Fran Lebowitz

Acerbic comic Bill Maher welcomes a panel of guests from diverse parts of the political spectrum for a lively discussion of current events, as well as offering his own perspective on contemporary issues.

Brad Osterhaus, a successful stockbroker who was very friendly with numerous women, is found dead in his upscale apartment. He fell down the stairs but the cause of death is a blow to the head. Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Green (Jesse L. Martin) discover he has multiple female friends, and had recently purchased three expensive pieces of lingerie. One was for a friend who is about to get married (she also has an airtight alibi); another is for Lindsay Tucker (Melissa Errico), a photographer with a young child. She considered herself Brad's true girlfriend (the other women were just dalliances) and she is very upset. Her alibi is she was at the office of world-renowned cosmetics maven Jackie Scott (Lucie Arnaz) at the time Brad was killed. The detectives question Jackie but she isn't much help. She's an empire unto herself and corroborates Lindsay's alibi. But when the detectives ask a few more questions about the people in Jackie's and Lindsay's lives, they discover Jackie is Lindsay's mother and both mother and daughter were sleeping with Brad.

A cop reporting to the scene of a dead jogger, Andy Corvo (Tim Gallin), who had a fatal heart attack, discovers the body of a woman, Anna Briseno, who is shot dead in Central Park. When Detectives Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Green (Jesse L. Martin) question her husband Rafael (Carlos Leone), he is grief stricken. He said he was at work the night it happened, but it turns out he left work early and had a drink. The Detectives suspect he could be the one who killed her. They find Rafael drunk and he points the finger at his brother, Renaldo (Otto Sanchez). In fact, Anna was really Marcella Celaya (based on a search of her social security number) and when they find Renaldo, who has just been released from prison, he says he can't be tried for her murder because he was accused of killing Marcella ten years ago. But the case was botched and even though he was convicted, obviously he wasn't guilty and based on double jeopardy rules; he can't be tried for the same crime twice.

A middle-aged man, Gideon Blake, drops dead in an Oyster Bar. Detective Green detects the smell of bitter almonds, indicating cyanide poisoning. His lunch date, a pediatric oncologist named Bethany Allison, arrives after Blake's been taken away. The cyanide came from the hot sauce, which he brought himself. Blake had a strange profession. He "talked" to the dead and people paid him a hefty sum for his services. Briscoe and Green realize there could be many disgruntled former clients but discover his prints match a guy the Feds have been looking for, named John Wayne Mapes. Mapes/Blake bilked doctors out of millions of dollars and Dr. Allison is on his list.

Andrew Donner was public enemy number one. He interfered with a foul ball during the championship series and that changed the outcome, as the team on its way to winning, ended up losing. Briscoe says you could start looking for his killer with the Manhattan phone book. He was killed by being hit over the head with a beer bottle in a dive bar. Very delicately, the bottle is reconstructed to get prints. In addition to the bartender, they get another set.