast about 30 speaking parts per episode, and the acting pools aren't large enough anywhere else," he says.
He and Wells settled on New York, but didn't want to do another typical Manhattan-based show. Hence, the highly eclectic and far-flung shooting locations. (To be sure, midtown congestion plays a role in all this, too.)
To Cannavale, who plays paramedic Caffey, the varied look of the show and its inhabitants are a major part of its appeal.
"I think that the cast on this show and the guest actors and the people who are stand-ins and even in the background are well representative of this city and of this country," says Cannavale, a Cuban-American who largely grew up in Union City. "People like to see themselves on television."
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